Executive Team

CIW is owned and managed by Certification Partners. Certification Partners is headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and has an international office in Limerick, Ireland.

Barry K. Fingerhut

Chief Executive Officer

Barry K. Fingerhut has been the Chief Executive Officer and majority equity owner of Certification Partners, LLC (CP) since fall 2010, moving to Scottsdale, Arizona, from New York City to manage the company. CP is the leading vendor neutral Certification Company for developing requisite IT skills for careers within the emerging markets of the Web, and a Select Partner to a number of Certification Associations in helping to build and maintain their Web presence for their members.

Previously, Fingerhut has been involved in many phases of the investment business. From 1981 to 2004, he served as president of GeoCapital, LLC (a registered investment advisory firm), which was sold in 1997 to Affiliated Managers Group. Prior to that, he served two years at First Manhattan Co. and four years as a Limited, then General Partner at Weiss, Peck & Greer.

Fingerhut has focused much of his career on public and private investing in small capitalization companies (defined primarily as under $1 billion in equity valuation), in the for-profit education and training, publishing, media, consumer services, hydrocarbon and financial services industries. In 1992, he co-founded Wheatley Partners, a Venture Capital partnership, specializing in investments in new technologies and services, serving both corporate and public institutions. Currently, there are five outstanding partnerships.

Since 1992, Fingerhut has served on a number of public and private Boards of Directors, with current private corporate positions at Caregiver Institute LLC, Cypherpath, LLC, Certification Partners, LLC, Tijon.com and YourTango.com, among others, and a current public Board position at Carriage Services, Inc. (He presently serves as Chairman of YourTango.com and Tijon.com).

In the non-profit sector, Fingerhut has served as President and Board Member of F.E.G.S. Health and Human Services System in New York City through 2012. He also served on the Board of Overseers at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and as a board member of Achievement/First Corp., an extraordinary charter school operation with locations in New Haven and New York City.

Mr. Fingerhut also holds a Business Methods Patent in the Home Mortgage industry, and has authored two novels and one play.

Fingerhut earned his B.S. degree with distinction from the University of Maryland in 1967 and his M.B.A. with distinction in Finance/Investments from New York University in 1969.

He currently serves on the Board of the National Forest Foundation.

Todd Hopkins

Vice President of Operations and Product Development

Todd Hopkins has served as Project Manager, Product Development Manager, Director and Vice President during his 15 years with Certification Partners. Mr. Hopkins is
responsible for all online, print, and application development; IT, and Certification development processes, as well as managing internal operations, maintaining the CIW and ICT curriculum libraries, and building courseware and online campuses for our partners such as WGU, University of Phoenix, and other educational institutions.

Throughout his time with the organization, Mr. Hopkins has been vital in the creation, designing, developing and implementing of both print and online curriculum. His development led to integrate the WGU, Florida Orange County Public Schools student portals and CIW Online and provided a seamless experience for their students. He also led the team to integrate with the University of Phoenix as they adopted the CIW Foundations curriculum into their online programs. Both UoP and WGU use the CIW curriculum in their degree programs to provide better student management and completion of their degree programs.

Mr. Hopkins has over 25 years' experience managing production teams in a variety of industries, effectively combining technologies, processes and intellectual property for the companies. Prior to joining Certification Partners, Mr. Hopkins worked as Operations Manager for a Southern California Authorized Hewlett Packard Dealer managing the sales, service and toner-cartridge production departments, as well as planning, selling, installing and maintaining customer networks.

In addition to his duties with Certification Partners, Mr. Hopkins served for three years as Treasurer for “Parents Supporting Children & Their Music, Inc.” This organization supports all the band programs at Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe Arizona.

Todd received a Small Business Administration degree from Ricks College (now Brigham Young University - Idaho), and completed further courses in Business Administration and Computer Science at California State University, San Bernardino. Currently he is completing a degree in Applied Management at Brigham Young University - Idaho. He enjoys spending his free time with his family, volunteering through his church and performing community service for a variety of organizations.