Meet Your 2025 Scrum Certified Member Candidates for the Board of Directors

The Scrum Alliance Board of Directors (BoD) has a minimum of nine members. Of these, at least five are appointed by the board and known as Board Elected Directors, or BED. Three are elected by the membership of the organization and referred to as Scrum Certified Members or SCM. One member is the current Chief Executive Officer of the organization.

Meet the finalists for 2025

In May, we petitioned community members to submit nominations for individuals to represent our vibrant community on the Scrum Alliance BoD. After careful evaluation of all candidates, our board has selected three top contenders based on a number of criteria, including how their backgrounds fit into our existing board’s skill sets, governance experience, agile experience, community involvement, diversity factors relating to identity, geography, and professional background, and more. No single factor is used to select any candidate.

Get to know the finalists:

Raj Kasturi

I am committed to advocating and promoting real-world agility in organizations across the globe. I truly believe that building teams in which members trust one another is a key leadership activity in the quest for organizational agility. This deep-rooted belief and motivation encourages me to serve the Scrum Alliance community.

My commitment is evident in my volunteer work and community service over the last 15+ years. I have volunteered at several user groups, including at Penn State University in the United States, as an adjunct faculty member, keynote speaker at Hyderabad University in India, and other illustrious organizations/groups, volunteer/reviewer at Scrum Alliance Global Scrum Gatherings, and volunteer at Scrum Alliance’s Coaches Clinics; as a speaker and author.

As an adjunct faculty member at Penn State University for the past 25+ years, I have imparted my knowledge on various subjects by helping individuals, teams, and organizations. From the last three decades working as a technologist, project manager, and agile coach, I have always been passionate about bringing change in organizations. I have played an instrumental role in many large-scale agile/scrum transformations in the financial, healthcare, eCommerce, life sciences, property and casualty, life insurance, telecommunications and cable, pharmaceutical, and medical/scientific publishing industries. 

In my current role as an entrepreneur/leader, I have helped several individuals, teams, and organizations with their agile transformation. I believe agile adoption is simple, but transformation is challenging, and requires patience and commitment. For me, gaining this experience has been both enriching and rewarding.

Alex Sloley

Dear Scrum Alliance Community,

I am deeply committed to and passionate about the Scrum and agile community—so much so that my book “The Agile Community” was published in 2022! I had heard you should “write what you know,” so that’s what I did. I am privileged to have helped many people engage in the community and to help many communities grow and learn together. I have advised, organized, keynoted, facilitated, reviewed, chaired, and many other things at dozens of agile conferences and meetups worldwide. I am so proud to see the awesome things you have all done! I have been a member of the Scrum Alliance Coaching Advisory Team, I am a global Shepherd for the Scrum Alliance Agile Coaching Retreats, and am a co-chair for the Agile Alliance Agile Coaching Ethics Initiative Team.

I believe we are at a critical point in our collective agile journey. The world is more uncertain than ever, and the challenges we face as agilists are harder than ever before. I want to join the board of directors because I think I can harness my agile community expertise to help make things a little better. I am especially interested in helping grow agile communities in developing regions, connecting communities around the world, and helping create a healthy and ethical agile ecosystem. I look forward to connecting with all of you, perhaps at an in-person agile conference, and vote for me and the #agilecommunity!

Thank you for your trust, 

Alex

Braz Brandt

I’m Braz Brandt, an Enterprise Product and Agile Coach. I live in the greater Richmond, Virginia, area, and I’m a husband to an amazing wife, dad to six wonderful kids, and friend to two dogs.

I’ve been a Scrum practitioner for nearly 25 years and a coach for the last fifteen years. Before becoming a full-time coach, I held every role on a Scrum team. I use those experiences to help people build high-performing teams and organizations. I’m reminded daily how essential Scrum remains in the world of work.

While I’ve worked with organizations from startups to Global Fortune 50 companies in industries across most major sectors, I started my work using Scrum in the non-profit sector. My experience with iterative and incremental product delivery, as well as my understanding of the need to build a sustainable, mission-driven organization, has served me as I’ve led Agile Richmond as their President over the last five years.

I’ve been very fortunate to have the support of Scrum Alliance, specifically its members, trainers, and community, as I’ve grown in my career and supported my communities. My greatest professional joy is growing the support I had in my career to help as many members of our global community as possible.

I am excited to have the opportunity to earn your support and help create and advocate for a vision of “Scrum, AND” to meet the needs of the people, teams, and organizations we all help every day.

Get ready to vote

Stay tuned. Starting October 1, 2024, all Scrum Alliance Scrum Certified Members, with an active certification and in good standing, will have the opportunity to vote on one candidate they feel will best represent our community on the Scrum Alliance BoD. The winning candidate will serve for a three-year term commencing on January 1, 2025.