Career Next Step Team

James G. Clawson, Chairman of the Board
Mark Higgins, Chief Executive Officer
Herb Crowder, Vice President
Conor Sibley, Chief Technology Officer

James G. Clawson
Chairman of the Board

Jim Clawson is widely recognized as an expert in organizational behavior, managerial leadership, and career development. Jim has taught courses in each of these disciplines at the Harvard Business School and the Darden School of Business for a combined 26 years. Jim currently serves as the Chairperson of the First Year Program at the Darden School of Business. In addition, Professor Clawson consults regularly on organizational behavior and leadership issues with dozens of Fortune 500 corporations. Jim also brings executive management experience to Career Next Step, having served for 8 years as the CEO of a 3,000 person non-profit organization. Finally, Jim brings extensive publishing experience to Career Next Step, having developed two editions of Self Assessment and Career Development, a widely circulated career development book upon which the Career Next Step site and multiple career development courses throughout the United States are based. While serving as a member of the faculty of Darden and the Harvard Business School, Jim published 7 books, more than 25 articles, and more than 50 cases. Jim has an A.B. with Great Distinction from Stanford University, an MBA from Brigham Young University, and a Doctor of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. Click here to learn more about Jim’s background.

Mark Higgins
Chief Executive Officer

Mark Higgins is a graduate of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Prior to Darden, Mark served in several business development and project management roles, the most recent of which were with Symantec Corporation, a $2 billion information security software and services company. Prior to Symantec’s $145 million acquisition of Riptech in August 2002, Mark directed Riptech’s healthcare marketing and sales efforts. Following the acquisition by Symantec, Mark led the development of Symantec’s corporate-wide trending and analysis capabilities. In order to establish Symantec firmly as the information security industry’s thought leader, Mark designed the Internet Security Threat Report, a semi-annual publication that was quickly recognized as the world’s most reliable reference on emerging threats. Mark graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University with a B.A. in English and Psychology, and received his MBA from the Darden School of Business in May 2005.

W. Herbert Crowder
Vice President

Herb Crowder joined the Darden School of Business seven years ago as the first Director of Alumni Career Services and a Visiting Lecturer. Herb designed and built the alumni career services function, which is now recognized as one of the top alumni career service center among graduate business schools worldwide. As part of these efforts, Herb developed the most extensive on line resource center for career assistance. Over the past 7 years, he has also served in a counseling capacity, having assisted more than 2,500 alumni (ranging from recent graduates to C-level executives) with career and life transitions. Herb has spoken widely at career development industry forums both domestically and abroad, and has recently lectured at both Widener and Temple Universities in Philadelphia. Prior to joining Darden, Herb spent more than 25 years in senior management roles at Citigroup, Bankers Trust and PNC covering investment banking, corporate banking and private wealth services both domestically and abroad. Herb also served as a Managing Director of a boutique consulting firm providing strategic marketing services to major financial service firms such as Wachovia, Bankers Trust, UBS, Fidelity Funds. Herb received both his BA and MBA degrees from the University of Virginia.

Conor Sibley
Chief Technology Officer

Conor has been involved with e-commerce and business enabling technology since the mid 1990s. His in-depth knowledge of software and networking technologies comes from designing and implementing emerging technologies while contracting with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), North-East Regional Research Center (NRRC), various branches of the military and the inteligence community. Conor frequently consults with contracting and product based business in the defense sector to help bolster sales via acquisition and the development of new product strategy. He also has served as a Network Security Engineer with BBN Technologies, an organization that architected the Internet and first e-mail technologies. Prior to joining BBN, Conor held positions at internet startups designing business and web-enabling software. Conor graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.S. after completing the requirements for both Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his MBA from the Darden School of Business.