Dr. Isabelle Gonthier is PSI’s Chief Assessment Officer, where she oversees the teams responsible for ensuring overall client and program success, including test development and psychometrics services, content management, data analytics and forensics, and client experience across all global markets PSI is serving. In an executive leadership role, she draws from her 20+ years of industry experience to help define PSI’s business strategies and develop service offerings and technology roadmaps. On a client level, Isabelle is known for her keen ability to blend best practice guidance with smart innovation to set credentialing programs up for success. Isabelle has been highly engaged in advancing the testing and credentialing field, including serving as NCCA chair and psychometric commissioner, and now serving as the Chair of the I.C.E. Accreditation Services Council and as Vice-Chair on the ATP Security Committee. She is also serving as a Director on the CNAR Board of Directors. Isabelle holds the ICE-CCP (Certified Credentialing Professional) certification, demonstrating competence across all professional credentialing activities.
In this exclusive interview with the CIO Magazine, Isabelle highlights emerging trends, the impact of AI on exam security, and the evolving role of assessments in bridging the education-to-workforce gap. For CIOs and IT leaders navigating a rapidly changing digital landscape, her perspectives offer a roadmap to maintaining relevance, fairness, and excellence in high-stakes assessments.
Can you share your journey in the field of assessment and credentialing? What pivotal moments or decisions have shaped your leadership style and approach at PSI?
I started my career as a psychometrician and learned the basics of assessment and credentialing working with a large-scale licensing nursing program in Canada. This allowed me to build strong foundations in exam development and psychometrics, as well as team management and leadership. During that time, I was also given an opportunity to work with a certification program in financial planning, working on the development of their first competency profile, which was very innovative and forward-thinking at the time. I later took a senior leadership position with that financial planning organization, which continued to leverage my skills and shaped me as a leader, getting me to understand the intricacies of a credentialing program from all angles, including governance, management, and operations. It was during that time that I got involved in volunteering within the credentialing industry, participating in key initiatives and committees with organizations such as the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (I.C.E.) and the Association of Testing Publishers (ATP). I took on leadership roles within these organizations, such as Chair of the National Commission of Certifying Agencies (NCCA) and Chair of the ATP Innovation in Testing conference, and these opportunities allowed me to connect and work with many thought leaders in the credentialing industry and continue to learn and grow within that industry. I then was provided the opportunity to lead the merger of two testing organizations in Canada, and as the President of this newly formed organization, further consolidated and established my leadership approach and developed as an assessment business leader. This then subsequently led to another major merger in the industry.
I then joined PSI Services, where I leveraged my experience and expertise to further build high-functioning assessment development and psychometric teams and now leading the Client and Assessment Office where we focus on developing and delivering valid, reliable, and fair assessments and ensuring client experience excellence throughout the process. In that role, I continue to promote the importance of thought leadership in the industry and foster the engagement of the team in key industry conferences and committees. I have the privilege of hosting the PSI Tried and Tested podcast, where I discuss key assessment and credentialing topics with various thought leaders and experts in the industry. This is an amazing opportunity to provide visibility on the important work they are doing and address topics that are top-of-mind within our industry.
The field of psychometrics has seen significant evolution over the years. How do you balance maintaining high standards with embracing innovation in testing and measurement?
Defensibility is at the forefront of everything we do, ensuring that the assessments we develop and deliver are in alignment with best practices and standards, considering what is at stake. A lot of the work we do is with organizations that certify or license professionals in healthcare, finance, construction, for instance, and the safety of the public is paramount. That is and remains the key priority in everything we do, maintaining these standards and not jeopardizing outcomes. Leveraging innovations and staying relevant aligns with these outcomes, it just requires thoughtful consideration as we embrace change. One example is remote proctoring as a delivery modality. Before the pandemic, several organizations were skeptical and concerned about its use, and promoting its effectiveness and benefit was challenging, even if data showed that it did not significantly impact exam performance one way or the other. Fast forward to now, where dual modality is made available across many sectors and programs, the conversation is no longer about the effectiveness of the modality, but continuous ways to improve and enhance the experience and access for test takers, while protecting the integrity of the program. Generative AI is another innovation that pushes our industry to think differently, from adapting exam development processes to rethinking how and what we assess. We need to ensure we put in appropriate guardrails in using Generative AI, but we must embrace the change as it brings huge benefits in building efficiencies and making our processes more streamlined and productive. AI in general continues to push our limits and forces us to expand our thinking from the traditional approach.
How do you envision the role of competency-based assessments evolving in industries with growing demands for certification and licensure?
Competency-based assessments will play an increasingly important role in bridging the gap between education and workforce readiness, and it is consequently critical in defining what needs to be assessed from a credentialing standpoint. The assessment of competencies not only validates an individual’s skills, knowledge, and abilities for a specific role but also ensures they remain adaptable in an evolving job market. In fact, according to a recent ETS survey, 80% of respondents believe that demonstrated skills will hold as much value as traditional university degrees by 2035.
Competency-based assessments provide a dynamic, evidence-based approach to verifying expertise, ensuring credentials stay relevant and reflective of real-world capabilities. This is essential for employers, organizations, and individuals. As the demand for lifelong learning grows, competency-based assessments have a significant role to play in helping industries maintain high standards while helping individuals showcase their evolving skill sets.
What emerging trends in credentialing and licensure have caught your attention, and how is PSI adapting to these changes to remain at the forefront of the industry?
One of the most exciting trends in credentialing (certification and licensure) is the integration of AI across the assessment lifecycle. After years of theoretical discussion, we are now seeing real-world implementation – with human oversight ensuring quality and integrity. From a PSI standpoint, this includes AI-driven test preparation that personalizes feedback, AI-assisted test content development with Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) processes, and AI-enhanced security measures to safeguard test integrity.
The trend towards AI-driven test security has evolved well beyond the challenges and opportunities highlighted through the adoption of remote proctoring as a test delivery modality over the course of the past number of years. For PSI, while AI supports our human proctors by flagging suspicious behavior, its role now extends across multiple security layers. This includes AI-powered identity verification with biometric checks, AI deepfake detection, AI-enabled room similarity scans, and tools to identify generative AI content. Additionally, AI-driven investigative tools help combat professional impersonation and cheating rings.
With your involvement in organizations like I.C.E. and ATP, what do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges in developing and maintaining global testing standards?
With the constant evolution of technology, and pressure to stay relevant, what is most critical for our industry is to stay engaged, work together, and collaborate on enhancing and promoting standards. Our industry is very collaborative and organizations like I.C.E. and ATP provide us with an opportunity to leverage that collaborative mindset and work together on guidelines and approaches to ensure we stay relevant and get ahead of the curve. ATP’s Innovation in Testing conference theme for the past 3 years has been about being ‘Better Together’, which reflects this collaborative mindset and recognizes that together, we are stronger and can accomplish so much. It is reflected through the work committees such as the Technology-Based Assessment (TBA) and the Security Committee, as well as the AI Advisory Committee that was put in place last year.
How is PSI leveraging data forensics, statistics, and research to ensure the integrity, fairness, and effectiveness of its assessment programs?
The PSI test security roadmap is ambitious and the move toward real-time data forensics to help us identify suspicious patterns and detect potential misconduct is an essential element as we continue to progress and enhance our approaches. Our data forensics service is already extremely effective at detecting patterns through the analysis of indices such as response similarity, error in common, score drift, or response times. The next step is to make it faster to continue supporting the protection of the integrity of the assessments we deliver and ensure the validity of the scores provided. We implemented next-day flagging for a specific use case in 2024, and we are planning to launch automated next-day flagging in 2025. The next phase is gathering information in near real-time and then using data to support proctors in real-time. We are also enhancing our web crawling service, which searches for stolen test content on the internet, with dark web monitoring and getting as far into closed groups as we can.
One of the ways we leverage statistical analyses to ensure the fairness of the assessments we develop is to conduct Differential Analyses (DIF) to analyze whether certain demographic groups perform differently on specific test questions. This helps identify questions that might disadvantage certain groups and require further review or updates, as well as refine the approach when working with subject-matter-experts in developing and validating test content. Any disparities found are addressed by implementing targeted interventions or adjustments.
What drives your passion for advancing the fields of psychometrics and credentialing? Is there a personal mantra or experience that keeps you motivated?
Get engaged with the industry, contribute to committees and thought leadership opportunities such as conference presentations, blogs, and podcasts, connect with people to share perspectives and expertise as well as learn from them and adopt a learning and growth mindset.