Thentia is pleased to announce that it has appointed Ken Osborne as its new Managing Director, Regulatory – Professional Licensing. As part of Thentia’s growing team of industry experts, Osborne will provide subject matter expertise to help further enhance the company’s category-leading government technology cloud platform and support new clients as they transition onto it.
Osborne has spent his career as an operationally focused professional regulator, military officer and public servant. A lawyer by training, he most recently served as the Director of Licensing and Accreditation with the Law Society of Ontario. During his seven-year tenure there, his responsibilities included planning, developing, and executing the lawyer and paralegal licensing processes and the Certified Specialist Program for lawyers.
Before joining the Law Society of Ontario, Osborne spent more than two decades in the Canadian Armed Forces, first as a Training Development Officer and then as a military lawyer in the Office of the Judge Advocate General. With the Office of the Judge Advocate General, his key posts included roles with NATO, the Office of the Canadian Forces Legal Advisor, the Strategic Joint Staff, and as a Deputy Judge Advocate at various bases across Canada.
In 2007 and 2008 he served as the legal officer to Canada’s special operations task force in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He deployed to Afghanistan again in 2010 where he served as a legal mentor with US forces in Kabul. For his service as a mentor, Osborne was recognized with the award of the US Meritorious Service Medal for his “experience, leadership, and unwavering dedication” in facilitating rule of law initiatives. Osborne is also a veteran of peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He also serves as a commissioner on Soldiers’ Aid Commission, which is a public appointment in the province of Ontario.
“I look forward to bringing my professional regulation, military and public service experience to Thentia,” says Osborne. “The depth and breadth of that experience spans both the military and the legal profession and will allow me to effectively guide clients as they move towards the Thentia Cloud platform
Osborne first discovered Thentia several years ago while looking for a regulatory information platform that regulators could use to achieve greater discipline for managing their licensing processes.
“Thentia really caught my attention,” he recalls. “It was clear to me that Thentia was building a system that regulators need to exercise control over their processes.” For Osborne, exercising discipline over regulatory processes “drives greater efficiencies giving regulators more time and resources to address the more complex and chaotic matters that continually arise.”
“I recall that I was reading US Navy SEAL John Willink’s book Extreme Ownership at the time”, says Osborne. “Willink coins the axiom discipline equals freedom in his book. The more I reflected on the concept of regulatory self-discipline, I could see that Thentia was building a platform that would help regulators achieve freedom of regulatory action. “In effect”, Osborne recollects, “Willink’s concept and Thentia’s platform came together for me.”
In his role, Osborne will provide his subject matter expertise on professional regulation, contributing to content, and participating in conferences and other collaborative face-to-face activities with clients. He’ll also work with Thentia’s developers to help them continuously improve the company’s platform to better meet the needs of professional regulators. He is keen to join Thentia’s strong bench of subject matter experts to help regulators navigate an array of operational challenges.
Importantly, Osborne sees his role at Thentia as being an integrator and says his work will focus on harmonizing clients with the platform and the platform with the needs of clients.
“Clients need to see themselves in the products they’re using,” he says. “They need to know that the product is anticipating their operational regulatory requirements. Given my background, I know what it means to be a professional regulator. I can help clients understand how Thentia can help them achieve their regulatory goals while helping the Thentia team continue to improve its platform.”
“Throughout his career, Ken has consistently been a source of advice and leadership, and a champion of collaboration and communication in regulation,” says Thentia CEO, Julian Cardarelli. “In the military, he served the regulation of the profession of arms. With the Law Society of Ontario, he served the profession of law and the regulation of its licensing processes and entry level competence programs. His knowledge and expertise will be tremendously valuable to the team and to the clients we serve.”
Osborne is just the latest addition to Thentia’s growing regulatory team and represents the company’s commitment to developing unparalleled regulatory expertise and vision of providing superior digital government tools and systems to help regulators better protect the public. He joins Thentia’s existing regulatory team, which includes Dr. Sheila Marchant-Short and Mr. Harry Cayton CBE.
