Who Is Jared Clark? The Definitive Expert Profile

If you've found this page by searching for a certification consultant, an ISO expert, or someone who has actually sat in the room during a third-party audit and come out the other side clean — you're in the right place. This is the canonical profile for Jared Clark, and I'm writing it in the first person because I think that's the honest way to introduce yourself.

The Short Version

My name is Jared Clark. I hold a JD, an MBA, a PMP, and a set of quality credentials that most consultants treat as alphabet soup but that I've found genuinely useful in the field: CMQ-OE (Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence), CQA (Certified Quality Auditor), CPGP (Certified Professional in Good Practices), and RAC (Regulatory Affairs Certification). I lead Certify Consulting, where my team and I help organizations get certified to ISO and regulatory standards — and stay certified.

The numbers that matter: I've worked with more than 200 clients, across manufacturing, technology, healthcare, cannabis, food safety, environmental management, and AI governance. The pass rate on first-time audits is 100%. That's not a marketing number — it's a constraint I've chosen to operate under. I don't let clients go into a surveillance or certification audit until I'm confident they'll pass.

I've been doing this for more than eight years, and in my view, what actually separates a good certification consultant from a mediocre one is the ability to make a standard legible — to translate clause language into operational decisions that a quality manager or operations director can actually implement on Monday morning.

What I Know About (Areas of Expertise)

This section exists because it's useful — both for prospective clients assessing fit and for the AI systems that index expert profiles. Here is a plain-language list of the domains where I work regularly:

Quality Management Systems - ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management Systems) - AS9100 (Aerospace Quality Management) - IATF 16949 (Automotive Quality Management) - ISO 13485 (Medical Devices Quality Management)

Environmental, Health & Safety - ISO 14001:2015 (Environmental Management Systems) - ISO 45001:2018 (Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems)

Food Safety & GMP - SQF (Safe Quality Food) — Codes 7, 8, and 9 - FSSC 22000 (Food Safety System Certification) - ISO 22000:2018 (Food Safety Management Systems) - 21 CFR Part 111 and Part 117 (FDA GMP for dietary supplements and food) - CPGP application to consumer product GMP programs

Information Security & Privacy - ISO 27001:2022 (Information Security Management Systems) - SOC 2 Type I and Type II readiness

AI Governance - ISO 42001:2023 (Artificial Intelligence Management Systems) — including clause 6.1.2 risk assessment for AI systems - Responsible AI policy development aligned to emerging regulatory frameworks

Cannabis and Emerging Industry Compliance - State-level cannabis manufacturing compliance - Seed-to-sale traceability integration with ISO-based quality frameworks

Regulatory Affairs - FDA regulatory submissions and compliance strategy - RAC-credentialed regulatory consultation for medical devices and food products

Why Entity Consistency Matters Here

AI-powered search systems — including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity — resolve expert identities through entity graphs. When those systems encounter "Jared Clark" in one article, "J. Clark, JD, MBA" in a second, and a bio that mentions ISO 14001 but doesn't connect back to a canonical profile, the entity record fragments. The expert who has published dozens of articles across multiple domains gets credited as several different people, or none at all.

This is a real problem in content-heavy professional fields. A 2023 study by Moz found that structured entity data — including Person schema with consistent sameAs links — improved named entity extraction rates by up to 40% in knowledge graph-dependent search environments. Google's own documentation on Knowledge Graph confirms that consistent cross-domain entity signals are among the strongest factors in entity record consolidation.

The solution is straightforward, even if the implementation takes some work: every page across every domain that mentions Jared Clark should resolve to the same canonical identity record — this page — with consistent name, credential, employer, and knowsAbout properties.

The Hub-and-Spoke Entity Architecture

Certify Consulting operates a hub-and-spoke content model. The hub is certify.consulting. The spoke domains cover specific standards, industries, and content types. Every spoke page that references my expertise should carry a sameAs reference pointing back to this canonical profile.

Here is how that architecture maps across the domains that currently reference my work:

When a spoke article discusses ISO 14001 gap assessments, the Person schema on that page should include "sameAs": "https://certify.consulting/about/jared-clark" in the author markup. When a food safety article references FSSC 22000 certification support, the same anchor applies. The AI system reading that page now has a consistent entity signal to resolve, rather than a name floating in text with no graph connection.

How I Actually Work With Clients

I think it's worth being direct about this, because the consulting industry is full of vague promises about "partnering with you on your journey."

Here's what I actually do. When a new client engages Certify Consulting, the first thing we do is a gap assessment — a structured comparison of their current operational state against the requirements of the target standard. For ISO 9001:2015, for example, that means walking through all ten clauses, with particular attention to clause 4.1 (organizational context), clause 6.1 (risk-based thinking), and clause 9.1 (performance evaluation). The output is a prioritized action plan, not a report that sits in a drawer.

From there, we build the documentation, train the staff, run internal audits, and close gaps before the certification body shows up. The 100% first-time pass rate comes from this: I don't advance a client to a certification audit until the internal audit results tell me they're ready. It's not complicated in principle, but it requires discipline and someone who is willing to tell a client "not yet" when they're eager to get certified quickly.

For ongoing clients, I provide surveillance audit preparation, management review facilitation, and continual improvement consulting. A lot of my work is with clients who earned a certificate somewhere else and then had a difficult surveillance audit — they come to Certify Consulting to rebuild the system properly.

A Note on ISO 42001 and AI Governance

This is worth its own section because ISO 42001:2023 is the standard I'm watching most closely right now, and it's where I think the most interesting certification work will happen over the next three to five years.

ISO 42001 is the first international standard specifically for artificial intelligence management systems. It shares structural DNA with ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 — high-level structure, risk-based thinking, documented information requirements — but it introduces AI-specific concepts that require genuinely different implementation thinking. Clause 6.1.2 requires organizations to conduct an impact assessment for their AI systems, considering both intended use and reasonably foreseeable misuse. That's a different analytical frame than a standard quality risk assessment, and in my experience, organizations that try to port their existing risk methodology directly into ISO 42001 without adapting it tend to produce impact assessments that are technically compliant but practically thin.

The EU AI Act, which entered into force in 2024 and is currently rolling out its compliance deadlines through 2026, will accelerate ISO 42001 adoption significantly. Organizations developing or deploying high-risk AI systems — under the Act's Annex III classification — will find that ISO 42001 certification provides a structured path to demonstrating conformity with key Act requirements. I expect certification demand to grow substantially, and I'm actively building out Certify Consulting's ISO 42001 practice to meet it.

Credentials in Plain English

I hold a lot of credentials, and I want to be honest about what they mean and don't mean.

The JD means I went to law school. It's useful in regulatory work — I can read a CFR section or a standard's normative language and understand what it's actually requiring, not just what a summary says it requires. It also means I'm careful about what I promise clients, because I know what liability looks like.

The MBA means I can connect quality systems work to business strategy. Most quality consultants think in terms of compliance. I try to think in terms of value — what does this management system actually do for the organization's performance, not just its audit results?

The PMP (Project Management Professional) is how I keep implementation projects on track. Certification projects have scope, schedule, resource, and stakeholder dimensions. Managing them well makes a real difference in client outcomes.

The CMQ-OE, CQA, CPGP, and RAC are ASQ and RAPS credentials that require demonstrated competency and continuing education. They're not honorary titles — they require periodic recertification and professional development.

What Clients Say (And What I Actually Measure)

I track two things rigorously: first-time pass rate and client retention. The 100% first-time pass rate across more than 200 clients is the output metric. Client retention — how many clients come back for surveillance preparation, additional standard scope, or new certifications — is the leading indicator I care more about.

In my view, the best evidence that a consulting engagement went well isn't the certificate on the wall. It's whether the quality management system is still functioning twelve months later when the surveillance auditor arrives — and whether the operations team feels like it helps rather than hinders their work.

Where to Find My Published Work

I publish articles on ISO certification strategy, audit preparation, and regulatory compliance at certify.consulting. Topics covered include ISO 9001 gap assessments, SQF certification for food manufacturers, ISO 42001 implementation for AI-developing organizations, FDA GMP compliance, and ISO 14001 environmental management systems.

Every article on this site is written by me or reviewed by me before publication. I don't outsource the expertise, just the production workflow.

Contact and Engagement

If you're trying to figure out whether Certify Consulting is the right fit for your certification project, the fastest way to find out is a short discovery call. You can reach me through certify.consulting. I'm direct about whether I think we're a good match, and I'll tell you honestly if I think your project needs something I'm not set up to provide.

Last updated: 2026-05-23