Top Brand Leaders On One Stage

Rebecca Nathenson

Director of Product Management, Google Assistant Developer Platform
Google Assistant

Rebecca works as Director of Product Management at Google. She leads the Developer Platform for Google Assistant, working to ensure that the developer experience for Assistant is intuitive, fast, and fun. Prior to Google, Rebecca led compliance and Admin product management at Box. Rebecca has also led product at Jobvite, where her team delivered deeply-researched, smartly-designed products and features for Jobvite's Engage, Hire, and Onboard products. Prior to Jobvite, Rebecca worked at NetSuite, leading first Commerce then Infrastructure product management. She also has extensive experience in driving commercial and technology innovation through product management in consumer e-commerce and retail companies, including Shutterfly, eBay, Apple, and BizRate. Rebecca received her MBA from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, and her BA in International Relations from Stanford University.

Greg Bennett

Director of Conversation Design
Salesforce

Greg Bennett is Director of Conversation Design at Salesforce, where he founded and leads the company’s first dedicated Conversation Design practice since its inception. As a sociolinguist, he shepherds a product and design vision at Salesforce that helps teams across the entire product portfolio create inclusive experiences that feel natural, helpful, and meaningful, and manages an international team of Conversation Designers who work with Salesforce’s Product leaders to define the future of conversational AI.

Shyamala Prayaga

Senior Software Product Manager Conversational AI-Deep Learning
NVIDIA

Shyamala is a seasoned conversational AI expert. Having led initiatives across connected home, automotive, and wearables - just to name a few, she's put her work on research into usability, accessibility, speech recognition, and multimodal voice user interfaces and has even been published internationally across publications like Forbes. Outside of her research, she's spent the last 18 years designing mobile, web, desktop, and smart TV interfaces and has most recently joined NVIDIA to own their roadmap for speech AI solutions.

Sean King

SVP, General Manager, Commercial Enterprise
Veritone

Sean King oversees the commercial services division at Veritone including managed services for advertising, licensing, and synthetic media. His forward-thinking marketing and operational insights have solidified Veritone’s subsidiary, Veritone One as the leading AI-powered audio and influencer advertising agency in the world, and has grown Veritone Licensing as North America’s premiere AI-based content licensing firm — setting the stage to take on the next frontier of synthetic media and metaverse solutions with Veriverse. Over the past 20 years, Sean has held various senior level management positions focusing on sales management, technology operations, and strategic partnership development. He is passionate about finding new ways to refine operations, create new opportunities, and applying practical uses of AI and synthetic media to the metaverse.

Pete Erickson

CEO
Modev

Pete is the founder and CEO of Modev and the creator of the VOICE series of events including VOICE Summit, Global, Talks and all related media properties.

Maple Cheng

Head of Digital – Service Delivery, Cargo & People
Cathay Pacific

Maple is an aviation and management professional with experience across a variety of leadership positions in Cathay Pacific Airways. In the current role, she leads the Digital Transformation initiatives across Service Delivery, Cargo and People functions at Cathay Pacific to drive business change through data driven insights and promoting adoption of new technology such as Conversational AI.

Arte Merritt

Conversational AI Global Segment Lead
AWS

Arte Merritt leads Conversational AI partnerships at AWS. He was the co-founder and CEO of Dashbot, a leading analytics platform for chatbots and voice assistants, which he led to 20,000 customers, 90 billion messages processed, and multiple acquisition offers. He is a frequent author and speaker on conversational AI and data insights. Previously, he founded Motally, a mobile analytics platform he sold to Nokia. Arte is an MIT alum

Lisa Falkson

Senior VUI Designer
Amazon, Devices Design Group

Lisa Falkson is currently Senior VUI Designer at Amazon, leading a team of VUI designers covering Alexa Communication, FireTV, and new multimodal devices. She is the editor and author of “Ubiquitous Voice: Essays from the Field” and has over 20 years of industry and research experience, specializing in the design, development and deployment of natural speech and multimodal interfaces. Her most recent work includes next-generation voice user interfaces at NIO and CloudCar, as well as Amazon’s first speech-enabled products: Fire TV, Fire Phone and Echo/Alexa. Prior to that, she focused on early iPad/iPhone interfaces at Volio, and speech-enabled IVR applications at Nuance. Lisa holds a BSEE from Stanford, and an MSEE from UCLA.

Sanket Shinde

AI Solutions Architect
CARIAD, A Volkswagen Group Company

Sanket Shinde is the Voice AI Solutions Architect at CARIAD, a Volkswagen Group Company. A self-described technology and math enthusiast, his background is in data science and research. Sanket received his Master of Science at Technische Universität Darmstadt in Information and Communications Engineering, with a focus on Machine Learning and AI, and a Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Mumbai in Electronics and Communications Engineering. When Sanket's not innovating the driver experience, he's most likely playing the drums or bouldering.

Evan Macmillan

CEO
Gridspace

Evan has been an entrepreneur most of his life. Previously, he co-founded Zappedy, a payments technology company that was backed by Eric Schmidt's venture fund and acquired by Groupon. His other technology projects have been covered by the WSJ and PBS. Evan's patents include an HCI invention and a bank infrastructure capability. He has an engineering bachelor's from Stanford in Product Design.

Noelle Silver

Global Partner, AI and Analytics
IBM

Founder, AI Leadership Institute | Former VP of Digital Technology at NPR | WAC Global Digital Ambassador | Voicebot.ai Top Influencers in Voice | Alexa Conference "Executive of the Year" | VentureBeat’s Women In AI Award for AI Mentorship. I am a leader who creates clarity, leads with empathy and delivers results. I am a leader who acknowledges the work of my teams, inspires and supports innovation and fosters a growth mindset. Intentional, Mindful Leadership is the new normal.

Ayesha Saleem

Conversation Design Manager
Instacart

Ayesha is a Conversation Design Manager @ Instacart where she leads the strategy for voice AI and chatbots. Prior to Instacart, Ayesha was the first Conversation Designer at Rocket Mortgage where she defined what conversation design looks like in the home loan space. Ayesha has a Masters in Human-Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Michigan and is a proud Detroit native.

Toni Klopfenstein

Developer Relations Engineer
Google Assistant

Toni Klopfenstein (she/her) is a Developer Relations Engineer for Google Assistant, focused primarily on Smart Home and IoT platforms. She has been involved with open-source hardware for over a decade, including her previous work at SparkFun Electronics and the Open Source Hardware Association, and enjoys mentoring and teaching. Toni believes in making technology and technology documentation accessible to empower others in making, hacking, and developing their own solutions.

Alex Dunn

Chief Product Officer
Voicify

Alex Dunn leads the product team at Voicify and is the founder of Enabled Play. He's also a Microsoft MVP, PubConf Champion, Bixby Premier Developer, and AWS Alexa SME. His background in accessibility, application development, and conversational AI has leaned into enabling applications to do more for businesses and consumers using scalable architectures and design, distributed services, cloud infrastructure, and innovative edge technologies. Alex does his best to remain platform agnostic in his practices and development with specialties in C#, Kotlin, and TypeScript while building for cross-platform compatibility. You might find him co-organizing the Boston Mobile C# Meetup with Microsoft, speaking at all sorts of conferences and events around the world, streaming on Twitch, and on Pluralsight. You can read his regular tips and thoughts in the development community at https://alexdunn.org/ or watch him live at https://twitch.tv/suave_pirate Outside technology, you can find him playing guitar, working with animal rescue, or exploring the great outdoors.

Marlinda Galapon

Director of Conversation Design Senior
Salesforce

Marlinda Galapon is Conversation Design Senior at Salesforce, where she leads design strategy and production for cutting-edge conversational products across the company's CRM product suite. Drawing on her experience at myriad tech companies such as Adobe, Meta, and Yahoo!, Marlinda puts fairness, rigor, and inclusion at the center of her design process, guiding teams toward developing experiences that are efficient, welcoming, and personable for her users.

Surbhi Rathore

CEO/Co-Founder
Symbl.ai

Surbhi Rathore is bringing to life her vision of a future where conversation intelligence is easily accessible to any organization. Surbhi has had quite the journey - from software developer to first time founder who moved to the U.S. to create a programmable AI platform built on easy-to-deploy APIs and SDKs. Surbhi is co-founder and CEO of Symbl.ai, a technology that makes it simple to deploy contextual AI and analytics across voice, text and video communication, for any stage software. Symbl is now a Series A startup with $24M in venture financing and 70+ team members across the globe.

Tobias Dengel

CEO
Willow Tree

Tobias Dengel is CEO of WillowTree, LLC. a leading mobile strategy, design and app development company servicing Fortune 500/5000 clients and large government agencies. He is a seasoned technology executive with 20+ years experience in Mobility, Digital Media and Interactive Marketing.

Jessica Dene Earley-Cha

Developer Relations Engineer
Google Assistant

Jessica Den eEarley-Cha (she/her) is a Developer Relations Engineer for Google Assistant. She has been teaching developers how to build voice applications and App Actions for over 3 years. She enjoys connecting with developers and future developers. Jessica is @WomenInVoice Advocate, former @WomenTechmakers & @gdg lead, former @girldevelopit & @Hackbright teacher. Before attending a software bootcamp in 2015, Jessica worked in the non-profit sector for over 10 years, working primarily with at-risk female youths and adults with mental health challenges.

Jon Stine

Executive Director
OVON

Jon Stine is the Executive Director and founder of the Open Voice Network. Prior to founding OVN, Stine was global director of retail sales at Intel and a director of North American retail at Cisco. He has an MS in telecommunications from the University of Oregon.

Joti Balani

Founder and Managing Director
Freshriver.ai

Joti Balani, founder of Freshriver.ai, is a creative architect designing and delivering complex enterprise, human and systemic transformations with her multidimensional framework blending AI, Data Science, Engineering and Social Sciences. She leads transformative innovations at Fortune 100 enterprises to create emotional, economic and brand value with her team, who represent the empowered human race in all dimensions.

Stas Tushinskiy

CEO
Instreamatic

Stas Tushinskiy is the CEO of Instreamatic, based in Palo Alto, California. Prior to Instreamatic, Stas built a leading digital audio advertising sales house in Europe, working closely with Tier 1 brands like Porsche, Starbucks, and McDonalds, as well as global ad agencies including OMD and Mindshare. He's a contributing writer to several voice, marketing and advertising industry publications, including Radio & Internet News, MyCustomer, Podcast Business Journal, Mobile Marketing, and Marketing Magazine.

Alex Serdiuk

CEO
Respeecher

Alex founded Respeecher with Dmytro Bielievtsov and Grant Reaber in 2018. Since then the team has been focused on high-fidelity voice cloning. Their technology was the first synthetic speech adopted by big Hollywood productions, starting from 2019. Alex is in charge of Business Development and Strategy. Their primary focus is improving the voice cloning technology in several directions, including the tech democratization to let sound professionals and creators all over the world have the fine tool in their acquaintance. Respeecher works in Feature films and TV projects, Video Games, Animation studios, Localization, media agencies, Healthcare, and others

Emily Banzhaf

Content Designer
WillowTree

Emily is a content designer at WillowTree, conversation/VUI designer, and professional violinist. She co-moderates the Ethical Use Task Force at the Open Voice Network and co-hosts the Voice Spark Live podcast. Engagements include speaking about voice ethics at VoiceTech Summit Americas and featuring as a Voicefluencer on "The Voice Den." Awards include winning the Digital Assistant Academy's Hackabot 2021.

Madhukar Srivastava

Product Manager
Google Assistant

Madhukar is a product manager on the Google Assistant team working on the Assistant Integration Platform building products that help developers create voice first experiences across surfaces. At Google he has also worked across the Assistant on Auto, Next Billion Users, and Ads teams. Prior to Google, Madhukar was a co-founder at a few startups and has multiple patents in his name. He's an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and loves spending time with his kids and pursuing his passion of playing cricket and acoustic guitar.

Chandler Murch

CEO/Co-Founder
TalkGo

Chandler Murch is the CEO/Co-Founder of TalkGo. His background is in managing IT business operations for Valve Software, known for it billion dollar distribution platform, Steam and Promethean, a global leader in front-of-class education hardware. His work experience in hardware and software have set him up for an exciting ride to make TalkGo a huge success.

David McKeague

Co-Founder
Curious Thing

David is a Co-Founder of Curious Thing which is leading the way you engage with your customers using voice-based conversational AI. David is serial tech entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building technology businesses.

Christoph Börner

Co-Founder and CEO
Botium

In a few words - entrepreneur, developer, tester, keynote speaker and drummer. Active member and organizer in the testing community. Deep interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning and chatbots from day one. Close friendship with Florian, even after playing in the same rock band for several years :). Started together developing the open source Botium Core in 2018 to reinvent automated testing for chatbots. Today Botium can be considered as the first choice for testing and training conversational AI.

Michael Collett

Conversation Designer
Australian Broadcast Corporation

Michael Collett joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as a journalist in 2008 and first became involved in conversation design in 2016 as one of the creators of the ABC News chatbot on Messenger. He switched to conversation design full-time in 2020 in order to create a voice app for ABC Emergency, among other CUI projects.

Ed Sewell

Founder/CEO
Velocity.ai

Ed Sewell is an AI security technology pioneer. Ed is the CEO and Founder of Velocity AI - a global artificial intelligence company. Our mission is to build trust in AI to accelerate economic growth for everyone. Velocity is a partner of the Linux Foundation - Open Voice Network - helping move the conversational AI market forward faster. Velocity collaborates with the Open Voice Network to co-create new security standards and technologies for conversational AI. Ed is the inventor of the Mobile Health ID security protocol. The Mobile Health ID allows mothers in sub-Saharan Africa to access health care and immunization services for their newborns. Ed was also the Founder and Chief Architect of Virtual DNA - a global Biometric and Embedded AI security firm.

Charlie Cadbury

Founder/CEO
Say It Now

Charlie Cadbury has been building businesses in emerging technologies for the past 20 years. Having sold his first website in 1999 he went on to found a software business, putITout, growing that organically to a 45 person team and overseeing the creation of over 350 digital products for clients like BBC, RBS and Boeing. Since 2015 Charlie has been working exclusively with Conversational AI. In 2015 he co-founded the multi award winning conversational platform www.dazzle.ai, which among other things became the the first Alexa based concierge tested by Marriott Hotels. Charlie founded Say It Now with Sander Siezen in 2018 to create the platforms required to harness the value created by the voice channel. They have gone on to work with innovative multi-nationals, are UK & EU Alexa Cup holders and recently announced a global ‘Media First’ delivering actionable audio advertising campaigns that allow consumers to purchase goods directly from an audio advert.

Joana Sousa

Innovation Consultant

Ken Sutton

Founder/CEO
Yobe

Ken is a serial entrepreneur who has leveraged nearly 20 years of strategy, product development, and business management experience to build a company from IP he co-authored with Dr. Hamid Nawab, a renowned researcher, engineer (PhD, MIT ’82) and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. His company was the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to conduct research and development work on voice technologies whose performance in speech and speaker recognition does not significantly degrade due to the presence of interfering voices or environmental sounds.

Dr. Christoph Essinger

Founding & Managing Director
VUI.agency

We help companies create charismatic digital assistants. I am a strong believer in the “Age of Assistants” — digital assistants becoming an indispensable connector between brands and their customers. What could be an easier way to start interacting with a brand than to just speak your wishes and questions out loud? I have extensive experience in consultancy for companies on their way into the Age of Assistants. With my team, I help brands discover the strategic potential of starting a true conversation with their customers, work out the way to get there efficiently, and navigate the challenges along the way. My special passion lies in building unique teams that are suited for tackling the challenges of this new age. At VUI.agency, we have assembled a special team covering all the nuances of language and communication; combining fields like linguistics and rhetoric with UX design and technical implementation.

Olga Howard

Information Architect & Innovation Manager
PBS

Olga Howard is a designer focused on innovation and strategy. In her current role she manages the Metadata for Content Discovery program at PBS where she’s moving the needle towards voice discoverability.

Ian Utile

CEO
attn.live

Ian Utile believes that humanity is thriving in new ways because of technologies like NLP and NFTs. As a tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for 20+ years, he and his teams have launched seven companies together. One of their start-ups, Kukui, was acquired by a PE firm in 2019 after exceeding $10M ARR bootstrapped. Because of their 3,943% growth rate, Kukui was ranked by the Inc. 5000 as the #1 fastest growing private company in San Jose. Ian’s ancestor, José Joaquin Moraga, founded the City of San Jose in 1777. This unique heritage is a great inspiration to Ian. Today, he’s focused on co-producing events like NFT.NYC as well as creating wealth for content creators and their communities with attn.live’s NLP/NFT “Sonic Streaming” platform. Ian lives in Santa Cruz, CA inside a treehouse with his two sons (Malakye 12, Kenton 9). Connect with Ian directly on all social media sites @ianutile or @attnlive.

Brandon Kaplan

CEO
Skilled Creative

Brandon Kaplan founded Skilled Creative in 2017 as an interactive agency that developed a focused expertise in interactive voice AI experiences for media and consumer products companies. The company’s clients range from HBO and Pottermore to Meredith and Pepsico. In 2022, Skilled Creative combined with two other interactive agencies to form Journey. Kaplan remains CEO of the independently operated Skilled Creative and serves as chief innovation officer for Journey.

Jodi Krangle

Voice Actor | Podcaster | Media Geek

Jodi Krangle is a Toronto based voice actor who works with major brands all over the world including Dell, BBVA, HGTV, Nespresso & Kraft. She's been heard in thousands of your favorite commercials and on your favorite brand websites too. Her voice has been described as warm, friendly and comforting with a hint of gravitas, and coupled with her years of professional work in sound, will take your project to the next level. On her podcast "Audio Branding", she and her guests offer advice on making an impact with sound and how sound influences us - both in our buying decisions and our daily lives. Being a sought after voice over talent, Jodi understands The Power of Sound. Follow her on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Clubhouse and check out her website at https://voiceoversandvocals.com.

Dana Mazia

Business Vertical Leader
Verbit.ai

Dana is a business strategy expert who has been leading business development and partnership teams over the last 10 years. At Verbit, she is in charge of the vertical strategy and business growth, working with many companies in the ecosystem to keep building Verbit’s marketplace offering.

Anne Ganguzza

Voice Talent/Coach/Producer

Anne Ganguzza is a professional voice actor, coach, and awardwinning producer with a dynamic presence and a passion for all things voice + technology. She works with talent around the world who are interested in boosting their VO career to the next level, using target-marketed demos and customized marketing strategies in addition to vocal coaching. Her networking group, the VO Peeps, offers meetups and workouts with incredible opportunities for feedback and growth; while her VO BOSS podcast can be heard weekly around the globe, and highlights prescient industry topics with a fresh take on what’s happening in voice over. Anne's voiceover credits include United Healthcare, Delta, Pearson, Mercedes Benz, PayPal, Wells Fargo, Michelin, Credit Suisse, Cisco, Toyota, Panasonic, Baxter, Xerox, and more...

Scott Leatherman

Chief Marketing Officer
Veritone

Scott Leatherman is Veritone’s Chief Marketing Officer responsible for the company’s comprehensive go-to-market (GMT) strategy and execution. An award-winning full stack marketing executive with 20+ years of leadership and business management experience, he is renowned globally for delivering business ransformation at scale and capturing market leadership positions in highly competitive markets including cloud, Metaverse, compliance, CRM, database, ERP, performance management and security. Highly regarded as an inspirational leader, he develops talent and teams founded on diversity, collaboration and integrity. Prior to joining Veritone, Scott served as CMO of Interana, where he launched data streaming ecosystem go-to-market that generated more than $2 million in pipeline in less than three months. His career includes more than 12 years at SAP Labs, holding various executive-level positions including Global Vice President of Marketing. Scott’s expertise spans from branding to product launches and everything in between. He is a graduate of San Jose State University and a board member of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce since 2015.

Robert Sciglimpaglia

Actor/VO Artist/Attorney

Robert has appeared on National Television many times. He is best known as the DAD on the 2012 Chevy SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL, HAPPY GRAD. Robert's very first venture into the acting field was a show called "American Experience: Hijacked!" which aired nationally on PBS-TV and was narrated by Campbell Scott. Since that time, he has appeared in numerous national projects with many big name stars. Besides television, he has done many film projects in leading or supporting roles. Most recently he shot the short films called “Bathtub Chronicles” and "Within and Without" that he produced as well, where he won several best actor awards, and the films have won over one hundred festival awards. He also shot a Sci/Fi project where he is lead actor called ONE, starring opposite LANCE HENRIKSEN ("Aliens, Close Encounters. Millenium), and a horror feature film called “Hillsborough Road” which are in post production. Robert has done on camera or voice overs for many recognizable brand names Perhaps his most prominent VO project to date was as the director of the sessions for BIXBY, the voice of the Samsung Galaxy phones and products. Robert is also the author of the book "Voice Over Legal", which hit NUMBER 1, on the AMAZON BEST SELLER LIST for Entertainment Law Books. Recently Robert has taken on the roles of production attorney, Producer and Executive Producer for several projects as well, and he started a full fledged production company called Belair Productions, LLC.

Otto Söderlund

CEO
Speechly

Technology enthusiast and digital tinkerer since a kid, Otto learned to program at the age of 10, ran a BBS (pre-internet website) and was part of the Finnish demoscene revolution. Otto started his studies focusing on Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence but was quickly drawn into the startup world. After having done technical work for over a decade Otto pivoted his career to business, studied business strategy and started a career in management consulting advising large European companies on surviving digital disruption and transforming and modernizing their organizations. Soonafter Otto founded Magenta Advisory, which he grew to become one of the most successful digital management consultancy boutiques in the Nordics, subsequently sold to BearingPoint. Today Otto is considered an experienced growth entrepreneur with a solid track record of building and growing international digital businesses, and recognized as a digital disruption and transformation expert and advisor. In addition to Speechly, Otto helps and invests in early stage startups leveraging AI technologies to disrupt industries.

Arthur Sheyn

Product Manager
Google Assistant

Arthur Sheyn is a Product Manager on the Google Assistant Wearables team, which focuses on bringing the helpfulness of Google Assistant to new, wearable surfaces that allow for more natural, and frictionless Assistant interactions. Arthur’s focus on the team is to scale the capabilities of Google Assistant with the power of the developer ecosystem. Prior to Google, Arthur led supply chain product at a start-up called Clutter. Arthur holds a BS from UC Berkeley and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

James Poulter

CEO
Vixen Labs

James is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vixen Labs, Europe's leading full service Voice Agency. Previously as Head of The LEGO Group’s Emerging Platforms & Partnerships team as part of the Digital Consumer Engagement division, James Poulter is pursuing new technologies, platforms and partners to build digital consumer engagement with LEGO customers, shoppers and consumers on a global basis. James previously was the Head of Social Media for LEGO’s social network for Kids, LEGO Life – which launched globally in 2017 and has since grown to over 2m active users regularly posting their content to the world’s first global and safe social network for kids. Prior to joining LEGO, James worked for a number of the world’s leading marketing, advertising and public relations firms including Edelman and Ogilvy leading digital marketing, mobile and social campaigns both in EMEA and globally as well as new business efforts for clients such as Diageo, Unilever, Bose, PayPal, HP and Adobe. James is an innovation and strategy consultant with over 10 years experience specialising in Voice, Conversational AI Technologies and emerging platforms such as Immersive AR/VR, 5G and Blockchain. Outside of work James is an advisor to the Church of England’s digital board as well as well as a number of other charities, entrepreneurs and startups. James is a father to Hazel and Willow and husband to Holly and lives in Surrey, UK. He can be found on all good social media as @jamespoulter.

Robbie Thiessen

Chief Design Officer
Monytize

Born and raised in Fresno, CA, to now residing in Dallas,TX, Robbie has been a creative at heart from a very young age. From sketches on the coffee table, to cartoon drawings in sketchbooks, Robbie has developed a story-telling skill that syncs technology with strategic design thinking. Robbie has performed and delivered for audiences on a global scale, in some of the most competitive of markets working on the Disney Parks & Resorts Digital Design team, RealPage product & software team, Citi’s product and data visualization team, to ZYYAH’s product and digital home management team, and finally, serving as the Chief Design Officer for Montyize. From illustration to branding, media to tech, Robbie has a versatile skill set that is ever expanding in order to take an innovative and proactive approach to every large scale initiative in order to create a positive impact in this world, starting at the local level.

Jeff "Susan" Ward

AI Speech Engineer
Deepgram

Jeff "Susan" Ward is a Research Engineer at Deepgram, where for the past four years, he has been exploring and innovating technological solutions in the realm of automatic speech recognition. His work has focused on automating the entire training pipeline with the intent to enable rapid customization across a variety of ASR use cases. He also has experience in automatic alignment, transcript cleaning, large-scale data management, automated training, and model design. Before joining Deepgram, Susan earned his master's from the University of Edinburgh and his pilot wings from the US Navy.

Kevin Fredrick

Managing Partner
OneReach

Kevin Fredrick is a Managing Partner at OneReach, where he works with companies to offer effective customer support over SMS. His passion for technology and the study of human interactions has led him to a career in customer experience management. With over 10 years experience in sales and product management, Kevin is a skilled leader and manager whose expertise spans several industries. Kevin has an MBA from the University of Denver.