SpeechCycle’s Advisory Board provides a depth of expertise across all facets of the business, including customer support, voice recognition and enterprise software products, and reflects the company’s commitment to developing true and innovative solutions to the challenges of cost containment and customer retention in the call center.
Joseph E. Bentzel
Joseph E. Bentzel is a marketing strategy advisor to software, web and tech companies at all stages of their development, and is the author of the book “Asymmetric Marketing: Tossing the ‘Chasm’ in the Age of the Software Superpowers.” Bentzel began his marketing career at AT&T consumer marketing in the 1980’s. He also provided marketing leadership to OEM graphics technology pioneer Tseng Labs, now part of AMD. Bentzel is focused on providing strategic advisory services to companies in emerging categories, including enterprise security, Web 2.0 communities, and on-demand applications. He maintains a weblog at www.asymmetricmarketing.com, and is the founder of Asymmetri Incorporated, a Silicon Valley-based boutique consultancy.
Tom Epes
Tom Epes is a Senior Director of Sales for Microsoft, where he manages a group focusing on telecommunications, cable and satellite providers along with publishing and advertising customers located across the U.S. Tom’s responsibilities span sales, marketing, consulting and support services for all customer segments within the region. Prior to his current role, Tom has held several leadership positions within Microsoft including Practice Manager for the Communications Sector Consulting business, Director of the Financial Services team in New York , and Manager of the corporate sales teams for the New York/New Jersey district. Tom has also lead sales efforts for DataEase International and Proctor & Gamble.
Mark Finkel
Mark Finkel is a Venture Partner with Prism Capital, a fund focusing on expansion stage companies. He is the former CFO of HALO Technology Holdings, Inc. Prior to joining HALO, Mark served as Chairman of the self-service solutions provider RightAnswers Inc., and of payment technology leader ISD Corporation, where he also served as Chief Executive Officer upon their initial acquisition. Mark has provided leadership for initial public offerings as CFO for Consilium, Inc., Logic Works, Inc., and ServiceWare Technologies, Inc. He has additionally served as CFO of BackWeb Technologies, Inc. and Neuron Data, Inc. Mark has also practiced venture law at Ware & Friedenrich, focusing on technology financings.
Esther Levin, Ph.D.
Dr. Levin is a professor of Computer Science at the City College of New York and a recognized leader in the scientific community for her research on Automated Speech Recognition-based dialog systems. Previously she was the Chief Scientist at Telelogue, which was acquired by Scansoft (now Nuance), and. Prior to Telelogue, she spent more than 13 years at Bell Laboratories and AT&T Research where she was a lead figure in the DARPA ATIS and Communicator projects, which revolutionized the field of Advanced Speech Recognition.
Mike Phillips
Mike Phillips is Co-Founder and CTO of vlingo. vlingo is pioneering new voice recognition technology that enables wireless carriers to provide subscribers with an ability to simply speak to their mobile phones to enter search terms, addresses or any other text. Over his 20 years in the speech industry, Mike has been one of the leading contributors to the commercial application and widespread adoption of speech technology. In 1994 he co-founded SpeechWorks based on technology that he developed as part of the Spoken Language Systems program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As CTO he grew SpeechWorks from a startup in an emerging industry into a leader in the now established market for speech-enabled solutions. The company was acquired by ScanSoft (now Nuance) in 2003.
