Speakers
If you have any questions regarding speaker or presentation submissions for Voice Biometrics Conference New York 2008, please contact Derek Top: (415) 904-7666, or dtop@opusresearch.net.
Jacob Abboud - CTO, Fluency
Jacob Abboud has a wealth of experience in all aspects of corporate technology in a career that spans more than 20 years. As Fluency's Chief Technology Officer he is the driving force behind product development and product management with a special focus on research & development especially in the field of voice biometrics. Prior to Fluency, Abboud served as chief technology manager at Create Services - Lloyds TSB where he managed the development and operations of the Cards Transaction Platform for Goldfish and co-brands. He was also responsible for the development and productization of Smarte's e-commerce portal during his appointment as CTO at Smarte and has also held senior IT roles at Capital One, Cedel Global Services and CSC Pinnacle Alliance at JP Morgan. Abboud holds a PhD in Computer-Aided Engineering and is a Chartered Member of the British Computer Society.
Almog Aley-Raz - CEO, PerSay
Almog Aley-Raz is one of PerSay's founders and he joined the company's speaker verification team in 1999 as a system engineer and product manager, while it was still a part of Verint Systems Inc. -- formerly Comverse Infosys. Aley-Raz held an important position in the successful spin-off of the company in early 2000, raising funds of over $5 million from the Israeli VC industry. From 2000 to 2002, Aley-Raz served as PerSay's Product Manager and VP of Professional Services-marketing, deploying and supporting PerSay's speaker verification technology around the world. PerSay's management board appointed him CEO in May 2002. Prior to joining PerSay, Aley-Raz served in the technical wing of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) from 1990 to 1998, holding key field and headquarters positions, and managing various projects involving avionics, command and control, and air-defense technology. Aley-Raz holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Digital Signal Processing from Ben-Gurion University and is an MBA graduate of the Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration at Tel Aviv University.
Jeremy Bernard - VP of Marketing and Business Development & Co-Founder, Diaphonics
Prior to co-founding Diaphonics, Jeremy was a strategic marketing manager with Aliant Telecommunications, where he was responsible for the market assessment and planning for broadband product lines. While at Aliant, Jeremy also worked as an e-business development manager, with a focus on partnerships and investments. Prior to joining Aliant, he was an officer in the Canadian Naval Reserve. Jeremy is a Certified Analyst Relations Professional and an experienced public speaker. He holds a BA from Mount Allison University and an MBA from Saint Mary's University.
Chuck Buffum - President, Buffum Group
Chuck Buffum, president of Buffum Group LLC, is a visionary and pioneer in the call center, speech technology and secure authentication domains. His business experience spans 28 years in product innovation, executive management, and business development in high technology companies both large and small. His clients range from technology vendors and government agencies evaluating voice biometric offerings to enterprises assessing their existing call center security vulnerabilities. Buffum was the founding CEO of Vocent, a voice authentication solutions company, sold to PassMark Security in 2005. Prior to Vocent he lead Nuance's partner development and field technical organizations, managed Tandem's solution programs, and created IBM's call center solutions program, bringing CallPath and an IVR to market in the 1980s.
Jenny Burr - Manager, Global Consulting Services, Intervoice
Jenny Burr leads both the Voice Authentication Practice for Intervoice’s Global Consulting Services organization as well as the Tuning and Grammar Development team. She joined Intervoice in 1995 and has been a key contributor of speech technology initiatives since 1998. Burr has lead VUI design and tuning efforts for many complex speech recognition applications across a variety of industries. Her work on Intervoice’s voice authentication projects gives her a deep understanding of the user and business challenges of design, development and tuning when using voice biometric technologies. Burr co-invented a method for gauging design effectiveness that was granted a patent in 2004.
Sapna Capoor - Director of Corporate Development and Strategy (Global Markets), AGNITIO
Sapna Capoor is currently spearheading AGNITIO's voice biometrics corporate development and strategy program. She is a keen advocate for raising the profile of the Biometrics industry in the media and regularly presents at biometrics/security conferences. Capoor has been quoted in top global publications such as the Economist, Financial Times and Business Week. Previously, Capoor was the Global Programme Manager for Biometrics at Frost and Sullivan where she has authored numerous studies and white papers on different aspects of the biometrics industry. She has worked successfully with clients on biometrics/security based projects that range from product development strategies to entering new geographic markets. She has extensive experience in the development of business growth strategies.
Dennis Cote - VP of Telecommunication Services, CIBC
Dennis Cote has 28 years of experience in the High-Tech and Technology Management space at both Nortel Networks and CIBC. In his current role, he manages CIBC's telecommunication infrastructure (both voice and data) for over 1300 locations globally. CIBC is the number one premium credit card issuer in Canada based on purchase volumes and outstanding balances and is a leading North American financial institution with nearly 11 million personal banking and business clients.
Bill Drew - Industry Strategist, Financial Services/Risk, Acxiom
With more than 20 years of expertise in the risk mitigation industry, Bill Drew serves as Acxiom's risk industry strategist for the Financial Services Group. He is a lead consultant on risk mitigation, fraud, identity management, ID verification, authentication and biometrics for some of Acxiom's largest financial services clients. Drew is instrumental in Acxiom's new entry into voice biometrics, combining the company's robust data assets with a patented voice biometrics process. This allows financial institutions, insurers, retailers and other companies to remotely verify the identity of customers and employees without the hassle of passwords or access codes. Before joining Acxiom in 1995 after the acquisition of May & Speh, Drew served as the credit scoring regional manager for MDS (now part of Experian). He was a principal in AMS (now CGI) and vice president of business development for Credit Management Associates (now CBCInnovus).
Ariel Freidenberg - Executive VP, Global Sales & Business Development, PerSay
Ariel Freidenberg joined PerSay during 2000, shortly after PerSay was founded. From 2000 to 2003, he has held various positions within PerSay's sales and business development team and in 2003 was appointed as VP Sales & Business Development and a member of the PerSay's management team. Freidenberg holds a B.A. in Law and Economics and an MBA in Business Administration, both from Bar-Ilan University. Prior to joining PerSay, he was an attorney in one of the leading law offices in Israel, following an internship at the Supreme Court of Israel.
Charles Giordano - Privacy Marketing Strategy, Bell Canada
Charles Giordano currently leads the Privacy Marketing Strategy within Bell Canada's Residential Division and is marketing lead for the company's voice-based authentication project. He manages Bell's vision of privacy-enabled marketing by championing customer choice and customer preferences collection in marketing. Giordano joined Bell Canada in 1992 and has held various management functions in sales, marketing, budgeting & forecasting. He graduated with an economics degree from University of Toronto in 1983 and completed an MBA with a marketing specialty from Wilfrid Laurier University in 1992.
Avery Glasser - VP, Strategic Development, Vicorp
Avery Glasser comes to Vicorp as a strategist with over 13 years of experience in the U.S. and EMEA. He started his career with MCI's Enhanced Voice Services group, before taking roles in product and service design at companies such as The Hartford, Genesys Telecommunications, VOICE.TRUST, VoicInt Telecommunications and Junction Networks. Most recently, Glasser worked as an Industry Analyst at Opus Research and co-founded VxV Solutions, a biometric security firm. Based in New York, Avery is leading the Strategic Service Group.
James Jackson - "Father of Identity Theft"
James Jackson, perhaps the most famous identity thief ever to serve time in prison, impersonated a long list of corporate executives and Hollywood personalities. He eventually was given the nickname "Father of Identity Theft" by some media outlets. By tricking customer service personnel into divulging a database of more than one hundred Social Security numbers, Jackson monitored the financial transactions of celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson. But his snooping morphed into full-fledged robbery when he stole nearly $1 million in diamonds and watches by pretending to be corporate executives from Coca Cola, Hilton Hotels, FedEx, Warner Bros. and many others. Jackson, now a reformer, has pledged to help draw attention to the problem of identity theft and help companies learn how to prevent the crime.
Aaron Kneiss - Product Manager, Nuance
Aaron Kneiss is currently product manager for Nuance’s Caller Authentication Solutions. He is excited about the expanding opportunities to commercialize voice biometrics. Prior to working on Caller Authentication, Kneiss played a key role in commercializing network speech recognition on the team that authored the MRCPv1 protocol which created the first widely adopted open standard for network speech recognition. Kneiss served as project manager for two major R&D projects that consolidated the network speech recognition technology of efforts of Philips, SpeechWorks, and Nuance into the most advanced network speech recognizers in the world: Open Speech Recognizer 3.0 and Nuance Recognizer 9.0. Prior to joining SpeechWorks in 2000, Kneiss designed telecommunications network equipment for Fujitsu and signal processing platforms for Lockheed Martin’s renowned Skunk Works.
Dean Lindstrom - Chief Technology Officer, Cyberstrom
Dean Lindstrom is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) and Certified Computer Forensics Investigator with 20+ years of experience as an IT Business/Project Manager and Enterprise IT and Security Architect. Most recently, he designed the system and security architecture for Federal Government HSPD-12 Shared Service solution. Lindstrom is currently developing USDA enterprise Single Sign-On solutions, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Network Access Control (NAC), and a high security voice authentication infrastructure for supporting HSPD-12 remote card activation and card management functions, and interactive voice response (IVR) support for voice-enabled Web applications and automated self-service Helpdesk functions. He holds a Master's degree in CIS and a Bachelors degree in CIS/Business Administration from Regis University, Denver, CO.
Fred MacKenzie - Senior Business Solutions Advisor, Bell Canada
Fred MacKenzie has held many positions at Bell Canada over the last 34 years and is currently working in the Bell Systems and Technology organization in Toronto as a Senior Associate Director. He is the Senior Business Solutions Advisor for customer service voice interface solutions. His role is to oversee IVR design and direct the planning for how current and new technologies can be leveraged for leading-edge customer service solutions. MacKenzie played a key role in delivering Bell's industry leading customer service voice recognition solution using advanced Natural Language Understanding technology. This solution answers and routes over 100 million calls annually. He is currently working on a voice biometrics solution which addresses industry issues with identity theft and verification.
Douwe Mik - Vice President of Business Development , AGNITIO
Douwe Mik is AGNITIO´s Vice President of Business Development and is at the forefront of shaping up the product development, sales and marketing of AGNITIO's KIVOX solutions. This primarily includes the ongoing development of voice biometrics solutions for the corporate sector, in particular the financial and telecoms industry. Douwe has gained credibility in IT Security and Identity Management through various operational, product marketing and sales positions. His career history includes having worked for global organizations including IBM, Cambridge Technology Partners and most recently BT Global Services.
Dan Miller - Senior Analyst, Opus Research
Dan Miller has over 25 years experience in marketing, business development and corporate strategy for telecom service providers, computer manufacturers and application software developers. Dan founded Opus Research in 1985 and helped define the Conversational Access Technologies marketplace by authoring scores of reports, advisories and newsletters addressing business opportunities that reside where automated speech leverages Web services, mobility and enterprise software infrastructure. He also participated in consulting projects in call center-based commerce, voice-based communications and electronic commerce for clients that include top IT, telecommunications and hosted service providers, as well as a number of entrepreneurial firms.
Maxine Most - Principal & Founder, Acuity Market Intelligence
Principal and founder of Acuity Market Intelligence - an emerging technology strategy and research consultancy with a proven record of accurately anticipating biometric and associated identification solutions market trends - C. Maxine Most ("max") has more than 20 years experience in international emerging technology market development. Since 2001, Most's focus has been in the biometrics and associated identification solutions arena where she has consistatnly provided original, thought provoking, accurate and reliable industry analysis. She is the editor of the Biometrics Market Intelligence eUpdate, an online enewsletter providing targeted market insight and analysis, a contributor to the recently published book Digital Identity Management, and author of Acuity's latest research report entitled "The Future of Biometrics." Most is quoted frequently in industry, business, and consumer press, and presents regularly at industry events on the evolution and development of emerging technology markets.
Bob Nelson - VP of Partner Development, Trade Harbor
Robert C. (Bob) Nelson serves as Vice President of Partner Development and Board Member of TradeHarbor, Inc., of St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to joining TradeHarbor in 2002, Nelson served as the Entrepreneur in Residence for the corporate new ventures group at VeriSign/Network Solutions. He was previously chairman, CEO, and co-founder of CrossMedia Networks Corp., a pioneer in providing services to allow mobile professionals to use voice to manage their email using any telephone. Nelson began his career in telecommunications marketing at MCI and Satellite Business Systems and previously worked for retired Chief Justice Warren Burger at the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, Sen. Pete Wilson (R-CA), and Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-NE). He received his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska in 1977. In addition to serving on the board of TradeHarbor, he serves on the advisory board of a text mining venture, ClaraBridge, on the board of the McLean Project for the Arts, on the Advisory Council for the Medical Care for Children Partnership, and raises funds for numerous charities and political campaigns.
Joseph Pasion - Vice President, Pershing
Joseph Pasion is a Vice President of Pershing, LLC an affiliate of the Bank of New York Mellon. He manages the application development of IVR and Mobile products. Pasion led the development of ResetExpress, a self-service password reset application which uses voice biometrics. ResetExpress won the Technology Innovation Award at the 2005 Technology Managers Forum. Pasion started his career in the telecommunications industry at Timeplex, a pioneer in T1 multiplexers and spent 4 years as a Software Engineer at Lucent Technologies. Pasion is a member of the Genesys Product Advisory Council and has been a speaker at industry conferences.
Javier Roldan - Senior Manager, Technological Innovation, Bankinter
Javier Roldan has over 10 years experience in Banking and Finance. He has held various positions on Bankinter's IT team, ranging from Infrastructure Designer to Main Software Architect. Currently, his role consists of monitoring the technology trends in the IT market and evaluating what technologies are best suited to meeting business and customers' needs. Roldan is leading the voice biometrics implementation project at Bankinter
David Standig - EVP of Business Development, VoiceVerified
David Standig oversees VoiceVerified's business development and marketing activities. An entrepreneur at heart, he is a master at marketing, with a reputation for growing technology start-ups into marketplace leaders. Prior to joining VoiceVerified, Standig was co-founder and chief operating officer of Independent Wireless One Corp., a regional provider of cellular phone services. He created and managed the company's sales, marketing, customer service, human resources and public relations functions, from its inception leading to its successful 2002 merger with US Unwired. Previously, David led the marketing launch of Triton PCS, a $1 billion affiliate of AT&T Wireless, where he served as senior vice president and chief marketing officer. During his tenure at Comcast Cellular, he spearheaded its marketing operations, created customer retention programs and developed distribution channels, to garner a 65% market share. Standig is an expert in new product and market development, branding, customer focus, financial planning and modeling, and sales and marketing. He has spoken at technology industry events, including the CTIA annual conference and the Qualcomm Technology Forum. He holds an M.B.A. in finance and operations management from Columbia University and earned his B.S. in business and economics from Lehigh University.
Rex Stringham - President & CEO, EIG
Rex Stringham has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and healthcare industries. He is President and co-founder of Enterprise Integration Group, a professional services firm that specializes in improvement of self-service solutions using interactive voice response (IVR) and speech recognition. Over the last ten years, EIG has done extensive research on telephone voice user interface design best practices, and has helped improve IVR and speech recognition systems for more than 100 of the Fortune 500. Prior to forming EIG, Stringham held key positions at a Regional Bell Operating Company and a major hardware and software original equipment manufacturer. He was also Director and Principal Analyst for Telecommunications at Dataquest, an international market research and consulting company.
Bob Sullivan - Technology Correspondent, MSNBC.com
Bob Sullivan is senior writer for MSNBC.com's Technology section, specializing in computer crime, electronic financial fraud, privacy, and the Internet Underground. His current column, "The Red Tape Chronicles," combines investigative reporting with community blogging to unmask government waste and corporate misbehaviors. He is also author of Your Evil Twin: Behind the Identity Theft Epidemic, published by Wiley & Sons in 2004. His investigative reports have forced hundreds of companies to come clean about the theft of customer data by hackers, and he has regularly been the first to warn of potential identity theft. Sullivan was also the first to tell Americans that the FBI had developed a computer program, called Magic Lantern, designed to steal public encryption keys. Sullivan's work has been read by millions and he has appeared on MSNBC TV, CNBC, NBC Nightly News, the Today Show, TechTV, and a variety of local NBC affiliates.
Derek Top - Director of Research, Opus Research
With more than 10 years of publishing experience, Derek Top has covered executive-level, IT business trends and the impact of transformative technologies. He currently serves as research director for Opus Research and managing editor for VoiceBioCon.com. Prior to joining Opus Research, Top was with CMP Media, both as events editor with InformationWeek magazine and senior associate editor with Optimize, responsible for editing and writing feature stories on the current topics facing CIOs in the areas of business strategy and execution. Previously, he was features editor with Streaming Media, Inc., which produced a monthly magazine, daily news online, and in-depth research reports.
Julia Webb - EVP, Sales and Marketing, VoiceVault
Julia Webb has a successful track record of more than 12 years experience within the biometrics technology industry. She joined VoiceVault in 2007 to head up development of the company’s North American operations. Prior to VoiceVault, Webb held senior positions at leading biometric companies ranging from Identix to Bioscrypt. She is an advisory council member to the Security Industry Association and holds a BA from Arizona State University in fine arts and business education.
Tim Webb - Senior Manager, Fraud Operational Strategy, Chase Card Services
Tim Webb is the Senior Manager of Fraud Operational Strategy for Chase Card Services, among the largest credit card issuers in the U.S. In his current role, Webb is responsible for identifying and implementing promising new technologies in the fraud space, as well as strategic initiatives, vendor management, fraud analytics and MIS, and budgeting/forecasting. Prior to joining Chase by way of First USA/Bank One in 1999, he managed fraud operations and policy for Chevy Chase Bank. Earlier in his career, Webb managed various credit and collections operations and credit policy functions at several credit card issuers. He is a member of several industry advisory boards and has been a speaker and panelist at a number of industry forums during his career.
