John joined Nexidia with an extensive background in technology and demonstrated leadership experience from having held executive positions for companies ranging from start-ups to publicly traded corporations. Prior to Nexidia, John was CEO of Orchestria the leading innovator of solutions designed to provide unprecedented levels of real-time visibility and control of all electronic communications, including e-mail, the Web and Instant Messaging. John has served twice as Entrepreneur in Residence for Benchmark Capital, a leading investor in enterprise software and services, communications & security, semiconductors, mobile computing, consumer services and financial services. John also served as CEO of Encompass Inc., a startup software company that delivered the default end-user Internet experience for users of new PC’s. Encompass was subsequently acquired by Yahoo in 1999, and as a result of this acquisition, John, was appointed VP and General Manager of Corporate Yahoo! John has also held positions with Global Village where he served as VP of Engineering and at Atlanta-based Sofnet where he was Chief Technical Officer.
Jon Ezrine, SVP of Business Development & CFO
Jon joined Nexidia from Witness Systems, a call center recording and optimization software company, where he served as CFO. Jon was responsible for all aspects of Witness Systems financial management from its start-up stage, through a successful IPO and as a public company. Jon was also instrumental in the company’s M&A, business development and strategic development initiatives. Prior to Witness Systems, Jon served as Controller for SQL Financials, now Clarus Corporation, as Controller for ITL Interiors, Inc, and as a senior staff accountant with Arthur Andersen & Co. from 1989 to 1992. Jon holds a BS in Finance from the University of Virginia.
Anna Convery,
As Senior Vice President of Marketing & Product Management at Nexidia, Anna is responsible for developing the marketing strategy, as well as overseeing the development and enhancement of new and existing products. Anna comes to Nexidia from Jacada Inc, the world’s leading provider of legacy integration and web-to-host solutions where she held the position of Vice President of Marketing. During her 7-year tenure with Jacada (Nasdaq: JCDA), Anna was instrumental in establishing business development and worldwide marketing functions as well as helping prime Jacada for a successful IPO in October 1999. Anna has also held various business development and marketing positions at IBM Corporation and Unibol.
Anna has presented at several industry conferences, including SpeechTEK, Call Center Summit, KM World, and Voice of the Customer and has been quoted in numerous publications, such as Contact Professional, Information Today, CRM Magazine, and Speech Technology Magazine. Anna is also the recipient of the 2007 Women in Technology of the Year Award, and was recognized as one of Atlanta’s 40 under 40 as recognized by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Anna holds a BA (Hons.) Business Studies from the University of Ulster, Belfast Northern Ireland; and earned professional accreditations in international business studies from the Universite Louvain la Neuve, Brussels, Belgium.
Mark Reich, SVP of Operations
Mark has over 20 years experience working in the computer industry. He currently serves as Senior Vice President, Operations where he is responsible for engineering, professional services, technical support, quality assurance and training. Most recently, Mark served as Senior Director, Client Services, for Yahoo!'s Enterprise Solutions division. Mark built Yahoo!’s first consulting, training and technical support organization targeted at Fortune 500 companies. Prior to Yahoo!, Mark served as Vice President of Operations for Encompass, Inc., which was subsequently acquired by Yahoo!. Encompass was a startup software company that delivered the default end-user Internet experience for users of new PC’s. Before joining Encompass, Mark was a Managing Consultant at Gemini Consulting, where he led engagements in the information technology and operations practice areas for Fortune 500 companies. Earlier in his career, Mark served as Principal Engineer at Encore Computer Corporation, where he led an RFP response and won a $10M contract from DARPA for the development of a large-scale parallel processor system. Upon completing graduate school, Mark served as Project Lead for Digital Equipment Corporation, where he designed and developed a communications subsystem for the VAX11 family of computers. Mark holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and an MBA with honors from Boston University.
Drew Lanham, SVP of Media
Drew Lanham is leading Nexidia’s expansion into new market initiatives, including digital media content search. Lanham most recently held the position of vice president, business Development at Good Technology, Inc. (acquired by Motorola), where he was responsible for forming and managing global partnerships with wireless carriers, handset manufacturers and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Prior to Good Technology, Lanham held various positions at Yahoo! Inc. including vice president and general manager, Access and vice president of business development. He was also the co-founder and vice president of business development at Encompass, Inc. (acquired by Yahoo!, Inc.). Drew holds degrees in Economics and Finance from Baylor University and is currently based in Menlo Park, California.
Howard Smith, SVP of Sales
Howard joins Nexidia as SVP of Sales after having served as a consultant and advisor to the management team. Prior to Nexidia, Smith held the position of Vice President of Sales at Orchestria, the leading innovator of solutions designed to provide unprecedented levels of real-time visibility and control of all electronic communications, including e-mail, the Web and Instant Messaging. In less than three years, Smith established and grew Orchestria’s US business from a position of having no clients, to being the preferred email compliance solution among the majority of Wall Street’s most prestigious financial services firms. Prior to Orchestria, Smith led Yahoo!’s Enterprise Solutions sales force, from a position of no revenue in the enterprise portal market, to a position of industry leadership. Smith has also served in a number of management, sales and consulting roles with Accenture, Oracle and EDS.
Professor Mark Clements, Founder
Dr. Mark A. Clements received S.B., SM, E.E., and Sc.D. degrees in 1976, 1978, 1979, and 1982 respectively, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and all in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. During his graduate work, he was a National Institutes of Health fellow. Professor Clements came to the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1982 as an Assistant Professor. He is currently Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Interactive Media Technology, an interdisciplinary center that takes ideas from conception all the way to demonstrable prototypes. He has served on the IEEE Speech Technical Committee and as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. He was also the Technical Program Chair of the 1996 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing. In addition, Professor Clements taught and performed research for two years in France. Dr. Clements has been an active consultant to industry for over 25 years working for many start-ups as well as large companies. His current research interests involve digital processing of speech signals. In particular, he is interested in such problems as the application of digital speech technology to automatic recognition of speech in adverse conditions and sensory aids for the hearing impaired. Some of the interesting challenges arising from these applications include robust word-spotting, enhancement of speech in noise, formulation of robust perceptual distance measures, and real-time implementation. Dr. Clements also does work in efficient coding of speech signals, auditory modeling for improved speech analysis, speech production modeling, general digital signal processing, and pattern recognition. Professor Clements holds three patents, and has filed for five others. He has published over 100 scholarly papers and is author of two textbooks. He has successfully advised seventeen PhD dissertations, many of which have won awards.
Mark Finlay, Research Manager
Mark has over 20 years experience as both a software developer and manager, including co-founding several companies and starting his own firm and serving as president. He has worked as a chief technical officer, principal system architect, systems engineer, product manager, and project manager as well as a designer and implementer of a broad range of applications in a wide variety of software environments. His experience ranges from architecting, designing, and developing custom embedded software & hardware for flight simulation to developing advanced imaging applications for analyzing satellite imagery. In his career, Mark has managed and led several large software teams in the development of complex applications for delivery to government and commercial clients around the world. Prior to Nexidia, Mark served as chief technical officer and co-founder of TrueShopping, Inc., as president and co-founder of Atlanta Innovation, Inc. and as co-founder of IVEX Corporation. Mark has authored one patent and holds a BS in both Mathematics and Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a MS in EE from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Peter Cardillo, Co-Founder & Director of Research & Development
Peter worked extensively in the development of Nexidia’s Audio-Voice Search technology while a Masters student and PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His area of specialization is speech processing and recognition. He has worked on commercial applications in the area of speech recognition and speech compression with Lanier Worldwide. Peter holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
