Management Team

Mark Lazar, CEO

“It’s great to be a part of transforming the caller experience. ”

Mark joined TuVox in 2008 to drive a new growth phase for the company.  Mark has extensive executive leadership experience, having been CEO of 10 technology companies across a variety of industries including telecom services, software, networking, and Internet services.  Mark’s background includes CEO positions at Talking Blocks, Pacific Edge Software, and LoopNet, which went public in 2006. Mark also has significant experience at mergers and acquisitions as a strategy to drive company growth, and has led eight M&A transactions.

Mark has been involved in telecom services multiple times, building relationships with seven major wireless carriers, and helping build a $200M long-distance aggregator.  Mark has also been part of many enterprise software companies, focusing on IT governance, supply chain software, and web-services management.  Mark has an MBA and BA from Stanford University.

John Kirst, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development

“Improving the customer experience has been a never ending aspiration. That’s what TuVox is all about.”

John brings over 20 years of sales and business development experience in the Call Center and Web Self-service markets. Since joining TuVox in 2003, John has driven TuVox’s growth as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company and, under his sales leadership, the acquisition of many of TuVox’s current major accounts. Prior to TuVox, John was with Edify Corporation where he held several senior management positions from company founding to IPO and acquisition by S1 Corporation, including Senior Vice President of World-wide Marketing, Vice President of Asia Pacific Sales and Operations and Director of World-wide Channel Sales. John was responsible for the product management of the first releases of Electronic Workforce, Edify's Flagship product, and associated applications in Automated Speech, Internet Banking and HR Self-service. Prior to Edify, John started the Interactive Voice Response program at IBM/ROLM Corporation.

John holds a masters degree in Business Administration from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Stanford University.

Manish Sharma, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Solutions Delivery

“We're continuing to advance TuVox’s ability to deliver the industry’s most sophisticated voice solutions.”

Manish Sharma joined the team in 2009 as the Senior Vice President of Solutions Delivery, to drive excellence in the creation of innovative solutions for TuVox customers.

Manish joins TuVox from Nortel Networks where he held various leadership roles in consulting and professional services, product planning, and global business development. Prior to joining Nortel, he co-founded SpeakEZ, a start-up that was later acquired, and is now a part of Nuance. Manish was voted as one of the “Top 10 leaders” by readers of Speech Technology Magazine. Since 2007, he is also the Chairperson of the VoiceXML Forum’s Marketing and Communications Committee.

Manish Sharma holds several key patents related to speech technology. His articles and papers are widely published and he is a sought-after speaker for industry events. He holds Masters and Doctorate degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Brian Colbeck, Chief Financial Officer

“I'm excited to be part of a company that solves real business problems by empowering callers.”

Brian's financial leadership helps to further accelerate TuVox’s growth. He is responsible for developing and managing the financial and acquisition strategies for the company. Brian is a highly regarded professional who brings over 18 years experience in financial management of publicly traded and privately held software companies.

His extensive industry experience includes financial operations, strategic planning, investor relations and managing financial negotiations for mergers, acquisitions and divestitures of both subsidiaries and intellectual property. Brian most recently served as Chief Financial Officer for SourceCode Technology Holdings, where he achieved annual revenue growth in excess of 100% for three years.

Prior to joining SourceCode, Brian served as Senior Vice President of Finance and Corporate Controller for McAfee Inc., where he led restructuring activities that resulted in targeted savings of $16 million a year. Previously, he held senior financial positions at XYLO, Inc. and FileNET Corporation. He is a CPA and holds a Bachelors degree in business administration from California State University, Fullerton.

Silke Witt-Ehsani, PhD, Vice President, TuVox Design Center

“I love to come up with new ways of using speech technology to make it easier for callers to get their tasks taken care of.”

Silke leads the TuVox Design Center, TuVox’s multidisciplinary approach to designing speech applications, and drives the TuVox Voice User Interface design ethic. Silke has contributed extensively to TuVox product development and patent development and has personally designed scores of large scale speech applications.

Silke has over 13 years of research and industrial experience in the creation and application of speech and natural language technology in call center environments, ranging from speech recognition algorithm development to the design of numerous leading-edge speech dialog systems.

Prior to TuVox, Silke was responsible for VUI design, grammar development and speech application tuning at Edify Corporation. Silke worked at SRI with the team that eventually founded Nuance and produced some of the first commercial speech applications. Silke holds a Ph.D. in speech recognition from Cambridge University