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.

Larry Miller, President and COO

“I wish TuVox had been around when I was managing call centers.”

Larry joined TuVox in early 2003, bringing over 25 years of call center, customer service and enterprise software experience. Having spent most of his career in customer service, Larry immediately saw the value that TuVox offers enterprise call centers and decided he had to be part of this revolutionary advancement in voice applications.

Larry began his career at IBM where, during his 17 years there, he held a number of senior management positions within IBM's world-class customer service organization, including customer service executive and business unit executive for Availability Services. He then spent four years with Aspect Telecommunications, a pioneer in delivering mission critical call center solutions to large contact centers. During his tenure at Aspect, Larry served as Vice President Worldwide Operations and Vice President, North American Sales and Customer Support where he was responsible for more than doubling North American revenues from $145 million to over $340 million.

Just prior to joining TuVox, Larry was president and COO of WorldChain, an enterprise software company he co-founded in 1999. While at WorldChain, Larry led the launch of the company and established a customer base of highly referenceable customers, including multiple Fortune 500 companies. Larry earned an MBA in International Management from the University of San Francisco.

Ashok Khosla, Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder

“We’ve hired a team of really great people – it’s the people and satisfying our callers that make TuVox such a special experience.”

Ashok has a unique background that combines linguistics, computer science, and architecture, including 24 years of professional programming experience. As Vice President of Engineering at Brightmail, Ashok led a team of 40 engineers in building a carrier-class anti-spam and anti-virus Telco solution using high-performance linguistic approaches. Prior to Brightmail, Ashok managed the line of translation and internationalization products at Uniscape, a provider of linguistic technologies for e-commerce companies, where he also served as Director of Product Management. Prior to Uniscape, Ashok was Partner and CTO of Treefrog Technologies, an engineering consulting company providing software architecture and project management for Verisign and Real3D, a division of Lockheed Martin.

In 1995, Ashok established Apple Computer's India and China development divisions. As Managing Director and General Manager, he led a team of 65 engineers and software consultants and generated more than $13 million in revenue. Ashok's background also includes serving as Manager of Graphics Applications and Director of Advanced Technology for Claris Corporation. He was the chief engineer responsible for the MacDraw and MacPaint applications.

Steven S. Pollock, Executive Vice President and Co-Founder

“I really enjoy improving customer experience through technology.”

Steve is responsible for strategy, marketing and corporate development. Steve is the co-author of multiple TuVox patents and speaks often about using self-service technology to achieve business results.

Prior to TuVox, Steve was Vice President of Marketing for Edify Corporation, marketing IVR platform software and applications. Steve also has product marketing, corporate marketing and customer support experience at a variety of software companies ranging from Apple’s Computer’s software subsidiary (Claris Corporation) to Microsoft.

Steve is passionate about using self-service technology to solve business problems and improve the customer experience. Steve’s educational background includes an MBA from Stanford University.

John Kirst, Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development

“It’s great to see that both the business and technology sides of our customers ‘get it’. That’s exciting.”

John has a wealth of experience in the voice processing industry. Prior to TuVox, John was a co-founder of Edify Corporation where he was responsible for the product management of the first releases of Electronic Workforce, Edify's Flagship product. He later held several senior management positions including Senior Vice President of World-wide Marketing, Vice President of Asia Pacific Sales and Director of Channel Sales.

Prior to Edify, John started the Voice Response program at IBM/ROLM Corporation. He holds a masters degree in Business Administration from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Stanford University.

Priscilla Morgan, Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President Global Business Operations

“I am excited to be part of an On Demand company that is driving the next wave of call center automation.”

Priscilla is charged with providing financial leadership to further accelerate TuVox’s growth. She is responsible for the company’s finance, accounting, human resources, facilities and legal functions. Priscilla is a highly regarded professional who brings extensive financial, business and sales operations experience in the areas of subscription and managed software solutions, as well as traditional enterprise software licensing.

Prior to joining TuVox, Priscilla was a 16-year veteran of Oracle and most recently served as Vice President of Business Operations and Development for Oracle On Demand, which delivers Oracle’s ERP, CRM and Call Center products in either a subscription service or managed applications service model. As one of the original executives in Oracle’s Business Online group in 2000, she was instrumental in the formation of the On Demand business model for the enterprise software industry.

Priscilla also held a variety of other senior positions in finance, sales and business operations and business development within Oracle. Before Oracle Corporation, Priscilla was at KPMG, where she planned and supervised audits. Priscilla graduated from the University of California Berkeley and is a Certified Public Accountant.

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

Neil Storey, Vice President, Professional Services

“We're always trying to find ways to create a great caller experience, and to do it as efficiently as possible.”

Neil is at the helm of the TuVox Solutions Delivery Team, which designs and deploys leading-edge voice self-service solutions for companies like 1-800-Flowers.com, American Airlines Credit Union, Apple, British Airways, Canon, Charter Communications, Gateway and Virgin America.

Neil has over 17 years of professional services experience in the management of large scale technology implementations in the call center, supply chain management, and software development industries.  Neil has played a key role in creating service delivery processes for TuVox, including creating the TuVox “ABC” delivery process, which reduces risk, improves delivery speed and decreases total costs.

Prior to TuVox, Neil held key positions at Click Commerce, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Claris Corporation.   He holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Dublin.