Howard Lee, Chief Executive Officer
Howard Lee is a customer service industry expert and Spoken’s relentless customer ambassador. He applies his nearly 25 years of experience to releasing call centers from the grips of current industry limitations while positioning them to reap the benefits of call center technology innovations.
Prior to joining Spoken, Lee was the founder of HyperQuality, an independent call center QA firm that allowed him to develop tremendous insights into the customer service business. His audits and recommendations covered phone calls, email, and chat communications of contact center professionals representing organizations, customers and prospective customers.
Lee gained additional insight into call center profitability as the CEO of PhotoWorks, a NASDAQ traded company, and before that as the Senior Vice President of Disney Direct, where he was responsible for profit and loss, branding operations and marketing of the direct division. The 1,800-person team included two call centers and a large warehouse operating team. Lee also has worked at an India CRM outsource provider as the SVP of Sales and Marketing. He attended the University of Washington.
Gilad Odinak, Chief Technology Officer
Odinak is an inventor and computer industry innovator with over 50 issued and pending patents to his name. The founder of Spoken Communications, Odinak is Spoken’s driving force to solve complex operational problems, diligently and comprehensively. He has 20 years of experience in computer software and hardware research and development.
Prior to Spoken, Odinak led the development group at Wingcast, a joint telematics venture of Ford Motor Co and QUALCOMM to provide advanced services and applications incorporating state-of-the-art wireless communication, GPS, voice processing and embedded hardware and software.
Prior to joining Wingcast, Odinak spent 12 years at Microsoft Corporation developing systems software for new products, including Smart Card security, GSM wireless communication and multimedia operating systems. Odinak holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and a degree in computer science from Tel-Aviv University.
David Milstein, VP of Engineering
Milstein, Spoken’s solution architect, brings over 15 years of software development expertise and problem-solving to Spoken. His extensive experience ensures that software and program management at Spoken are exceptional and that uptime is at the maximum. Prior to joining Spoken, Milstein spent nearly 10 years at Microsoft Corporation in software development and management positions, working on emerging technology including cryptography, GSM, Smartcard, mobile services and mobile devices technologies.
Prior to Microsoft, David was the head of software development at Fortress U&T, an Israeli startup that was sold to M-Systems in the year 2000. David holds 43 issued and pending patents and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer and Electronics Engineering from Ben-Gurion University.
Dan Karr, VP of Finance
Dan Karr brings eight years of venture capital and private equity experience to the Spoken team to manage the day-to-day accounting, finance and investor relations functions.
Prior to joining Spoken, Karr spent 4 years as the Corporate Controller at Ignition Partners, a leading venture capital and private equity firm with $2.5 billion in committed capital across multiple funds and areas of investment focus. In this role, he oversaw the global financial accounting and reporting, audit, tax compliance, investor reporting, treasury, and portfolio valuation functions. Prior to working at Ignition, Dan was a Manager in Deloitte’s Seattle practice, serving companies and investment funds in the finance and high growth technology industries.
Dan is a Certified Public Accountant in Washington State, has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting and Economics, and anticipates graduating from the University of Washington Executive MBA program in June 2012.
Jonathan Roberts, Board Member
Jonathan Roberts is a founder and a partner at Ignition investing in business application and services. Prior to Ignition, Jonathan spent 13 years at Microsoft, most recently as General Manager of the Windows CE Intelligent Appliance Division, where he was responsible for developing new WinCE products, product marketing, business development and long-term planning for the Windows CE solution, as well as the retargeting of the Microsoft’s PocketPC effort. Jonathan led the marketing and business efforts for Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows NT 3.51, NT 4.0, BackOffice 1.0, Windows 98 and NT 4.0 on the Desktop, and finally all of Windows CE including embedded, Pocket PC, Auto, Phones, Set-top, Games, etc. Jon received his B.A. in history from the University of Washington.
Ty Graham, Board Member
Ty is a partner with Ignition Capital. He focuses on telecommunication services and on turnarounds of existing businesses in deep value situations. He has been involved in financial management and business operations for more than 22 years. Previously, Graham was Vice President of Business Development and Operations for SeaMobile. He was part of the initial buyout team that acquired SeaMobile’s largest asset, MTN Satellite. He subsequently led the turnaround of several businesses within SeaMobile.
Graham previously held a wide variety of executive positions at McCaw Cellular, AT&T Wireless and Cingular. He managed mobile communications business development in more than 15 countries. Ty led a team that secured a $1 billion of Indian cellular licenses and ultimate became CEO of the operating entity, Idea Cellular. He managed from inception, the company’s 1,500+ employees and more than 1.5 million subscribers. He helped negotiate the first non-recourse telecommunications project finance debt facility in Indian history, valued at more than $283 million, and concluded multiple mergers and acquisition transactions that each exceeded $150 million. Today, Idea Cellular is one of the largest mobile operators in India.
Graham holds an M.B.A. from Seattle University and an undergraduate degree in business from the University of Washington, where he lettered for three years as a member of the varsity crew team.