The Top Leaders in Voice AI for 2020 – 68 Professionals That are Driving the Industry Forward

Voice AI innovation and adoption continue to move quickly. Behind all of that action are innovative professionals with conviction and tireless effort that is driving the industry forward. Voicebot’s second annual Top Leaders in Voice AI List includes 68 dynamic professionals for 2020, up from our list of 44 in 2019. Our expert panel of judges reviewed over 250 submissions and other entries to narrow down our set of honorees to 17 each in four categories: visionaries, technologies, design and product pros, and influencers.

Today, we are publishing the visionaries along with the design and product pros, and tomorrow, we will finish up with the technologists and influencers. You can go to the main overview page to see all of the honorees in one place and then click through to each category to see biographical information and why they made the 2020 list.

68 Leaders in Voice AI in 4 Categories

From the visionary perspective, Amazon is still driving the industry hard but Google is standing out in more ways than ever, particularly with Google Duplex and the new App Actions for Assistant. That landed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in the number one spot and Google’s Sundar picture in the second position, up one from 2019. SoundHound’s Keyvan Mohajer rounds out the top three also moving up a slot. On the visionary front, we also have a number of new entries ranging from Cerence, Soapbox Labs, SingluarityNET, and what3words.

For the design and product pros, Google’s Cathy Pearl still holds the top spot for 2020 followed by Adva Levin of Pretzel Labs who moved up from position number seven in 2019. Adobe’s Mark Webster rounds out the top three. While the top six positions on the list are dominated by Google, Amazon, Apple, and Adobe (with Levin being the lone independent), as we move down the list we encounter more independents and people building voice-interactive products ranging from Mayo Clinic and Comcast to voice games and educational products.

Be sure to look out tomorrow for the announcement of the honorees in the technologist and influencer categories.

Help Us Make Our Lists Even Better in 2021

It is always hard to draw the line on lists that honor professionals. There are many people making big contributions to the industry that fall just outside of the final list or are doing the work without a lot of fanfare and might not even get considered. We did our best to include more people this year and gathered hundreds of submissions for candidates. I hope that next year we can do even better. A big thank you goes out to our nine judges including Zohaib Ahmed of Resemble AI, Jochen Emig from ONSEI, Maarten Lens-FitzGerald from Project Zilver and the Open Voice Newsletter, Brielle Nickoloff of Botmock, Katherine Prescott from VoiceBrew, independent design and product strategist Ben Sauer, Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai, and a couple of other industry professionals that were generous with their time.

Once again, congratulations to the 2020 honorees. All are very deserving of the recognition. It is also time to let the debate begin. If you disagree with people on the list, want to advocate for those that didn’t make it this year, or want to haggle about the order, we welcome the feedback, debate, and honest discussion. Tag us on Twitter @bretkinsella or @voicebot.ai and we are happy to engage.

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