WHY HE MADE THE LIST // A successful entrepreneur and sought after public speaker, Gary Vaynerchuk is the chairman of VaynerX, a media and communications holding company. He is also the CEO of VaynerMedia which helps brands implement solutions ranging from digital experiences and social media strategy to conversational AI and voice publishing. Customers of the VaynerSmart group that leads efforts with voice assistants include JP Morgan Chase, Diageo, GE, and NPR. Vaynerchuk has two million followers on Twitter and over six million on Instagram along with two million YouTube subscribers and a big presence on other social platforms. In short, he has reach. What is he talking to them about? Well, Gary covers a lot of topics but very often he is espousing the rise of voice assistants, voice search, and the importance for brands to have a robust presence on the next big consumer engagement channel. His opinion about marketing technologies is also highly regarded in the business community so he is increasingly influential in spreading the message about the rise of voice to corporate boardrooms.

Listen to Clair Mitchell, Director of Innovation at VaynerMedia, on Voicebot Podcast.

#2 // Dave Isbitski

Chief Evangelist of Alexa & Echo, Amazon

WHY HE MADE THE LIST // As Amazon’s first chief evangelist for Alexa staring in 2014 before the product launch, Isbitski started out hosting office hours in Alexa Slack and attending Meetups and Hackathons. More recently he is most commonly seen as a keynote speaker at conferences around the world or in meetings with top executives Fortune 500 companies. In many ways, Isbitski has been the most prominent and most frequent public face of Alexa—initially to the developer community and increasingly to business leaders. Prior to his role on the Alexa team, Isbitski was the chief evangelist for the Amazon App Store. That was preceded by six years as a technical evangelist at Microsoft and time as a technical manager for Johnson & Johnson. Isbitski was also the host of the popular Alexa Dev Chat Podcast which was active between 2016-18 and has his own loyal following over nearly 18,000 voice industry professionals on Twitter.

Listen to the Dave Isbitski interview on Voicebot Podcast

Alexa Skill Engagement Rose 75% in 2017

#3 // Noelle Lacharite

Principal PM Manager, Microsoft

WHY SHE MADE THE LIST // In 2018, LaCharite moved to Microsoft Cognitive Services after six years at Amazon. Her time at Amazon included a role as the senior technical project manager on the machine learning team responsible for rolling out new languages for Alexa and time as a developer evangelist. LaCharite also has experience working at Pivotal, VMWare, and 11 years at IBM. Today, LaCharite can be seen on social media almost daily broadcasting from points around the world where she is a frequent conference speaker. A software engineer at heart, she was also an early developer on Alexa and continues to maintain several popular skills.

Listen to the Noelle Lacharite interview on Voicebot Podcast

Microsoft Releases Voice Assistant Usage Report, Finds Apple Siri & Google Assistant Tied at 36%

#4 // Bradley Metrock

CEO, Score Publishing

WHY HE MADE THE LIST // Metrock is the CEO of Score Publishing, which is best known for its VoiceFirst Events conferences including The Alexa Conference, Project Voice, Digital Book World, Voice of the Car, Voice of Healthcare and several others. He also founded the podcast network VoiceFirst.FM and personally hosts the popular show “This Week in Voice.” Most recently, he founded VoiceFirst.community, an industry consortium focused on helping shape policy related to voice assistant use and consumer advocacy.

Listen to the Bradley Metrock interview on Voicebot Podcast

Bradley Metrock Offers 200 Alexa Uses That Aren’t Weather and Music in Forthcoming Book

#5 // Pete Erickson

Founder, Modev & ExoLeaders.com

CEO of Voice Summit

WHY HE MADE THE LIST // Erickson is Founder of Modev which serves a group of more than 25,000 software developers and industry experts across the voice, mobile, and open source software sectors. Modev creates community and content to serve these professionals and is best known for running VOICE Summit which is the world’s largest voice technology conference. Modev will also be hosting an exclusive voice event in collaboration with the Consumer Technology Association for CES 2020 which is generating a lot of buzz. Pete also has conducted dozens of video interviews with voice industry experts and hosts a new podcast called Inside VOICE which published over 40 podcasts in the first seven months of 2019. He is also a co-founder of VoiceFirst.community along with Bradley Metrock.

Listen to the Pete Erickson interview on Voicebot Podcast

Four Takeaways From VOICE 19

#6 // Max Amordeluso

EU Lead Evangelist Alexa, Amazon

WHY HE MADE THE LIST // Max Amordeluso is the lead evangelist for Amazon Alexa in Europe. He leads the group that works with third party developers to ensure the growth and quality of Alexa skills in each of the European countries where Amazon makes Echo smart speakers available for sale. Max is one of the most visible Amazon executives in Europe with frequent keynote presentations at conferences large and small. He also meets in smaller settings with executives of leading global corporations and is influencing the way Alexa is perceived throughout the EU. During a career spanning over 15 years, Max has held several technical leadership roles, and, prior to his current position on the Alexa team, spent two years leading the Solutions Architects for Amazon Web Services in Europe.

How You Can Tell Who Might Get Alexa Localization Next

#7 // Brian Roemmele

Author of The Last Interface

WHY HE MADE THE LIST // Brian first started working with voice technology in the 1980’s and expanded his research efforts to include the development of a voice assistant named Alfred which occasionally makes appearances in Twitter videos. Most recently he announced a book project called “The Last Interface,” which will expand on product concepts that he calls the Intelligence Amplifier and Wisdom Keeper. The Intelligence Amplifier records your life in real-time and instantly enables you to retrieve any information from your life experiences as needed. The Wisdom Keeper will be your manifestation while you are not there and can represent you both in life and afterward. Roemmele has a Twitter following of 77,000 and is probably best known for his analysis of the intersection of voice and payment technologies along with the broader concept of voice commerce. He is also a Quora champion where he has provided nearly 1,400 answers, has a following of 23,000, and is listed as a top writer for the years 2013-18 with combined content views nearing 15 million.

Listen to the Brian Roemmele interview on Voicebot Podcast

Amazon Pay for Alexa Will Accelerate Voice Commerce Says Brian Roemmele

#8 // Joan Palmiter Bajorek

Founder & Director, Women in Voice

WHY SHE MADE THE LIST // Palmiter Bajorek is the Founder of Women in Voice, an international nonprofit that celebrates and empowers women in voice technology. That role landed her a nomination for the “Executive of the Year” Alexa Award in 2019. She is a PhD candidate in the speech language technology at the University of Arizona. Prior to her PhD studies, Bajorek worked at Nuance where she was a speech technologist and conversation experience designer. Women in Voice was founded in August 2018 and currently has active chapters in the U.S., France, Germany, New Zealand, India, and the UK.

Consumers Prefer Female Voice Assistants

#9 // Heidi Culbertson

Founder & CEO, Marvee

WHY SHE MADE THE LIST // Heidi Culbertson began her career in mobile technology solution sales for Sprint, USAT and Incode wireless. Her work in enterprise sales led her to focus on UX design for mobile followed by a move into consulting at AT&T. Culbertson was drawn full time into voice in order to help her mother who suffered from macular degeneration. Amazon Echo became a liberating technology that helped her mother maintain independence in her 90’s but the functionality had gaps when it came to elderly users. The realization that many elders faced similar challenges led to founding Marvee in early 2016 and launching the company’s first Alexa skill shortly thereafter. Culbertson is a widely sought-after speaker and expert on the application of voice technologies for use cases that are particularly impactful for senior citizens.

Listen to the Heidi Culbertson interview on Voicebot Podcast

2019 Predictions From 35 Voice Industry Leaders

#10 // Dan Miller

Founder & Lead Analyst, Opus Research

WHY HE MADE THE LIST // Dan Miller was working in voice before it was cool. As the founder and lead analyst as Opus Research, he conducts analyses, authors reports, provides consulting services, and oversees conferences specializing in intelligent assistant and intelligent authentication technologies. Although he evaluates voice and authentication technologies broadly, he is particularly well-known for his expertise of conversational technologies such as chatbots and voice for customer service. Miller founded Opus Research in 1986 after holding executive positions at Atari and Pacific Telesis (now AT&T). He is likely the first person to publish an article using the term “Conversational Commerce” in an article in 2013 that describes applications and services that improve person-to-person, person-to-machine, and machine-to-machine interactions.

Introducing a Maturity Model for Voice & Conversational Marketing

#11 // Bill Rogers

Co-Founder & CEO, Orbita

WHY HE MADE THE LIST // Bill has over 25 years of software industry experience. He co-founded Orbita in 2015 to provide conversational platform technology and solutions to the healthcare industry. Orbita was among the first, if not the first company to focus on the intersection of voice assistants and healthcare for consumer engagement. As a result, Orbita executives are frequent speakers at voice and healthcare industry conferences and the company today supports many innovative healthcare applications using voice technologies. Those efforts are shaping the way many people approach voice solutions in healthcare today. Prior to launching Orbita, Bill was CEO & founder of Ektron – a digital experience management platform acquired by Accel-KKR in 2014.

Orbita Launches Orbita Voice to Streamline Voice App Development for Healthcare Providers

How AI and Voice Assistants Will Change Healthcare