John Kirst has more than 20 years of call center technology, enterprise software, sales, marketing and business development experience. Kirst started the Voice Response program at IBM/ROLM with the launch of Direct Talk, the company’s first IVR product. Direct Talk became an industry leading product line and is now the Voice Portal product within IBM’s Web Sphere. In 1990, Kirst co-founded Edify, a global provider of enterprise CRM and customer contact center software. At Edify, he was responsible for product management of the first releases of Edify's flagship product, Electronic Workforce that became the first software-based platform for Web and voice portal applications. Kirst subsequently held several senior management positions at Edify. As director of worldwide channel and OEM sales, Kirst established and developed Edify's global and regional reseller, OEM and systems integration channels and grew year over year sales by more than 100 percent between 1994 and 1997. While vice president of Asia Pacific/Latin America sales and operations, Kirst started-up and built Edify's business in those regions, created Edify Asia Joint Venture to penetrate the market in China and grew Edify APLA revenue from a base of four percent of total Edify revenues in 1998 to 15 percent in 2002. As senior vice p[resident of worldwide marketing at Edify, Kirst created and led Edify’s strategy to enter the customer service applications segment of the CRM market and following Edify's merger with S1, re-launched and re-positioned Edify as an enterprise provider of multi-channel, contact center automation software. At TuVox, Kirst is responsible for global sales strategy and execution as well as business partnership strategy and development. He has been responsible for a number of strategic customer acquisitions, including one of the largest telecom providers in the AsiaPac region. In September 2005, Kirst spearheaded TuVox’s acquisition of NetByTel's hosted speech application business, strengthening TuVox's position in the speech application market and accelerating the company's growth and expertise in new vertical markets such as retail and financial services. Kirst holds a master's degree in business administration from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College and an undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford University.