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The Carnegie Speech TeamJaime Carbonell, Chairman
Angela Kennedy, Chief Executive Officer
Maxine Eskenazi, Chief Technical Officer
Melanie M. McNeilly, Vice President Finance and Operations As Vice President of Carnegie Speech, Melanie is responsible for all finance and operations for the company. She also collaborates extensively on sales, business development, investment and strategic planning for the organization. Prior to joining Carnegie Speech, Melanie was Director of Operations for WISDOM Technologies Corporation. In this position she managed all of the finance, administration, operations, physical plant, and human resource activities for the corporation. Melanie served as a member of the executive committee for WISDOM and was Secretary of the corporation. In her previous position with IBM, Melanie managed the financial operations of the RS/6000 Division Marketing, Software Vendor Support. While in this position, she developed processes to improve customer support, administered the equipment loan program, and led the area to full ISO 9001 compliance. Melanie holds an MBA and BA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Garrett Pelton, Director of Product Development
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Awarded an Advanced Technology Program Grant from NIST |
Dr. Carbonell is the Allen Newell Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his B.S. degrees in Physics and Mathematics from MIT in 1975, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Yale University in 1976 and 1978. He was the executive editor of Machine Learning [1988-1991], and serves on several editorial boards, including that of Artificial Intelligence. He has also served as chair of SIGART [1983-1985], the special interest group on AI of the ACM, and was president of C-STAR-II, the international organization for speech-to-speech translation [1993-1995]. Dr. Carbonell's previous business venture Carnegie Group, Inc., a successful public software-consulting corporation, traded on the NASDAQ until its acquisition by Logica PLC in 1997. He serves on the advisory board of e-lingo.com, Powerloom, Vivisimo, and most recently Wisdom Technologies. As a board member of Carnegie Speech, he will bring invaluable experience in the area of commercializing technology from the university to the business marketplace. Furthermore, he will help attract the right technical staff throughout Carnegie Speech's products development cycle.
As Chief Executive Officer of Carnegie Speech, Angela is primarily responsible for overseeing sales, marketing, and business development and coordinating those areas with product development and operations. She is also responsible for managing investor relations and coordinating the strategic planning for the organization.Prior to joining Carnegie Speech, Angela co-founded WISDOM Technologies Corporation and served as its President and CEO. While at WISDOM, Angela raised venture capital and private investments and forged strategic relationships with Citibank, SEI investments with, Selkirk Financial Technologies, SunGard Treasury Systems, and Union Fenosa of Spain. She has software development management experience from the Lead Artificial Intelligence Group at Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and sales and marketing experience with IBM. In addition to authoring several publications in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Treasury Management, Angela is a Certified Cash Manager accredited by the Association for Financial Professionals. Ms. Kennedy holds an M. S. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.A. from the University of Tennessee.
The inventor of the technology at Carnegie Speech, Dr. Eskenazi is a Systems Scientist at the Language Technologies Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. She received her B.A. in Modern Languages and Education from Carnegie Mellon University in 1973 and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics and Computer Science from the University of Paris in 1981 and 1984. She has published over 40 papers in the area of speech recognition and modern language pedagogy. In addition to the many research appoints in both Europe and the United States, she served as the Head of the Assessment and Variability in the Speech Group at the LIMSI laboratory from 1984 to 1994. She is co-director of the CMU Masters program in Computer-Assisted Language Learning. Dr. Eskenazi has worked on several consulting assignments ranging from technology development to speech curriculum development for various scientific and linguistic organizations. She will lead the technology and curriculum development of Carnegie Speech products and services. Our CTO plans to take a leave of absence from the Carnegie Mellon University to launch Carnegie Speech. 
Gary has led teams developing products at several different organizations from Bell Labs to a number of startups. These products ranged from robots and factory floor diagnostic systems to neural network simulators. Most recently he was a team leader developing algebra and geometry tutors for high school students. These tutors are currently in over 300 high schools across the United States, and rely on cognitive models to determine whether the student understands a particular aspect of a problem.