Management Team
| Marty Beard | President and CEO |
| Susan Dahm | General Counsel |
| Matthew Fisher | EVP of Sales |
| Norma Jean Lane | SVP of Human Resources |
| Sanjay Mathur | VP of Product Management |
| John Nai | SVP of Operations and Service Delivery |
| Alan Priest | VP of Finance |
| Aaron Ridgway | SVP of International Sales |
| Ann Sung Ruckstuhl | SVP and Chief Marketing Officer |
| Richard Southwick, Ph.D. | VP of Engineering |
| Mark Westover | SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy |
Marty Beard
President and CEO
Marty Beard is a seasoned executive who has demonstrated his ability to identify untapped market opportunities and deliver solutions that dynamically enhance the customer experience. Before LiveOps, he served as President of Sybase 365, a $250M subsidiary of Sybase, Inc. (an SAP company) and the recognized global leader in mobile messaging and mobile commerce services. Under his leadership, the division grew 150% and helped advance Sybase's position as the global leader in enterprise mobility. Sybase's Enterprise Mobility success has been viewed as a major reason for SAP's $5.8B acquisition of Sybase in July, 2010.
Throughout his career Beard has demonstrated proven and unique success in operations, strategy, corporate development, and market capitalization skills. Beard managed Sybase's corporate strategy, corporate development and corporate marketing functions. He helped drive Sybase's "Unwired Enterprise" strategy and acquired 11 companies in support of that strategy. He also developed several industry leading partnerships and helped Sybase re-brand its position in the technology marketplace. With more than twenty years of leadership experience, Beard has a strong track record of driving technological innovation, strategic market growth, developing key enterprise customer relationships while building and retaining strong management teams .
Beard currently serves as a board member for Harris Interactive, a global leader in custom market research and widely known for the Harris Poll. He also served on the board of directors for CTIA-The Wireless Association while at Sybase 365. He actively participates in public policy advocacy on issues affecting the wireless industry, such as standards, telecommunications regulation and consumer protection.
Beard obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, with a double major in rhetoric and history. He also holds an MBA from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Susan Dahm
General Counsel
Susan is responsible for overseeing the LiveOps’ legal department responsible for providing legal support for all of LiveOps’ transactional matters, litigation, regulatory compliance, and corporate affairs. Before being appointed to this role, Susan served on LiveOps’ legal team as Associate General Counsel, where she was responsible for overseeing all technology licensing and agent services transactions. Prior to LiveOps, she was Assistant General Counsel for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies where she was lead counsel for Hitachi’s international direct and OEM sales operations, as well as litigation and technology licensing, and managed a team of attorneys supporting Hitachi GST’s legal operations worldwide. Earlier in her career, Susan spent approximately eight years in house at IBM in a variety of positions including senior attorney of the IBM Software Group, and staff counsel of the IBM Storage Technology Division. Susan holds a Juris Doctorate and Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University.
Matthew Fisher
EVP of Sales
Matthew Fisher has been instrumental in building diverse organizations within LiveOps since 2003. Today, he has responsibility for all of the North American sales activities covering the LiveOps Contact Center Technology in the Cloud. Matt works with Enterprises to develop a customer service edge through the award-winning Platform, Applications and Talent suites that are offered by LiveOps. The Talent Community is an on-demand business process outsourcing (BPO) service which includes its high-performance contact center services and the LiveOps 20,000 independent contractors who provide high performance sales and service type work to LiveOps customers.
Matt's responsibilities with LiveOps over these last 10 years has provided significant contributions starting with his successful deployment of customer projects as VP of Client Services; his GM role of LiveOps award-winning Direct Response business which grew over 100% under his leadership; leading to ever increasing responsibilities as General Manager and EVP for the agent division including sales, the agent community and LiveOps Enterprise clients. Today, the majority of the leading direct marketing firms work with LiveOps to solve their contact center needs.
Prior to LiveOps, he was head of project management for Lycos Global Media group. Previous to Lycos, Fisher worked for Mountain View-based Netscape, where he worked with many of the engineering team that would ultimately develop the LiveOps technology platform.
He holds a MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor's degree in Math from the University of California at Davis. Fisher is a member of the 2010 Electronic Retailers Association Board, frequently speaks at industry conferences and is a guest lecturer on distributed work and crowdsourcing at UC Berkeley.
Norma Jean Lane
SVP of Human Resources
Norma oversees strategic workforce management at LiveOps. She manages the planning, direction and implementation of all human resources programs and policies and participates in the overall executive management of the company. Her team serves all LiveOps employees in the areas of human resource services, compensation, benefits, organizational development, training, EEO compliance, recruiting, staffing, and all other aspects of human capital management.
With over 20 years as a strategic human resources leader, Norma’s has an impressive track record in translating and aligning strategic business plans into HR strategy and operations to achieve Corporate objectives. Norma's extensive experience spans from leading global HR operations at fortune 500 companies to overseeing the HR due diligence process through successful IPOs. She also has extensive experience representing management in labor union mediations, building leadership development programs, as well as designing and implementing complex total compensation programs. Additionally, she is an expert in building highly efficient and respected global HR teams.
Prior to joining LiveOps, Norma held HR executive positions at successful companies in the Silicon Valley, to include ShoreTel, Fortinet Security Networks, Foundry Networks, Silicon Graphics, Direct TV Broadband, Kaiser Permanente and Apple Computer. Additionally Norma has been active on various Corporate Boards as a management representative for Compensation Committees.
Norma holds a Masters degree in Public Administration and a Bachelors degree in Human Resources and Organization Development from University of San Francisco. She is currently completing the Certificate of Equity Professionals (CEP) at Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business and maintains certification in Myers Briggs Assessment and other critical HR assessment tools.
Additionally, she received the prestigious award as "Speaker of the Year" from the Women of Color Action Network (WCAN), a global Women's Leadership association.
Sanjay Mathur
VP of Product Management
Sanjay is responsible for building and leading a cloud-focused product management team that establishes LiveOps’ overall product strategy and roadmap. With more than seventeen years of experience in driving technology and business innovation and being a champion for change, Sanjay has been instrumental in developing LiveOps’ global, multichannel cloud applications. Sanjay is also a key spokesperson and thought leader for the company on industry-changing topics such as gamification to drive performance and the rise of social and mobile for customer interaction excellence.
Under Sanjay’s leadership, the Product team partners closely with Engineering to ensure the rapid delivery of innovative applications and infrastructure, and the successful launch of these new capabilities. Product Management also works closely with the Sales organization to partner with clients in order to drive awareness and education of product plans, as well as gather client feedback and ideas that can impact innovation in the cloud.
Prior to LiveOps, Sanjay was a Partner at Accenture for 15+ years. He was a senior leader within Accenture Technology Labs leading a global team that delivered market-ready business solutions built using emerging technologies to Accenture’s clients. Sanjay held a variety of leadership positions driving research, development and commercialization efforts in analytics, data management, knowledge management, CRM, cloud-enabled services, and virtualized infrastructure. Sanjay worked with clients in many industries including Pharmaceuticals, Retail, Healthcare, High Tech, Utilities and State/Federal Government.
Sanjay received a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He holds several patents and has published thought leadership pieces in management and industry journals.
John Nai
SVP of Operations and Service Delivery
John Nai is the Senior Vice President of Service Delivery at LiveOps. Building on 22 years of experience in data center operations and infrastructure engineering, Nai is responsible for the LiveOps technology operations, product availability and overall service quality to Tier 1 Enterprise clients, and is driving continued improvements in LiveOps' technology, processes and people to deliver best-in-class client solutions. Prior to joining LiveOps, Nai served in senior leadership positions at Charles Schwab Corp., overseeing Schwab’s mission-critical external and internal facing customer platforms. Most recently, he was Schwab’s Senior Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering and Data Center Operations where Nai was responsible for ensuring the highest quality operational support for Schwab’s telecommunications, mainframe, distributed, storage and database technology infrastructure environments.
Nai is a graduate of Westfield State College in Massachusetts, with a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Science.
Alan Priest
VP of Finance
Alan Priest is responsible for financial operations at LiveOps. Since joining LiveOps in 2005 as Senior Director Finance, Alan has been instrumental in the financial infrastructure and strategic planning as the company tripled in size. Alan brings more than twenty years of financial, strategic and operational business experience to LiveOps. Before joining LiveOps Alan led the corporate planning and investor relations for Covad Communications, a DSL and VoIP provider.
Prior to that, Alan held strategic and business planning roles at NorthPoint Communications, RouteScience Technologies and SBC Internet Services. Alan holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Aaron Ridgway
SVP of International Sales
Aaron Ridgway is responsible for LiveOps' international business development, managing the LiveOps sales teams in Europe and Australasia and strategic relationships with channel partners outside North America.
Aaron joined the LiveOps team in December 2011 when LiveOps bought the award-winning multichannel contact center provider Datasquirt. Aaron was the founder, CEO and major shareholder in New Zealand-based Datasquirt, having grown the business from launch in 2001, through worldwide export growth.
By 2005 Datasquirt was recognised by Deloittes as the 5th fastest growing company in New Zealand. In 2007 Aaron led the company through a successful, fully subscribed IPO on the Australian Stock Exchange, making Datasquirt the first New Zealand IT company to list on that market. The funding injection allowed further expansion into Europe. In 2011 Datasquirt won Best Call Centre Technology in the UK in the prestigious Call Centre Helper awards.
Aaron has extensive experience in the mobile and telecommunication industry. Prior to Datasquirt, Aaron founded and developed New Zealand’s most successful Vodafone mobile dealership network, as a franchisee of First Mobile.
Ann Sung Ruckstuhl
SVP and Chief Marketing Officer
Ann Sung Ruckstuhl is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at LiveOps. In her role, Ruckstuhl drives LiveOps’ overall marketing and lead generation strategies across the customer lifecycle. Her responsibilities include corporate, product, field and partner marketing, public relations, analyst relations, social media, demand creation, lead nurturing and customer retention.
Ruckstuhl has over 15 years of executive management experience in building successful software and service businesses at start-ups and Fortune 500 companies including Symantec, Sybase (an SAP company), Billpoint (acquired by eBay), and Hewlett-Packard. As an executive at Symantec and HP, Ruckstuhl drove steep revenue and profit growth in consumer tech support and network support services. She worked closely with a number of Symantec BPO partners to market services in 15 languages, provisioned by 14 contact centers with local access numbers in 25 countries. As a part of the core executive teams at Billpoint/eBay and Sybase, Ruckstuhl pioneered the person-to-person online payment technology and transformed Sybase from a database software company to a global leader in enterprise mobility. Ruckstuhl is a frequent speaker at industry conferences on consumerization of IT, cloud computing and marketing automation.
Ruckstuhl received her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and her master's degree in business administration from the University of Florida.
Richard Southwick, Ph.D.
VP of Engineering
Richard Southwick leads the LiveOps Engineering organization. Richard joined LiveOps in 2009, and brings to the company over 25 years of experience in engineering management, software engineering and consulting services. Before coming to LiveOps, Richard was VP of Engineering at Contactual (now 8x8), an on-demand call center company, and at NightFire (now NeuStar), a telecom services provisioning company. Richard also directed product development at Quintus Corp. (now Avaya), a leading provider of call center software. During his tenure at Quintus, Richard also established and developed Quintus' consulting practice.
Richard has held management positions in Europe, directing an academic/industrial research consortium for the EU. He’s a published author, with a book and several papers to his name.
He holds a doctorate in Computing from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, as well as masters and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Mark Westover
SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy
Mark Westover has spanned the globe between Japan and Silicon Valley to bring LiveOps a diversified and varied business background. He is responsible for LiveOps corporate development and strategy including identifying and developing global alliances, sales channels and technology partnerships. With a background deeply rooted in operational business planning for B2B organizations, Mark has been instrumental in enabling companies to look across their business landscape to identify acquisition targets, strategic partnerships and create new revenue opportunities.
Prior to LiveOps Mark spent ten years at Sybase/SAP in various strategic development roles. He was instrumental in reversing the financial and strategic decline of the company through appropriate market positioning, acquisitions, and finally the acquisition of Sybase by SAP. During his tenure he acquired a dozen companies and established multi-million dollar partnerships with industry leaders such as IBM, HP, and Apple. His career has also given him the opportunity to live and work in Japan as a product development engineer and a management consultant from 1989 to 1993. He is fluent in Japanese.
Mark obtained his bachelor’s degree with a major in mathematics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He also holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
