Contact Center

Christopher G. Botting is the Sr. Director of Product Management for Cisco's Collaboration Business Applications Business Unit. In this capacity, Mr. Botting is responsible for Cisco's contact center product strategy and all aspects of bringing the company's contact center solutions to market. Previously, Mr. Botting was the Director of Business Development for Cisco's Voice Technology Group, leading world-wide business development and field engagement activities. Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Botting was most recently the Vice President of Marketing and co-founder of PakNetX Corporation. Previously, Mr. Botting was the Marketing Manager of Multimedia Call Centers for MultiLink, Inc.; National Marketing Director for L.M. Ericsson; and a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Northern Telecom. Mr. Botting started his career at Motorola.

Mr. Botting holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (1983) from Grove City College, a M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1989) from North Carolina State University, and a MBA (1991) from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.

Mark de la Vega is vice president and general manager of Avaya’s Worldwide Contact Center Business, and is responsible for Avaya’s contact center technology direction, driving innovation in customer care technology and accelerating Avaya’s endeavors in the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) Cloud delivery model.

Mark brings industry and executive leadership experience to this position, gathered from his tenure at large technology companies such as Cisco Systems, Bay Networks, Nortel Networks, Teletech and Amdocs. Most recently, he led a Cloud Services Practice focused on SFDC’s Service Cloud at a boutique systems integrator. Prior to that, Mark served as SVP of Products and Technologies at Rainmaker Systems where he launched the company’s first cloud based ecommerce offering. Mark served as EVP and GM of Teletech’s On-Demand Business Unit, where he led their initial B2C entry into Contact Center Cloud based offerings. He started his career at British Telecom, managing various facets of information technology as well as worldwide software, sales, alliances, customer support, and product organizations.
As president of the Clarify/CRM division at Amdocs, Mark’s held full P&L responsibilities with cradle to grave product responsibilities including product management, R&D, sales, professional services and customer support.

Mark holds a B.S. in Business Administration with a major in Marketing & minor in Economics from San Jose State University.

Chris Koziol brings more than 25 years of experience managing and directing high-growth, mature and start-up technology companies to his role as General Manager of Aspect’s Interaction Management division. Chris brings focus and cross-functional experience to this role, ensuring alignment of solution and high priority company initiatives.

Before joining the Aspect team, Chris was Chief Operating Officer at JDA Software Group where he directed all functions and developed strategies governing sales, services, product development and marketing organizations. He has also held positions at Mission Advisors, LLC and Microage, Inc./Pinacor in leadership roles.

Chris is a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development. He also holds a Bachelor of Science, Business Administration – Marketing, from the University of Arizona. Chris has also completed executive education sessions in e-commerce and IT strategy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, quality improvement program from the Phillip Crosby Quality Institute, strategic negotiation skills program from the Bay Group, Int’l and general management from the IBM/Harvard Business School President’s Institute.

JOSEPH A. STAPLES serves as chief marketing officer for Interactive Intelligence. He oversees the global marketing efforts of the company's award winning contact center and IP communication product lines. Mr. Staples brings 25+ years of experience in technology and marketing to Interactive Intelligence, including specific assignments in the areas of computer telephony, unified messaging, mobile wireless, computer networking, and computer-based education.

Prior to joining Interactive Intelligence, Mr. Staples was the principal of FirstLight Marketing, a successful marketing services company. For the six prior years, he was executive vice president of corporate marketing at Captaris, Inc., a provider of business communication solutions. Previously, Mr. Staples was the vice president of marketing for Callware Technologies, Inc., a provider of unified messaging software. Prior to his employment at CallWare, Mr. Staples spent five years with networking leader Novell Inc., in several management positions. While at Novell he is credited with playing a central role in developing the early stages of the computer telephony industry, including the launch and evangelism of TSAPI, a broadly adopted CTI development platform. Mr. Staples earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Phoenix with an emphasis in marketing. Mr. Staples is an accomplished presenter and has had a number of articles published in trade magazines on various communication subjects. He was named Novell employee of the year in 1990, was named a Star of the Industry by Computer Telephony Magazine in 1993, and was presented a Lifetime Achievement Award by Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine in 2006.

With over sixteen years of experience working in high-tech, Keith Pearce has worked extensively in new and emerging Customer Service technology markets in both the North American and European markets. At Siemens, he helped orchestrate the migration strategy from legacy to advanced Communication products, starting in Sales and later in Marketing. At Nuance, he worked to build the initial commercial markets for Speech Recognition software.

Keith spent five years leading EMEA Marketing for Genesys’ former parent company Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise in Paris, France before moving to the US to lead Solution Marketing for Genesys. In his current role as Vice President of Solution Marketing, he is responsible for evolving the company’s product marketing approach to align with today’s customer needs for advanced Customer Service solutions. He draws on experience as a US Senate staffer and reporter.

Keith holds a BS in Journalism from the University of Florida (’94) and an MA in International Business from Georgetown University (’99). Keith’s tweets and blogs can be followed @pistolprce.