Igor Jablokov :: CEO

Igor's our resident Willy Wonka and a 10 year veteran of IBM. He was formerly their Program Director for WebSphere-based multimodal and voice portal initiatives. In plain English, that means he led the team that created the world's first ever speech enabled mobile web browser. The one that stunned an audience full of Googlers and Yahooligans at the Googleplex Mobile Monday a few years back. And worked on technologies that ended up in your Honda's navigational systems. But don't blame him if it can't recognize your cursing at it, he tried giving it some personality!

Additionally, he was thrilled at being a business mentor for IBM's elite Extreme Blue incubation and internship program, and also represented the Company as Chairman over the fine folks at the VoiceXML Forum, an industry group driving an open standards-based vision of human-computer interaction. Prior to that, Igor has held positions with IBM's Pervasive Computing, PartnerWorld, Global Industries, and Microelectronics divisions. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, an MBA from the University of North Carolina, and is a member of the Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS). With over twenty patent disclosures pending in speech technologies, rest assured he's working tirelessly to bring you something special.

Profiles :: CrunchBase :: Doostang :: ELSNET :: Facebook :: INmobile :: LinkedIn :: MySpace :: Plaxo :: Twitter :: Wikipedia :: Xing :: Yahoo!

Victor Jablokov :: COO

Vic had over 8 years of operations, R&D, manufacturing, quality, and advanced materials product development experience prior to co-founding Yap. At Siemens Power Generation, he was a program manager charged with new product development of high performance alloys and provided engineering support to various organizations within SPG. He also helped establish and maintain SPG's global supplier base through extensive vendor qualification and auditing activities both in the US and internationally.

At Allegheny Technologies, Vic held positions in both operations/manufacturing and R&D. Most recently, he was a manager in the Titanium R&D group where he led programs to develop advanced titanium alloys. He's authored 9 technical articles in his field and has filed more than 10 patent disclosures. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Materials Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from Wake Forest University.

Profiles :: CrunchBase :: Facebook :: LinkedIn :: Twitter

Felix Gofman :: VP of WW Sales/Business Development

Felix joined us in 2008 to lead all sales and business development efforts. He brings over 17 years of high-tech industry experience in marketing and selling innovative software applications.

Felix came to Yap after a distinguished 10 year career at Nuance, the industry pioneer in speech recognition technology. Most recently, Felix was responsible for building Nuance's mobile ecosystem and unified messaging partnerships. Felix was also a founding member of the Nuance product management organization. He led the team responsible for the flagship core speech recognition, speaker verification and text-to-speech engines that were instrumental in positioning the company from start-up, through a successful IPO in 2001 to a premier speech technology provider with a $4B market cap.

Before joining Nuance, Felix held various technical pre- and post- sales roles in Silicon Valley technology companies. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Kiev State University and an MBA in Marketing from Golden Gate University.

Rick Terrell :: VP of Engineering

Rick has over 20 years of engineering and management experience, focusing on consumer electronics silicon and software design. Although he enjoys technology for its own sake, his real passion is turning it into mass market products that delight everyone's eyes and ears.

Prior to joining Yap, Rick was a Principal Engineer at NVIDIA and Senior Member Technical Staff at PortalPlayer, where he helped create the system-on-chip and firmware engines powering successful products such as the Apple iPod. Previous to that, he worked on groundbreaking handheld computers at Norand/Intermec, and award winning laptops at Zenith Data Systems. He is also one of the industry's foremost authorities in mobile power management. Finally, as co-founder and COO of Sensovi Institute, he led the branding and deployment of web-based subscription services.

Rick holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Andrews University and has numerous patents, both issued and pending, relating to chip design, software, mobile computing, motorsports, and web-based services and business models.