Vocollect Senior Management
Roger Byford, Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer
Joe Pajer, President and Chief Executive Officer
Vaughn Dempster, Chief Financial Officer
Donna Mastandrea, Vice President, Operations
Rakesh Thapar, Vice President, Engineering
Mike Wills - Vice President of Sales - Americas
Gary Glessner, Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA
Larry Sweeney, Founder and Senior Vice President
Mike Glatz, Vice President, Business Development - Americas
Tom Upshur, Vice President - Global Services
Thomas H. Murray, Vice President - Product Management and Marketing
Vance Lau, Vice President and Managing Director - Asia-Pacific
Masahiko “Masa” Uchida, Managing Director - Japan
Keith Johnson, Vice President - Public Sector
Roger Byford, Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer
Roger Byford is Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer of Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. Mr. Byford’s career spans more than 20 years in the industrial application of voice technologies.
Since the company’s inception in 1987, Mr. Byford has held numerous roles in the company, including Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer. He also led the company’s effort to broaden its market beyond the supply chain, and was the first President of Vocollect Healthcare Systems, the Vocollect business unit that is bringing the benefit of voice to the long-term care industry.
Prior to joining Vocollect, he was a member of the senior management team at Westinghouse Voice Systems, which was known for pioneering work in voice technology applications. He also worked for Westinghouse’s corporate Research and Development Center, where he collaborated to develop a voice-based access control system for apartment building elevators.
Mr. Byford resides in the Pittsburgh area. He holds one United Kingdom and three U.S. patents, and earned his M.A. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cambridge University.
Joe Pajer, President and Chief Executive Officer
Joe Pajer is President and Chief Executive Officer of Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice-centric solutions for mobile workers. Reporting to the Vocollect Board of Directors, Mr. Pajer has full executive responsibility for Vocollect’s entire global supply chain and healthcare systems businesses.
Mr. Pajer’s career spans over 20 years in senior executive roles in high technology markets including consumer electronics, semiconductors, personal computers and high-end computer networking. Prior to joining Vocollect in 2008, he was Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Broadband Routing & Switching division of Marconi, Plc. in Pittsburgh. He has also held leadership roles with FORE Systems of Pittsburgh, Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston, Texas, and AT&T Consumer Products in Parsippany, N.J.
He holds an M.S. degree in management and a B.S. degree in civil engineering/engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He also has held a variety of board positions in local civic and professional organizations throughout his career.
Vaughn Dempster, Chief Financial Officer
Vaughn Dempster is Chief Financial Officer at Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. In this capacity, he is responsible for the company’s accounting and finance, human resources and information services functions. He has more than 20 years of finance, accounting, information technology, human resources and executive management experience in a wide range of industries.
Before joining Vocollect in early 2000, Mr. Dempster was a senior consultant and group manager for American Management Services, a management consulting firm that provides operational and financial assistance to small and mid-sized companies in the in the eastern United States. The company’s clients included both service and product-based firms in a wide variety of high tech and traditional industries.
Previously, he was chief financial officer at Innovative Solutions & Support, a manufacturer of digital electronic instrumentation for the aerospace industry. Before that he was corporate controller, responsible for all finance and accounting functions at Tetra Laval, Inc., a leading manufacturer of mechanical separation equipment for industrial, municipal and power generation markets.
Mr. Dempster resides in the Pittsburgh area. He holds a B.S. degree in finance from Penn State University.
Donna Mastandrea, Vice President, Operations
Donna Mastandrea is Vice President, Operations with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. She is responsible for overall leadership of the company’s global supply chain, assembly, order fulfillment, global repair and facilities management. Her functional oversight responsibilities include customer service, production planning, materials management, purchasing, production, manufacturing engineering, repair and facilities.
She joined the Vocollect organization in 2003 as Customer Service Manager. In 2006 she was promoted to Senior Manager of Demand Fulfillment. She received her promotion to Vice President in 2007. Prior to joining Vocollect, she held a variety of customer service and planning managerial roles with Marconi Communications, Inc., a Pittsburgh area telecommunications firm. She also held multiple roles culminating in Division Planning Manager with Westinghouse Electro-Mechanical Division, also in Pittsburgh.
Rakesh Thapar, Vice President, Engineering
Rakesh Thapar is Vice President, Engineering with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. In this role, he has executive responsibility for hardware and software development, quality assurance (QA), technical publications, project management and custom system development.
Mr. Thapar’s career spans over 20 years in engineering leadership and academia in the United States and India. He served as technical director of the ATM Consortium at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab in Durham, N.H., a cooperative research and testing environment, and from there was hired into Fore Systems, which became Marconi, where he managed and directed its QA and software development teams. He then led a team of nearly 150 that developed what was, at the time, one of the largest, fastest ATM network switches. He next served as Vice President of Engineering with two high tech start-up companies, and held a leadership role with Network Appliance, Inc., a network storage and data management company. Mr. Thapar also founded and worked in a high-tech company in India from 1987-1994.
Augmenting his business career, Mr. Thapar has been an adjunct faculty member with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh since May of 2005, also serving in 2004 as Assistant Dean with CMU’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. He was also an Associate Professor for Computer Science and Engineering at IIT-Roorkee (India) from 1987-1994 and an adjunct faculty member with Boston University and Northeastern University from 1983-1994.
He holds a Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from Boston University, an M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., and a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Roorkee (IIT-Roorkee) in India.
Mike Wills - Vice President of Sales - Americas
Mike Wills is Vice President of Sales - Americas for Vocollect Supply Chain Solutions at Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice-centric solutions for mobile workers. In this capacity, Wills has responsibility for all channel and direct sales efforts across the United States, Canada and Latin America.
Prior to joining Vocollect in April 2010, Wills was Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Services with Intermec from 2000 to 2009. During his tenure there, the company grew from a declining revenue stream to $920 million in sales with a market capitalization of $1.8 billion. Prior to joining Intermec, Wills was the vice president and general manager of the Bar Code Solutions division at Monarch Marking Systems. Wills started his career with Motorola, where he became the director of Systems Technology, Land Mobile Products Sector, with responsibility for the design, sale and successful deployment of privately owned wireless infrastructure systems within North America.
He holds a master’s degree in business administration from Central Michigan University and a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Taylor University. He also has achieved inventor status, holding an RFID technology patent. He has been on the board of directors of the Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business, Center for Services Leadership since 2004, and is also on the board of the Auto Identification Manufacturers’ global association.
Gary Glessner, Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA
Gary Glessner is Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. In this capacity, he is responsible for growing the company’s sales and presence throughout the region, expanding its network of resellers and supply chain performance experts, and increasing opportunities for Vocollect Voice in newer geographic markets of the world, including Russia and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He is based in the company’s European headquarters office near London’s Heathrow Airport.
Gary joined Vocollect in September 2002 as a Business Development Director based in Atlanta. In that role, he managed Vocollect’s relationships with some of its largest North American based global partners who helped to fuel Vocollect’s growth from $30 million to over $110 million. In the process, he has worked extensively with Vocollect’s headquarters, EMEA and APAC teams, and helped to shape some of the global channel models in place today.
His career spans 25 years of progressive experience in sales and general management roles with both large and small entrepreneurial companies: General Electric - Robotics & Vision Systems, Hewlett-Packard - Computer Products, Comark, Abaco Mobile and Element K.
He holds both a B.S. degree in Engineering and a B.A. degree in Economics from Swarthmore College and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Larry Sweeney, Founder and Senior Vice President
Larry Sweeney is Founder and Senior Vice President with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. Based in Vocollect’s Tokyo office, Sweeney has a corporate sales strategy and business development role focused on supporting the Japan office and developing a go-to-market strategy for Vocollect expansion throughout Asia-Pacific.
Sweeney co-founded Vocollect in 1987 with Roger Byford. He has held many positions with the company over two decades, including Chief Customer Advocate, where he served as the strategic public interface with Vocollect’s external audiences worldwide and drove internal cross-functional teams in the assessment of global business opportunities, and Vice President of Product Management, where he had management responsibility for the company’s product strategy, product portfolio and new product development process.
Prior to joining Vocollect, Sweeney served as a product development engineer for Westinghouse Electric Corporation, a U.S.-based global supplier of technology products for the power generation and defense industries. Sweeney helped to create a line of voice-activated quality control systems for inspection of hybrid-integrated circuits used in missile guidance systems. His early work at Westinghouse provided the foundation for co-founding Vocollect and driving Vocollect Voice throughout the global supply chain arena.
He holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
Mike Glatz, Vice President, Business Development - Americas
Mike Glatz is Vice President, Business Development - Americas with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. In this capacity, he has executive responsibility for corporate channel strategy and developing and managing the company’s network of resellers and supply chain systems integrators across North America and Latin America.
Mr. Glatz joined Vocollect in 2002 as a Director of Business Development based in Chicago, where he managed Vocollect relationships with some of its largest North American-based global partners which drove significant business growth for the company. Additionally, during three years of this time, he managed Vocollect development activity across Australia and New Zealand.
Prior to joining the company, he was Director - Product Management at Zebra Technologies in Vernon Hills, Ill., a leading manufacturer of industrial bar code label printers. During his eight-year tenure there, he held a number of key product management and business development roles.
He holds a B.S. in marketing from Northeastern Illinois University and an M.B.A. from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He resides in Barrington, Ill.
Tom Upshur, Vice President - Global Services
Tom Upshur is Vice President - Global Services with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. In this capacity, he has executive responsibility for expanding the reach, scope, and profitability of Vocollect’s service offerings to partners and end customers and refining the company’s service business processes worldwide. Prior to beginning this role in August 2009, Mr. Upshur was Vice President - Product Management and Marketing. In that role, he had executive responsibility for the company’s strategic product planning and product lifecycle management, as well as global marketing strategy and execution.
Mr. Upshur’s career spans over 25 years of management with a focus on retail and the retail supply chain. His areas of product experience include electronic article surveillance (EAS), thermal printers, laser printers, related printer media, RFID, and other automatic ID technologies. Prior to joining Vocollect, he was Director of Product Management for Paper Products and Web Services in the Retail Information Services division of Avery Dennison. Prior to this
assignment, he was Director of the Innovations and Solutions group for Avery’s RIS and oversaw a product development and field operations staff of over 100 in multiple global locations. He began with Avery Dennison as the Business Unit Director for its Printer Systems Americas division.
Before joining Avery Dennison, Upshur held numerous positions of increasing responsibility with Checkpoint Systems, a $750 million-plus multinational manufacturer and marketer of EAS and related technology solutions for retail. He began his Checkpoint career in 1993 as Hardware Product Manager and left as Vice President and General Manager of Identification Products and Emerging Businesses.
He holds an M.B.A. degree from St. Joseph’s University and a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University.
Thomas H. Murray, Vice President - Product Management and Marketing
Thomas H. Murray is Vice President - Product Management and Marketing with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. In this capacity, he has executive responsibility for the company’s strategic product planning and product lifecycle management, as well as global marketing strategy and execution.
Murray is a proven executive with over 20 years of experience in high tech strategic planning, marketing, and product management for high-growth firms, both domestically and internationally, ranging from start-ups to multi-billion dollar organizations. His industry experience has been primarily in enterprise software, networking and telecommunications.
Prior to joining Vocollect in August 2009, Murray was founder and principal of Wexford Run Consulting, a Pittsburgh firm that assisted mid-market high tech firms with growing their businesses through strategic planning, marketing, product management, and merger and acquisition activities. In his practice, his client base included supply chain management software vendors, mobile computing vendors and electronic component process equipment vendors. He also developed the Strategic Product Positioning workshop for the Product Strategy Network, a best-practices association for product management and development.
Before establishing his consulting business in 2005, he was Vice President - Product Management and Marketing with an enterprise middleware start-up that provided automated decision-making software solutions to various industries. Before that, as Vice President - Marketing and Strategic Planning, he led worldwide marketing and strategic planning efforts for Marconi Communications’ $650 million Broadband Routing and Switching Business Unit. This business unit was acquired by Marconi as FORE Systems, where Murray enjoyed a growing career in product management.
Since 2004 Murray has served as an Adjunct Professor of Strategic Planning and Product Management courses at Carnegie Mellon University’s Graduate School. He holds a B.S.E.E. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame and an M.B.A. degree in marketing and finance from the University of Pittsburgh.
Vance Lau, Vice President and Managing Director - Asia-Pacific
Vance Lau is Vice President and Managing Director - Asia-Pacific with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice solutions for mobile workers. In this role, he has responsibility for Vocollect sales efforts across Asia-Pacific (with the exception of Japan and South Korea). He leads a team based in Vocollect’s Hong Kong office that was established in the fall of 2009.
Vance’s career spans over 20 years of experience in the IT industry, with more than half of that time working in supply chain solution provider organizations. Prior to joining Vocollect, he was General Manager, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Business Objects Unit, with SAP HK Limited. In this capacity, he was responsible for the operation’s P&L, business growth and sales operation, with a staff of 22. Before that, he was General Manager, North Asia at Cognos HK Limited, where he managed the North Asia sales operation and expanded growth into China, South Korea and Taiwan. He has also held business development leadership positions with J. D. Edwards Limited and at PeopleSoft Asia Pacific Limited, as the Singapore-based Regional Sales Manager for Asia.
Vance is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. He received his EMBA from Hong Kong Chinese University in 2004, and holds a post-graduate diploma in system analysis from Japan-Singapore Institute of Software Technology, Singapore, and a bachelor of business economics from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
Masahiko “Masa” Uchida, Managing Director - Japan
Masahiko “Masa” Uchida is Managing Director of Vocollect Japan, Inc., based in Tokyo. In this capacity, he has full executive responsibility for Vocollect business across Japan and South Korea.
Prior to joining Vocollect in May 2010, Uchida was the Japan Country Manager for four years with Informatica Japan K. K. in Tokyo. During his tenure there, market share grew from the low 20 percent range to the mid-40 percent range. In 2008 the company was rated #1 by ITR Research. Prior to joining Informatica Japan K. K., he was the Tokyo-based Area Vice President with Cognos K. K., overseeing a 40-member staff. He joined Cognos in 2004 and held several roles with increasing responsibility before being named Area Vice President. Before his affiliation with Cognos K.K., for 10 years he held positions with progressive levels of responsibility at Oracle Corporation Japan in Tokyo, with his final role being Director of Business Development, Business Operations.
He began his career with a nine-year stint at Digital Equipment Corporation in Yokohama, Japan. Uchida holds a B.A. degree in law from Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and is fully fluent in both English and Japanese.
Keith Johnson, Vice President - Public Sector
Keith Johnson is Vice President, Public Sector with Vocollect, Inc., the world leader in voice-centric solutions for mobile workers. He has responsibility for driving Vocollect’s entry into United States public sector markets including federal, state and local governments, as well as non-profit educational institutions.
Johnson’s career spans nearly 30 years of developing and executing go-to-market technology company strategies for the public sector at leading software companies such as SAP America AG and Oracle Corporation. Prior to joining Vocollect, Johnson was the Vice President, Public Sector with Liquid Machines and Vice President, Public Sector at Akamai Technologies. Keith’s extensive experience in Federal Sales includes previous senior sales positions with Oracle Corporation and SAP, where he helped lead SAP America’s Public Sector sales efforts. He holds a bachelor of science from Towson State University in the Baltimore, Md. area and resides in the Washington, D.C. area.