Chris Schindler Email and Phone Number

I Delivered: automated customer experience analysis engine, automated customer simulation engine, automated voice test suite with valid morphological variations, Smart Answering Ingestion (natural language ingestion) platform including AI Crawling, LLM, RL and generative AI integration, Smart Answering analytics, and synthetic pronunciation generation. Team Delivered: wallet, call center platform, interaction state tracking platform, visual + voice experience, automated learning(from customer interaction) engine, automated Benchmarking platform, operational performance metrics and dashboards, ongoing stochastic and functional QA support for the entire business.

Communications Artificial Intelligence - Software Development Manager- I manage three teams of ML scientists, engineers and linguistics providing CX/Business Analyses, SLU, NLU, ASR, Big Data Platform, and other ML-driven services for Alexa Communications. Paralanguage Understanding and Response - Manager- Taught Alexa to Whisper leading a team of engineers and scientists to understand non-verbal signals in human communication.Natural Understanding - Senior Product Manager Technical- Defined, driving and delivering a roadmap of Language Understanding innovations that teach Alexa to be a better conversationalist (e.g., contextual carryover)Alexa Communications- Senior Product Manager Technical- Delivered CEO and VP-level review documents on product design and execution. - Responsible for defining identity, contact and International expansion products.- Drove yearly business planning for the engineering team driving objectives, hiring, and org design.- Led the entire organization, as Release Owner, to a high-quality v1 Alexa Communications launch.Spoken Language Understanding - Senior Technical Program Manager- Delivered: Amazon Echo, Alexa Skills Kit, Mobile Shopping, FireTV, Dot, Tap(4.1/5; 1.6K reviews), Show- Directly improved Alexa's primary customer experience metric by ~30% absolute by conceiving of and driving innovations in speech recognition and natural language understanding. Directly responsible for delivering: context awareness, anaphora resolution, multi-modal dialog, entity resolution, ambiguity handling, dialog management, personalization, and word tokenization using grammar, machine learning and algorithmic techniques. - Directly responsible for delivering 22 Spoken Language domains for Alexa collaborating with Product Management, UX and senior leadership.- Owned the SLU science and architecture to deliver a third-party speech application development platform (Alexa Skills Kit), and led the Multimodal SLU design and implementation.

Delivered the product development lifecycle of breakthrough e-commerce user experiences within a start-up environment, leading a team of 30 both on-shore and off-shore designers, engineers and DBAs. Influenced the home décor industry by forging innovative manufacturer and retailer partnerships. Provided an efficient product development environment to support developing and testing 24 hours a day by effectively managing on-shore/off-shore resources and deliverables, analyzing operational costs, protecting intellectual property and developing processes and infrastructure. Recruited and developed local top-tier senior technical, user experience and technical operations team. Defined key product metrics and made proactive product and team adjustments as necessary to achieve goals.- Developed key innovations and intellectual property in: product recommendation algorithm, context capture platforml e-commerce transaction methods, color selection algorithm and innovative new user experiences focused on the female demographic.- Quickly developed and tested features ideas using a rapid prototyping practice.- Saved more than two-thirds on costs associated with web hosting by evaluating server operations and moving the infrastructure to Amazon Web Services.- Delivered complete custom e-commerce platform, consistently on-time, at 60% of estimated cost.

MICROSOFT LYNC (UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS)Led the Lync client platform team driving definition and delivery of integrated communication user experiences, APIs, controls, extensibility and context features to internal and external customers. Owned the Lync iOS and Android mobile applications. - Driving execution across 5 disciplines throughout the product lifecycle setting clear priorities, goals, requirements and metrics to successfully deliver 2 releases on schedule.- Leading strategic multi-release vision planning which has helped place Lync as Gartner’s Unified Communications Magic Quadrant leader in vision and execution for 2009 and 2010.- Partnering with Office and Dynamics teams to deliver industry-leading communication plus productivity user experiences (several of which I showcased in executive keynotes). - Driving and participating in over 5 major customer connection initiatives per year resulting in implemented product, concept, and deployment feedback for product teams.- Proven ability to manage and develop people as direct reports or as a mentor.- Patents pending for inventions across meetings, and user/application context services.- Completed the Unified Communications Leadership Development program

MICROSOFT SPEECH SERVEROwned technical partnerships for critical vendors, defined and delivered speech application engines, and owned critical customer relationships- Managed and developed over 8 technical telephony and speech partnerships delivering technical specifications, project execution, managed global delivery teams, go-to-market planning, quality coordination, contracts and overall relationships. - Integrated a new application run-time to address market requirements. - Proactively repaired key customer technical relationships by working with them to address issues and concerns, recruiting a response team and delivering necessary components.- Managed entire product team against predicative quality model I developed for a successful, on-time, high-quality release to manufacturing.

MSN CUSTOM SOLUTIONSLed the creation of, and managed a new team to deliver custom solutions to MSN’s largest brand partners, drove engineering execution and closely partnered with the sales team - Delivered 32 custom solutions in one calendar year with no slips serving customers such as Visa, Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Astra-Zeneca. - Developed and implemented engineering processes, key metrics, and reporting reducing the average time of execution from 32 days to 19 days. - Led the engineering team to support an increase in revenue by 1100% in one year.

MSN AUTOS, 2001-2003 Led the development of customer referral, vehicle data, and research features.  Created the lead distribution system responsible for delivering consumer referrals to multiple partners. This mission-critical system generated greater than 80% of revenue and had an uptime of greater than 99.9%.  Developed centralized import system to successfully and efficiently imported 1.5 million used vehicle listings twice daily supporting multiple partners and systems. Led the Detroit Auto Show web site team of 20. Drove (year-over-year) a 4.4-fold increase in page views, 41% revenue increase, reduced operating costs, and recognition for pioneering user experiences. Renegotiated the existing core data partner to save $900K per year.

As the first University Webmaster I defined the role and exceeded the metrics defined by the steering committee.  Developed first University-wide World Wide Web presence including an internally-developed self-publishing system. Served in oversight, and leadership role for departmental World Wide Web efforts. Purchased, implemented and supported first University-wide on-line courseware software (and supporting infrastructure) that supported over 2000 faculty and students in less than six months meeting the market needs of the faculty.

BRIDGES OF COMMUNICATION, INC., 1998 – 2000President of a consulting company that delivered Internet solution to retailers and on-line advertising companies.LIGHT YEARS, INC., 1996 –1998 Co-owner of an Internet Service Provider and web publishing company.