Meet the Genesys Orchestrators Innovation Awards judges

Brian Jones is Ascension Technologies Senior Specialist, Core Technologies. He received the 2025 Genesys Orchestrator of the Year award for best team leader and was honored as the 2025 Genesys Community Member of the Year. Jones is also a member of the distinguished Genesys Amplifiers Class of 2026.

Jones has been with Ascension since 2011 and has more than 25 years’ experience in customer service and technology roles, with previous positions at companies such as Lucent Technologies, WellPoint and Express Scripts. He is ITIL & Six Sigma Green Belt certified, which he received as a result of leading the implementation of Genesys and integration with the ServiceNow CRM.

Jones has an MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. He is a Deacon at New Hope Christian Church in Whitestown, Indiana, and a proud father of two remarkable young ladies, Ireland (20) and Vayda (16).

Lorena Lovrić is a Director of Customer Experience at Aterian with over seven years of experience leading global CX operations and building AI-driven support ecosystems. She specializes in Genesys Cloud architecture, workforce engagement strategy, and large-scale omnichannel transformation across international teams. Her work focuses on unifying technology, automation, and operations to create scalable, high-impact customer experiences.

Lovrić is a recipient of the 2025 Genesys Orchestrators Innovation Award for her work in AI-powered CX transformation. She is also pursuing a Master of Liberal Arts in Finance at Harvard Extension School, with a focus on the intersection of analytics, technology, and business strategy.

Having grown up in Nevada, Rachel Papka, Chief Innovation Officer at SDMI, brings a deep understanding of the local community and decades of professional insight to her work. Her career in Health Information Technology (HIT) began in 2002, where she built extensive expertise in Health Information Systems, including Health Information Exchange (HIE), before joining SDMI in 2014.

At SDMI, Rachel has played a pivotal role in implementing emerging technologies by observing workflows, collaborating with staff, and developing innovative solutions to reduce inefficiencies and streamline processes. Her contributions to the field have been widely recognized, including receiving the 2018 Top Tech Award and the 2025 Genesys Orchestrators Innovation Award for her leadership and forward-thinking solutions.

Rachel holds a master’s degree in Healthcare Administration with a concentration in Informatics and a bachelor’s degree in Business Management. This strong academic foundation supports her commitment to advancing healthcare technology and operations.

Beyond her professional achievements, Rachel is passionate about mentoring others, public speaking, and promoting fitness as a tool for maintaining mental and emotional balance. Her greatest priority, however, is her family. As a proud parent of four, she treasures the “sweat moments” of life—those small, joyful experiences that make everything worthwhile.

Whether at work or at home, Rachel strives to lead with purpose, innovation, and heart.

Christine Arnold is an accomplished Contact Centre, Customer and Employee Experience strategist with almost three decades of experience designing, leading, and optimizing complex contact center environments across Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.  She brings deep expertise in Contact Centre technologies and operations, underpinned by strong capability in enterprise and solution architecture.

As a Principal Consultant, CX, EX & Contact Center Strategy, Technology Architecture & Transformation, at ARZO, Christine partners with organizations of all sizes — from major enterprises to small not-for-profits — helping them get the most out of their existing technology while strategically guiding them towards the platforms best suited to their future business objectives. Her approach blends technical precision with a strong focus on business outcomes, enabling clients to align technology investments with customer and operational goals.  Christine is known for her strategic mindset, relationship-driven consulting style, and ability to bridge the gap between business ambition and technology execution — empowering organizations to create customer-centric, future-ready contact center ecosystems.

Ian Jacobs is VP, Lead Analyst for Opus Research. For more than 30 years, Ian has helped brands generate better customer experiences through his research, consulting, writing, and speaking. As an analyst, he has been at the forefront of research on conversational AI, covering the technology and its applications in customer service since 2005. His research dives into the powerful crossroads of technology and its real-world impact on employees and consumers. Ian’s research also covers workforce engagement tools, contact center outsourcing, and the uses of AI in analytics and employee augmentation.

Previously, Ian headed the teams researching conversational AI, conversational commerce, conversation intelligence, digital customer service, and core contact center at Forrester. He headed up the company’s Digital Business and Strategy product. As an individual contributor before that, he was “the chatbot guy” at Forrester. He has held senior roles at several analyst firms, including 451 Research and Ovum. At Genesys, Ian was the customer experience evangelist, connecting technology to people’s lived experiences. Ian is an award-winning columnist and is widely quoted in publications ranging from The New York Times to Wired.

Elena Marcelle is a Customer Experience and Digital Transformation Strategist. She specialises in shaping omnichannel experiences within regulated environments, where digital decisions, automation and compliance constraints directly influence customer perception and operational coherence.

She approaches CX as a strategic discipline that connects automated decision systems, transparency and trust within AI-enabled customer journeys. With hands-on experience in complex transformation programmes, Elena bridges customer ambition and operational reality, ensuring that digital initiatives are coherent, scalable and sustainable over time.

Nigel Medforth is a Principal Consultant at the Davies Group, specializing in customer experience and contact center operations. During his 6 years as a Davies Consultant he has worked across multiple industry sections, including insurance, banking, retail, healthcare and travel. He is a consultant with the ability to translate complex IT concepts into understandable business terms, and act as the interface between business and technology helping explain business requirements in technical terms. He has over 30 years’ experience developing IT strategies and devising change transformation programs. He leads competitive tenders (RFPs) for multinational companies and organizations across multiple sectors including Charities, delivering new contact center cloud technology, CRM platforms, and telecommunications infrastructure.  His IT knowledge and skills span a broad spectrum of Technology and emerging industry trends. He continues to expand his knowledge through research into new technologies. Prior to Davies he worked at AIG and Lloyds Banking Group supporting and enhancing their contact center solutions and infrastructure.

As research manager for AI-Enabled Sales, Customer Service and Contact Center Strategies, Michelle Morgan monitors the evolving impact of AI on sales, contact centers, and customer experience operations. In particular, she examines how emerging technologies, such as AI, shape customer-facing business processes, workforce dynamics, and customer experience.

Morgan has a deep experience in both quantitative and qualitative research, holding strategic positions at global market research firms, such as Nielsen and GfK, for more than a decade. She is a naturally curious researcher, eager to “read between the lines” to uncover insights that help organizations translate research into actionable strategy that fuels growth and innovation.

As part of Omdia’s enterprise IT team, David Myron focuses on contact center as a service, workforce engagement management, and AI solutions, as well as agent staffing trends. He provides insights into these topics for vendor and enterprise clients through research, consulting, white papers, webinars, and blogs.

Myron is a multiple award-winning writer who began covering the contact center industry in 2001 as the customer service and support editor at CRM magazine. He later served as the publication’s editor-in-chief and editorial director for more than a decade. While there, he also worked as the editorial director of Speech Technology magazine and the founding editor of SmartCustomerService.com. David holds a Bachelor of Arts in communication (with a concentration in journalism) from Hofstra University.

Alpa Shah’s professional and volunteer experience includes communications, business and strategy planning, product and vertical market analysis, growth consulting, event planning and execution, sales and marketing, writing growth opportunity insights, and most importantly, creating and inspiring teams to be best-in-class.

She currently leads Frost & Sullivan’s global CX (customer experience) research team, runs customer surveys on the latest digital transformation technologies, supports customers’ brand and demand efforts, obtains customer viewpoints via one-on-one conversations at customer events, and moderates webinars and event panels.

Before joining Frost and Sullivan, she worked for Smith Barney in its accounting division, handling incentive compensation plans. She also worked as an account executive at Edward Jones, a brokerage company.

In her personal and professional life, she served as the VP of Communications on the boards of PAMP (Parent’s club of 2,000+ members), PTAs, and Frost & Sullivan’s GLOW (Growth & Leadership of Women) team.

Lou Reinemann is Research Director, AI-Enabled Sales, Customer Services and Contact Center Strategies at IDC. Lou covers Customer Services (Voice of the Customer, Customer Success, Customer Service) and Contact Center Strategies, providing insights and research on organizational practices focused on customer engagements and journeys.

Prior to joining IDC, Lou spent over 30 years as an executive and consultant for tech companies and was responsible for running global pre- and post-sales customer-facing technical service teams. Lou has served for many years as a judge for customer service awards.

Rebecca Wettemann is CEO and Principal of Valoir, a technology analyst firm providing research and advisory services to leaders with a focus on the value of technology. Founded in 2019, Valoir has deep expertise in the value of CRM, HCM, customer and employee experience, and enterprise applications. Valoir helps clients understand and maximize the returns from their technology investments.

With deep expertise in HCM, employee experience, CRM, customer experience, cloud, AI and analytics, and enterprise applications, Rebecca’s team combines primary research and unique insights to help clients understand and maximize the value of technology. Rebecca is widely viewed as an expert in technology ROI and has helped hundreds of organizations build the business case for their technology investments.

Rebecca is a sought-after speaker and resource for the press, as well as financial analysts and VC firms seeking to understand the value of emerging applications and sectors. She has led the market in its understanding of cloud computing, employee and customer engagement, digital transformation, AI and productivity.

Rebecca has authored numerous reports including “The State of Digital Transformation,” “Assessing the Value of AI and Automation,” and “Is HR ready for AI,” as well as numerous return on investment studies and reports on enterprise applications, CRM and CX, and HCM and EX.

Rebecca brings more than 20 years of industry experience to Valoir, with previous leadership roles at Nucleus Research and IDC. Her practical experience includes tenures at the International Telecommunication Union and the United States Information Agency, where she led digital transformation initiatives and related projects to help governmental agencies bridge the digital divide.

Rebecca holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science and a Bachelor of Arts degree in French from Oklahoma State University, where she was honored as a Distinguished Alumna in 2022. She also holds a Masters of Law and Diplomacy degree with a focus on technology policy and finance from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Angelo Arezzi, Senior Director of Workforce Management at Genesys, is a seasoned support leader with over 20 years of experience driving customer-centric innovation and operational excellence. At Genesys, he leads Support Services with a focus on elevating the customer experience. He has held leadership roles at top global brands and holds advanced degrees in computer science and a doctorate in Business Administration.

Bridgette Bell McAdoo, the Global Sustainability practice leader at Genesys, spearheaded the company’s first Chief Sustainability Officer role. She crafted a holistic sustainability management approach for Genesys, optimizing its economic, social and environmental impact across diverse functions and regions. Bridgette continues to leverage advanced sustainability metrics to deliver integrated analysis to stakeholders and refine sustainability initiatives in real time. As a hands-on, cross-departmental leader, Bridgette places great emphasis on stakeholder engagement and education.

Bridgette is a seasoned executive with over two decades of experience in executing strategic outcomes for esteemed companies like Yum Brands, UTC and WWF.

Bridgette holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and an MBA in Strategy from Claremont Graduate University.

Annick Duffy is Global WEM Senior Director at Genesys. She is a business professional, coach and operational strategist with over 25 years of experience in driving business results to exceed growth expectations while assisting businesses in adopting employee engagement best practices in their markets.

Annick is responsible for workforce engagement management (WEM) practices across the Genesys WEM Knowledge Hub organization, delivering adoption of operational disciplines across the customer base. She partners with a team of experts in Sales, Professional Services, Customer Success, Product Marketing and the customer community to rethink, reinvent and innovate the way organizations interact with their employees and customers.

Rahul Garg joined Genesys in 2021 as Vice President of Product for AI and Self-Service. He leads the development of cutting-edge AI products for Genesys Cloud, including next-generation platforms that harness agentic AI and generative AI. With over a decade of experience in AI and natural language processing, Rahul brings deep technical and product expertise to the role. He is passionate about driving innovation to deliver value across the customer experience — from agents and supervisors to end users. Prior to joining Genesys, Rahul was Chief Product Officer at Pypestream and a founding member of the product team at IBM Watson.

Peter Graf is the Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Genesys, driving the global product vision and innovation strategy. He oversees software product management, engineering, cloud operations and product delivery across the company’s industry-leading customer experience platform.

Peter has held a variety of executive leadership positions in operations, development, sales, marketing and services throughout his more than 25 years in the global enterprise software industry. His extensive background includes deep expertise on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Prior to Genesys, Peter served as CPO for Sungevity, a market-leading solar electricity company. Earlier in his career, Peter held multiple senior leadership roles with multinational software corporation SAP, including serving as the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Sustainability Software.

Peter earned a doctorate in computer science from Universität des Saarlandes and a master’s degree in computer science and economics from Technische Universität Kaiserslautern in Germany.

Derek Nesmith joined Genesys in 2021 and is Vice President of CSS Innovations, leading customer experience transformation through AI and analytics. With nearly two decades of experience in AI and analytics, Derek brings deep expertise in data-driven experience orchestration. He focuses on leveraging advanced technology to create seamless, personalized customer interactions. Prior to Genesys, Derek held strategic positions at Accenture and Strategy, developing expertise in customer experience transformation and AI solutions.

Mike Szilagyi is a seasoned software executive with over two decades of leadership experience spanning product management, engineering, operations and technology strategy. As SVP of Product Management for Genesys Cloud CX, he leads product strategy and product management for the company’s flagship cloud-based, AI-powered experience management platform. Mike has a proven track record of bringing disruptive technologies to market, with prior leadership roles at Motorola and a Chicago-based equity market-making firm, where he oversaw development and IT operations. His expertise bridges deep technical fluency with enterprise-scale product delivery. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering technology and computer science from Purdue University.

Rakesh Tailor is the VP of Product Management for Workforce Engagement Management and Supervisor AI at Genesys, where he leads the vision and strategy for a comprehensive portfolio of solutions including recording, quality management, surveys, speech and text analytics, employee development, gamification, workforce management and supervisor AI products such as Virtual Supervisor and Supervisor Copilot.

Rakesh joined Genesys in 2006 through the acquisition of VoiceGenie, a pioneering VoiceXML-based platform startup. With over 24 years of experience in contact center technologies, he brings deep cross-functional expertise across software development, R&D leadership, solution architecture and product management. He has a strong track record of delivering enterprise-scale cloud software that supports global organizations with high performance, reliability and agility.

His passion lies in building innovative, AI-driven solutions that empower contact center teams to perform at their best, improve operational outcomes and enhance the overall employee experience.