Irina Hemmers is a prinicipal at Apax Partners where she focuses on investing in media businesses across all different media sectors. Apax Partners is a leading global private equity firm with over 30 years of experience in providing long-term equity financing to entrepreneurs across Europe, USA and Israel .

Most recently, Irina was involved in the leveraged buy-out of VNU World Directories and the acquisition of leading newspaper publisher PCM Uitgevers in the Netherlands. Prior to joining Apax Partners in 2001, Irina was a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company. She holds a master’s degree in international economics and business from Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck (Austria) and Tulane University in New Orleans (USA) and an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Steve Isaac is the Founder and Chairman of SITRA. Originally responsible for the conception of Responsa, he now manages its ongoing global development.

Trained as an engineer for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), he went on to study Business Management and Marketing, and has used these disciplines over the past 20 years to design commercially relevant products in the Aviation, Financial Trading and Tourism markets. He enjoyed a successful career in the CAA, before joining Reuters where he was responsible for developing and implementing financial trading systems.

Drawing on his commercial and technical skills and experience, along with his entrepreneurial spirit, Steve established SITRA (in the 80’s) as an innovative, independent financial trading systems consultancy. SITRA’s success enabled Steve to follow another passion, skiing, before returning to the product design world by reforming SITRA (2001) as a product development company to launch products in the mobile space, which he believes is under utilized and will impact society even more than the internet has.

Reiner Jakubietz has nearly 15 years of experience in the directory industry. He holds a degree in computer science and started his directory career with pc-plus, which later became varetis AG. Initially active in software development, he quickly took over responsibility for the Technical Marketing group, whose task it was to design varetis software products and prepare proposals for international tenders.

He then spent three years at telegate, the first and largest competitive directory assistance provider in Germany, where he played a key role in setting up and operating 12 call centers. He took these operational insights back to varetis and has since been in charge of enhancing the varetis product range for Yellow Pages providers and embedding it on the market.

Masoud Loghmani is the CTO of BTSLogic Corp. and its parent company LogicTree, Corp. He sets the technical vision for BTS-DA, BTSLogic's Multi-Modal Information Search and Delivery System. He also is working on the next generation of integrated Natural Interaction solutions for DA, Enhanced DA, and other contact center applications with massive vocabulary or complex content for BTSLogic and LogicTree.

Prior to BTSLogic/LogicTree, Masoud was the Chief Software Architect at Digital Technics Inc. where he designed the software for an Open Switching platform used in Wire-line and Wireless communication. Masoud holds multiple patents in telecommunications and ASR related technologies, and holds a B.S. degree in Physics from UMCP.

As Nuance's Vice President of Service Providers, Jim is responsible for Nuance's Service Provider business strategy, customer engagement and DA program. Jim has 20 years of experience in hi tech software, predominantly Telecom software applications. Jim joined Nuance in August of last year. Previously Jim was Global VP of Sales, Partners and Telcos at SpeechWorks and Scansoft. Jim has focused his efforts on Operator Services issues, primarily Automation.

He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Chris Matson has been with ScanSoft since April of 2004 during which time he has focused on coalescing its automated directory assistance initiative. Over the last year, Chris has been involved with the acquisition of two leading ADA application focused companies (Telelogue and Phonetic Systems) and in the integration efforts of the best of breed components of each technology. Chris is also involved with the ongoing efforts of working with the ADA customers and partners to improve the performance of their respective applications and increase the awareness of the benefits of directory assistance automation.

Prior to ScanSoft, Chris was with Nuance where he headed up the directory assistance program and focused on working with the leading DA solution providers to incorporate speech recognition into their solutions and increase their awareness and understanding of the business case of speech recognition.

Chris also spent several years with The Paisley Group where he worked with DA call centers conducting an array of directory assistance audits (i.e. database accuracy, customer care / fulfillment, competitive, and experiential audits) that provided customers with strategic intelligence concerning not only their own data and processes, but those of their competitors as well.

Chris Matson holds a degree in the area of International Business from the University of Colorado.

Sean P. McDevitt, INFONXX Corporate Vice President, is currently responsible for INFONXX's expansion into the newly deregulating French and Italian markets. Prior to joining INFONXX, Mr. McDevitt founded and managed Endovellicus, a niche professional services firm delivering a broad range of strategic, management, and financial advisory services to management teams and financial players in the information and technology-driven industries.

Previously, Mr. McDevitt was a VP and Partner at Cambridge Strategic Management Group, where he was responsible for business development, management of executive client relationships, and intellectual content development for a leading strategy consulting firm serving the communications industry. During his tenure at CSMG his practice focused on assisting operators, vendors, and financiers on a wide array of business formations: mobile market entry in newly deregulating markets such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Ukraine, Poland, and Taiwan; undersea fiber-optic cable system development; creation of a leading Internet Data Center (IDC) business; as well as some of the earliest WiFi commercial assessments. In addition, Mr. McDevitt previously worked for ITCA in Warsaw and Mercer Management Consulting.

A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Mr. McDevitt has an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Economics and Classics from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1992, Mr. McDevitt was one of 18 Americans named a Luce Scholar and was awarded a graduate fellowship to spend a year in Seoul, Korea with the LG Group.

Having been part of the team that created the new Directories business unit within BT Retail, Gareth has now taken on responsibility for all aspects of the operator delivered products and services. This includes operator and emergency assistance as well as the existing and new suite of directory enquiry products. Gareth jointed BT shortly after privatization in the mid ‘80s. He has broad experience of BT’s portfolio although has been focused on operator and directory services for much of the past 10 years. Prior to joining BT he worked in a variety of FMCG and industrial sales and marketing roles. Gareth has a degree in economics from the London School of Economics and postgraduate qualifications from the University of Westminster, London and the International Institute of Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Mr. Errol O'Meally, New Media Consultant and CEO of Sunset Media Limited, a content and development startup, is undaunted by the immense size and resources of the major players in the DQ/DA market. He believes that the Industry bestrides the same faultline, generated by converging Technology and Internet innovation, that has opened up new opportunities in other Markets. He points to the surprise growth of text messaging and ringtone services as an indicator that entrenched interests can overlook niches with untapped potential. These niches enable small players, with new ideas and tech savvy, to gain a foothold while the dominant players re-align themselves to the dynamics of rapid change.

UK born, Mr. O'Meally was based for many years in Jamaica where he pioneered the use of cutting-edge technology by major Financial Institutions in the Customer Service area with his own services company, Multimedia Systems Limited. Back in the UK since 2002 he has studied the tech environment for the past 2 years and has decided to focus initially on the emerging mobile services market. With the launch of the Thumbtips Digits Directory, a fully automated DQ/DA service for the nascent SMS/Premium rate market, Mr. O'Meally intends to provide a specialist channel for both users and providers of Leisure and Enterprise text messaging services.