Enabling the Agile & Omnichannel Contact Center for Over a Decade

CFO & CMO

Joe Newsum brings over 20 years of diverse experience to the CFO and CMO roles at OpenMethods. Previously, Joe was the COO at Goal Zero, the 9th fastest growing company in the U.S. (2013 Inc. 5000), where he led the Operations, Marketing, and Product Development teams to a successful acquisition. Prior to Goal Zero, Joe held multiple senior positions at Sports Authority, including SVP of Marketing, where he managed a $120 million budget, and SVP of Store Operations, where he led 15,000 associates and managed a $200+ million payroll budget. Joe has 7 years of experience as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company and Mercer Management Consulting, and held multiple leadership roles in ecommerce and communications start-ups. Joe has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth with High Distinction, and a B.S. in Science, Technology & Society from Stanford University.

CXO

Shannon Lekas

SVP, Product & Strategy

As vice president of product and strategy, Shannon Lekas is responsible for OpenMethods product portfolio, go-to-market initiatives and strategic product direction. Prior to joining OpenMethods, Shannon spent many years with both Genesys and VHT where he held various senior-level positions focusing on strategic customers and leading teams in sales, product management, strategy and business development. He successfully led go-to-market planning for new product lines, as well as played an integral role in Premise-to-SaaS business strategy changes. He is passionate about brand engagement and the use of customer in control solutions that make brand experiences, of all types, enjoyable for customers. Shannon holds a Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science from Stephen F Austin University.

Ankur Patel

VP, Product Development & Engineering

Ankur Patel leads product development and engineering and is responsible for the full SaaS offering where he leads a team of engineers across the stack. Before joining OpenMethods, Ankur was head of web applications at VPI (Voice Print International), where Ankur’s team built the full WFM and WFO suite including analytics, quality, coaching, and interaction playback. After 5 years of scaling the product and team, VPI was acquired by NICE inc. Ankur holds a B.S in Computer Science from Cal Poly Pomona.

Bala Karuppannan

VP, Engineering & Products

With over 20 years of product development and management experience, Bala Karuppannan is responsible for OpenMethods Products development and Quality Assurance. He has lead many groundbreaking projects as a VP, including the Media Bar Application, which integrates various telephony platforms, the Oracle Service Cloud BUI and Fusion, Oracle service Cloud’s Third party Queue Chat, and Email integrations. In addition, he manages Customer Support with the Engineering team for OMNI channel integrations.

Before OpenMethods, Bala was the head of Automated Speech Recognition and IVR products for Contact Centers with VirtualCSR. He holds a Bachelor’s of Engineering Degree.

Mr. Montgomery is currently the CEO of an advisory business, Montgomery Advisory LLC. He also serves on the Board of Directors at DreamWorks SKG. Previously, he co-founded and was president of Montgomery & Co., a boutique investment bank that was focused on internet based companies. Prior to this, Mr. Montgomery was chief executive officer of Sega Gameworks, a joint venture between Sega, Universal Studios, and DreamWorks SKG. In 1995, Mr. Montgomery joined DreamWorks and was instrumental in raising $1 billion in private equity financing. In 1989, Mr. Montgomery was the vice president and treasurer of the Walt Disney Company and was actively involved in the IPO of EuroDisney, where he later became the executive vice president and chief financial officer.