Blue Canoe Announces Strategic Hires in Sales, Marketing and Machine-Learning Science

Blue Canoe Adds Senior Leaders to Fuel Growth for Mobile App That Helps Businesses Improve Sales, Customer Support, and Engineering Effectiveness

Blue Canoe, an artificial intelligence (AI) B2B startup that helps non-native English speakers improve their pronunciation and business communication, announced the expansion of its team. New senior leaders are Michael Rawding as Vice President of Global Business Development, Penny Williams as Vice President of Marketing, and Xiaoyun Wang, Ph.D. as a distinguished Speech and Machine-Learning Scientist.

“These early hires are critical at our stage as we place bets on how we’ll grow in the coming months and years. I couldn’t be more excited by these three executives as Blue Canoe prepares for the next wave of growth,” said Sarah Daniels, CEO & Co-Founder, Blue Canoe.

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Rawding is a dynamic global business executive with extensive strategic sales and operational expertise in Asia. He spent seven years as President of Microsoft Greater China, President of Microsoft Japan, and President of Microsoft Asia. While at Microsoft, Rawding was also a leader of the Unlimited Potential Group, which focused on technology access and social impact for underserved communities in emerging markets. Michael has also served on the Board of Town Hall Seattle, as Chairman of the Washington State China Relations Council, and on the Board of Governors of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Williams brings over 15 years of experience with high-tech companies helping to drive awareness, sales and customer success. Most recently she held marketing leadership positions at Outreach and Trulia and is on the leadership team of LWT Seattle, which works to advance the careers of women. Penny has served in volunteer leadership roles with the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association and on the board of Ad Club New York and AD2 Dallas (an affiliate of the American Advertising Federation).

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Dr. Wang is a distinguished speech and machine-learning scientist specializing in the acquisition of second languages. She has been a researcher at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan, a visiting graduate researcher at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. Dr. Wang has led innovative new techniques to improve the effectiveness of second language learning. She is highly recognized for her work, having been invited to speak at dozens of conferences and published in many esteemed international journals. Her research interests include machine learning, deep learning, speech recognition, signal processing, and language technology for education.

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