Brett Shockley

Vice President, Emerging Products and Technology, Avaya

Brett Shockley is Avaya’s Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology. His responsibilities include oversight of the research team at Avaya Labs, the world-class research and development arm of Avaya, which began its history as the storied Bell Labs. In addition to his R/D role, Brett leads Avaya’s global professional services team for Contact Center and Unified Communications, which is charged with building and deploying advanced communications applications for customers in the financial services, health care, retail, government and other leading industries.

Brett's 25-year career has included senior leadership positions in the telecommunications and Contact Center markets at Avaya, Cisco and Spanlink Communications. He founded Spanlink Communications in 1988, where he partnered with Bell Labs and pioneered some of the industry’s leading innovations in speech recognition and computer telephony integration. Brett is credited with developing the industry’s first Web-enabled call centers with the launch of WebCall in 1995. 

In addition to holding a patent for a telecommunications device, Brett has an MBA in Marketing from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology. Shockley was a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award winner.

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