We’d like to give a warm welcome to Chris Reiner, Hiya’s newly appointed Vice President of Business Development. With 20 years of experience in sales and business development in the mobile technology space for both start-up and public companies, Chris will lead our ongoing growth strategy, with a specific focus on both carrier and OEM partnerships.
Before making his way to Hiya, Chris began his first mobile endeavor with then start-up Voice Signal Technologies. In the time before Siri was a household name, Voice Signal focused on bringing speech recognition and Natural Language Understanding to mobile phones. Chris was one of their original employees, number six to be exact, and helped establish and grow Voice Signal from its beginning stages to a market leading and ground breaking provider of mobile device speech interface solutions. Voice Signal was eventually acquired by Nuance for $300M in 2007, who leveraged the company’s core technology to build a foundation for what we now know as Siri.
Following Nuance’s acquisition of Voice Signal, Chris was VP of Business Development for Carrier IQ, a mobile analytics start-up focused on helping Operators and Device OEMs gain insights on real world device usage to improve the mobile user experience. He eventually returned to Nuance where he spent the last five years serving as Senior Director of Sales responsible for North American and European sales for the Mobile Division . During this time, he focused on bringing voice interface technology to all kinds of devices and services that are used by millions of people, every day. Chris received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Vermont and Master’s in Business Administration from the Franklin W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.
“I was immediately impressed with the level of innovation going on at Hiya,” said Chris. “I can see so much potential for this company to really change the way people communicate and I am so excited to help the team achieve that goal.”
When Chris isn’t hard at work at Hiya’s Seattle office, he’s spending time with his wife and two children in Boston, where they keep busy in the outdoors (skiing, hiking and golfing).
We are so excited to benefit from the knowledge Chris has acquired over his expansive career, and look forward to the business partnerships he will forge at Hiya!
