Executive Team

Giuseppe Staffaroni

A technology industry veteran with more than 25 years of European, U.S., and International experience, Staffaroni has an extensive background in marketing, product strategy, technology development, and general management. Prior to taking the lead at Promptu, Staffaroni spent nearly 15 years at LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI) where he served as Executive Vice President heading LSI's Consumer Products Group, a business unit providing leading-edge solutions for the rapidly expanding consumer electronics market. In this role, he oversaw marketing, product and business development, and engineering of LSI Logic's standard products and system-on-a-chip solutions for customers in the broadband access, broadband entertainment, and wireless markets. Prior to LSI Logic, Staffaroni worked in various technology and management positions at Texas Instruments, AT&T Microelectronics, and Zeltron, a unit of Electrolux.

Harry Printz

Printz has more than 12 years of experience in automatic speech recognition and computational linguistics. Before joining Promptu, Printz was manager of Pervasive Conversational Technology at IBM's Watson Research Laboratory. In this role, he managed research for IBM Embedded ViaVoice, the speech recognizer that is currently deployed in Honda Accord automobiles. He also conceived and co-designed the IBM speech chip. Prior to IBM, he worked at the Digital Equipment Corporation's Paris Research Lab and at Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Printz holds a B.A. magna cum laude and an M.A. in physics from Harvard University, a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon. He holds nine U.S. patents in the areas of speech recognition, data compression, and statistical modeling.

Matteo Monteverdi

With more than 18 years of consumer industry experience, Monteverdi has a successful track record in leading large organizations within key business units as well as start-ups. Before joining Promptu, Monteverdi collaborated as Venture Partner with Innogest Capital, the largest early-stage Venture Capital firm in Italy.

Prior to this, he gained significant experience in the service industry with FS, the third largest European railway company, where as EVP Marketing and Regional General Manager, he led the company’s wireless strategy and a $200 million business unit. Before that, Monteverdi worked in the Finance and ICT departments of Ford Motor Company in London , where he managed the deployment of the European, Ford branded B2C internet portals. Monteverdi holds an MBA degree from SDA Bocconi University, a Bachelor's degree in Business Law from University of Milan and a specialization in marketing from Stanford Business School.

Craig Peddie

Peddie brings more than two decades of international mobile and consumer electronics device experience to the company. Peddie has extensive experience in consumer product design and development on all types of wireless platforms. Prior to his role at Promptu, Peddie was Vice President and General Manager of the embedded speech division for Nuance Communications, and oversaw the development and widespread integration of speech technology into handheld and automotive products.

Prior to Nuance, Peddie was the General Manager of the Tegic division of AOL, the group responsible for developing the T9 Predictive Text software. Peddie oversaw the adoption of this software by every major mobile phone manufacturer in the world. Peddie also held management positions at Motorola, most recently serving as general manager of Motorola's Lexicus Division, focused on the development and licensing of user interface technology including embedded speech recognition applications. While managing the Lexicus Division, Peddie co-founded the Wireless Village (now part of the Open Mobile Alliance), an international standards organization created to design and promote universal specifications for mobile instant messaging and presence services.