Who we are
With a passion for entertainment and technology, ToyTalk strives to break new ground in the art of storytelling and the science of computing. Our founding team has over 60 years of experience at Pixar, thrives in the Internet start-up culture, and has a hand full of advanced degrees in Computer Science to boot!
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Oren Jacob Lead Avalanche Forecaster a.k.a. CEO read more...Oren Jacob, CEO and Wannabe Pro Snowboarder
Before founding ToyTalk as CEO, Oren was an Entrepreneur in Residence at August Capital. A filmmaker and technologist, he spent more than 20 years at Pixar, most recently as Chief Technical Officer and Director of the Studio Tools group. His feature film credits include "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2", "A Bug's Life", and Supervising Technical Director for "Finding Nemo". Oren also helped found Pixar University and taught animation at the Academy of Art College for seven years. Oren currently teaches "Lean Launchpad" courses with Steve Blank at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, and for the NSF. And Oren plans to drop all of this in a heartbeat to become a pro snowboarder the minute that first sponsor shows up.
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Martin Reddy Chief Scotsman a.k.a. CTO read more...Martin Reddy, CTO and 4-time British Tukido Champion
Martin founded ToyTalk and manages the company's engineering effort. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles, authored half a dozen patents, and written two books, including "API Design for C++." Martin spent 5 years in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International and then 6 years at Pixar where he led the development of the studio's internal filmmaking software for films such as Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, and WALL-E. Martin was founder and CEO of Code Reddy Inc. where he managed various projects including improvements to the Second Life client for Linden Lab. Martin is a Senior Member of the IEEE and was also the hair model for Mr. Incredible.
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Renee Adams Cat Herder & Realist a.k.a. Head of Operations read more...Renee Adams, Head of Operations and Keeper of Post-its
Renee is co-founder and Head of Operations for ToyTalk, Inc. Renee’s background is in Program Management where she’s worked on a variety of projects for all aspects of business. At her four years at Apple Computer Renee worked on projects for IS&T, Americas Operations, and Logistics and Retail Development. After Apple, Renee joined Pixar Animation Studios' Studio Tools software team. In her eight years at Pixar, Renee headed up the Project Management team on the next gen software effort and managed the department's budget and hiring. Renee completed her MBA with a focus in Organizational Behavior and Change Management at night while working for Pixar. When she’s not working at ToyTalk, you can find Renee shopping for shoes or playing with her two dogs.
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Michael Chann Visual Tracking Specialist a.k.a. Senior Software Engineer read more...Michael Chann, Senior Software Engineer, Visual Tracking Specialist
After finishing his studies in Computer Science at the University of California at Davis, Michael decided to give up on the professional world and make snowboarding daily his career. An offer from Pixar Animation Studios changed all that, and Michael focused his passion on bringing new technology to the world of entertainment. Over his ten year career at the studio, Michael contributed to many films, including Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Brave, as well as building core tools for Pixar's proprietary animation software. When not solving technological mysteries, Michael warms up his soccer legs by pedaling around the hills of San Francisco.
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James Chalfant Scalability Specialist a.k.a. Senior Software Engineer read more...James Chalfant, Senior Software Engineer, Scalability Specialist
James designs and builds the server infrastructure that underpins ToyTalk. He studied Computer Science at Dartmouth College before joining Akamai Technologies in 1999. While there he contributed to a platform that now lies at the core of the Internet, serving over 30% of all the HTTP traffic in the world. After constructing highly available, highly scalable systems that power the likes of Facebook, Netflix, Apple, and Twitter, James joined ToyTalk to apply his programming expertise to the problem of putting a smile on his nieces' faces.
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Brian Langner Speech Synthesizer a.k.a. Senior Speech Scientist read more...Brian Langner, Senior Speech Scientist
Brian Langner is a Senior Speech Scientist at ToyTalk. He has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Language Technologies from Carnegie Mellon, and a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Michigan State. Brian has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles and papers, and was a finalist for the Interspeech 2010 Best Student Paper Award. Brian has built several synthetic voices and conversational applications, including the Let's Go! bus information system, which has been used by the general public in Pittsburgh since 2005, and is a research platform for the Dialog Research Center at Carnegie Mellon. His work focuses on improving human-computer spoken interaction - making your computer talk to you - at the intersection of speech synthesis, natural language generation, and spoken dialog systems.
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Bobby Podesta Words & Pictures a.k.a. Head of Creative read more...Bobby Podesta, Head of Creative
Bobby Podesta graduated with his BFA in Film from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he completed several films, including his short Smoke…, which received the student Emmy for Animation in 1997. After graduation, Bobby joined Pixar Animation Studios, where he worked as an animator and story artist on A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. Bobby was a Directing Animator on Cars and Supervising Animator on the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage at Disneyland. Most recently he was Supervising Animator on Toy Story 3 before leaving Pixar to become Head of Creative at ToyTalk.
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Byrne Reese Market Engineer a.k.a. Head of Customer Development read more...Byrne Reese, Head of Customer Development
Byrne studied Computer Science and Anthropology at Berkeley and began his professional life as a software engineer, working for companies ranging from Hal Riney and Landor, to NBCi and Grand Central. Not ever wanting to betray his hacker sensibilities, he has forever kept one foot firmly rooted in code by becoming a contributor and leader in a number of open source projects and developer communities. His passion for customer advocacy served him well when he became the Product Manager for the pioneering products of TypePad and Movable Type at Six Apart. Before joining Toy Talk as the Head of Customer Development, Byrne ran a company called Endevver that helped companies conceive of, build and bring awesome new products to market.