Helen has over 18 years of experience in the Speech and IVR industry, with a focus on human factors and usability. A linguist by education, Helen is fully bilingual in English and Spanish, and has leveraged her knowledge of phonetics, phonology, and sociolinguistics in her designs, contributing to her understanding of human-computer interaction. Prior to joining Performance Technology Partners (PTP), she worked as a Senior User Interface Designer at Nuance (formerly ScanSoft and SpeechWorks) and in the speech group at Technology Resources Inc. (TRI), the R&D organization at SBC. Her specialty is IVR user interface design with a focus on human factors, usability, and localization of user-centered design. Helen's experience includes designing, tuning, localizing and testing automated speech recognition telephony systems, and coaching voice talent. Helen has served as the Lead UI Designer on English-only, English-Spanish bilingual, and multilingual international projects for many large-scale IVR projects and currently serves on the board of the Association for Voice Interaction Design (AVIxD).