Joan Palmiter Bajorek is an American
entrepreneur,
linguist, and
influencer. In August 2018, Bajorek founded Women in Voice, a
non-profit 501 organization for women in voice technology.
Bajorek is also the CEO of Clarity AI, an AI and software company.
Early life and education
Bajorek grew up in
Portland
Portland most commonly refers to:
* Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States
* Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...
,
Oregon, and graduated with a
BFA in Photomedia and a
BA in French from the
University of Washington in 2013, an
MA in
Linguistics from the
University of California, Davis in 2016, and a Ph.D. from the
University of Arizona in Speech-Language Technology.
She lives in
Seattle,
WA.
In 2019, Bajorek completed her Ph.D. Her
dissertation title is 'Speaking of Language Technology'.
Career
In August 2018, Bajorek founded Women in Voice, a
non-profit 501(c)(3) organization
A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of t ...
for women in voice technology, specializing in
speech technology,
artificial intelligence,
linguistics technology,
multimodal,
augmented reality (AR), and
virtual reality (VR)
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), edu ...
.
Bajorek has raised over $500k with 20+ chapters for Women in Voice.
Google Assistant was the first corporate sponsor for the non-profit organization.
Bajorek was previously the VP of
Data & Analytics at OneReach.ai, Head of Conversational Research and Strategy at VERSA Agency (beginning in 2019), a consulting advisor at the
University of Arizona, Senior Conversational Designer at Nuance, and an
Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at WeWork Labs.
Bajorek is also an advisor to CleanAI and an investor in startups and enterprises.
Bajorek's research and writing has explored how people interact with voice recognition software. In 2019, she wrote for
Harvard Business Review on the issue of such software's biases towards the voices of white men. She believes such issues need to be rectified, as voice-enabled software continues to become more popular and integrated with other technology. She has also written on the possibility of speech technology's use in language learning, and has written for
Cambridge University Press, UXmatters, and FLTMAG on the development of speech technology and the advantages and disadvantages of various speech technology interfaces.
As a public speaker, she has spoken at the 2019 Voice Summit, CES 2020, 2020 L3-AI by Rasa, Humans of AI, ConveyUX, 2021 MWC Telekom, 2022 Friends of
Figma
FIGMA or Finnish Games and Multimedia Association was founded in 1999. It is the Finnish equivalent to Entertainment Software Rating Board
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and ...
UX@UA, 2023 VentureBeat, and
Spotify's ''Inside Voice'' podcast which is focused on voice technology.
Bajorek hosts the ''Your AI Roadmap''
podcast, which features AI experts who work at companies such as
Adobe
Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...
,
Google,
Intuit, and
Microsoft.
Awards
* 2024
VentureBeat Women in AI Awards Finalist with the topic: 'AI Entrepreneur: Bringing AI out of the lab and into the real world'
* Women in Voice Awards: The Visionary Award Finalist 2021 and Winner 2022
* 2021 DataEthics4All Top 100 DIET Champion
* 2020 Top 17 Influencers in Voice, Voicebot.ai, ranked #4 position
* 2020 Twitter's Top Voice AI Influencers
* 2020’s Amazon Alexa Champion
* 2019 Alexa Awards Executive of the Year Finalist
* 2019 Voicebot.ai's Top 11 Influencer in Voice
* 2018
SoundHound Top 15 Voice AI Twitter Influencers
See also
*
Linguistics
*
Speech technology
*
Language technology
References
External links
Official websiteWomen in Voice non-profit
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bajorek, Joan Palmiter
Living people
Businesspeople from Portland, Oregon
American women in business
21st-century American businesspeople
Linguists from the United States
American women linguists