Dave Kirk

Dave has spent the last 30 years of his career applying and helping executives “leverage technology without being consumed by it”: helping companies deliver technology-enhanced business solutions that are focused on business outcomes and not just the next “hot technology for technology sake.”The more recent part of this 30 year journey has been focused on intelligent automation (a.k.a. robotic process automation (RPA) or “digital labor”) – a technology approach whereby software robots (or bots) are used to augment human work activities and/or eliminate the need for human participation altogether – just another method that Dave can use to help clients craft their unique approach to transforming the way they do business.Prior to joining wAIv as CTO, Dave was the intelligent automation technical lead for a major global professional services organization (“Big Four”), as part of their Shared Services and Outsourcing Advisory practice. He is a published author of numerous business and technical “whitepapers” on the topic of intelligent automation. He and has spoken globally at multiple industry conferences on intelligent automation / RPA.Dave has assisted multiple clients with the internal and external transformation of their business processes and IT operations. Most recently, he served as an IT and advanced technologies advisor to a large financial/mortgage institution. Dave led a joint technical team in several key initiatives including the most recent initiative supporting the client in identifying and architecting the best approach to leveraging intelligent automation to transform their approach to managing their data center and operational response center (incident and event management team). Key areas of focus included defining the scope of services, opportunities for robotic process automation, and critical differentiators (points of focus) between vendors as well as between automation technology platforms.Over his career, Dave has served in numerous technical leadership positions, focusing on the “then current” advanced technologies ranging from core computer design and software, to internet ecommerce, mobile technologies, distributed computing and data structures, cloud, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), robotic process automation, and most recently artificial intelligence.Dave is a recognized technical expert in the healthcare vertical and served as an executive advisor to one of the Blue Cross / Blue Shield organizations, and also served as the CTO of the Patient Safety Institute where he was responsible for architecting the technologies behind the proposed fully-connected and fully-automated nation-wide distributed electronic personal health record (i.e. electronic medical record (EMR)).Dave spent a number of years as a technical lead in a mobile technology company that pioneered the use of mobile technologies long before they were globally adopted. Dave led the mobile strategy and architecting of solutions in both the healthcare vertical, as well as in consumer packaged goods.While with IBM, he was nominated as one of two recipients to be selected for the IBM PhD program, under which Dave was able to pursue his PhD, while still serving as an employee. Upon completion of his PhD, Dave continued his career with IBM where he rose to position of Lead Technical Architect focused on state-of-the art technologies that led to multiple IBM patents.Dave holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University; a Masters of Science and Computer Engineering degree from Syracuse University; and a Bachelor of Science – Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.