Redstart Systems is dedicated to improving the speech interface. Our products are shaped by real-world user experience and cutting-edge research in cognition, linguistics, networking and human behavior.

Utter Command makes using speech to control a computer fast and easy because it follows an easy-to-remember human-machine grammar. At Redstart Systems we use Utter Command for our day-to-day work.

Redstart Systems was an Entrepreneur Showcase company at the 11th MIT Venture Capital Conference.


Board of Directors

Kimberly Patch is president and founder of Redstart Systems. In her previous life as a journalist she was a founding editor of the science and technology Web publication Technology Research News. While there she wrote custom speech interface software to enable hands-free writing, editing and production of the weekly publication. Redstart Systems' Utter Command speech interface software and the Human-Machine Grammar that underpins Utter Command grew from that experience.

Kim was a writer and editor for 20 years, and began writing about technology in 1988. She was a metro reporter in Washington D.C. for United Press International, founded the Internet beat as a Senior Editor at PC Week, and freelanced for many publications and news services including the Associated Press, Reuters, the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News, Computerworld, Popular Mechanics, Technology Review, CIO, InfoWorld, Information Week and Network World.

Kim has given presentations on Utter Command and Redstart Systems at SpeechTEK, SpeechTEK West, Closing the Gap, the MIT Venture Capital Conference Entrepreneur Showcase and the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) conference.

Kim also plays the fiddle.

Kim began using speech recognition software 15 years ago after she was hit with repetitive strain injuries. To learn more about her experiences, see Greetings from planet RSI: an attempt to explain what it's like to have hands that hurt all the time and Advice from planet RSI: how to get better.


Rick Mohr holds a PhD in computer science from Yale University and has worked as a software architect and developer since 1992. His areas of expertise include desktop publishing, parallel computing, and voice command systems. His voice command language Vocola (http://vocola.net) is widely used in the voice recognition community.


John Vittal has an outstanding track record in developing and bringing leading-edge technologies to market. He serves on various boards, and is an advisor to a wide range of startup companies on both business and technical issues.

He was a member of the Verizon Technology Strategy group, where he led the strategy effort in applications and services. At GTE Laboratories he managed research and advanced technology groups, developing new technologies and bringing them to market. He helped develop corporate strategies and initiatives for GTE, principally around the Internet. He developed technology and strategic alliances, as well as being the principal interface with relevant consortia and standards bodies. He was technical leader of several due diligence efforts for major acquisition opportunities. He has also held research and supervisory positions for Xerox, BBN, and the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. He also taught at the University of California.

John has been involved with the Internet and its predecessors since their inception, and has made substantial contributions to the Internet. He created the first integrated electronic mail program, MSG, the initial "killer application" on the Internet, and helped develop the email standards still mostly in use today.


Laurie Garden has 20 years of systems experience as a software developer, systems analyst, and integration team lead in higher education, government, and healthcare. Her projects have included electronic docketing for the courts, and healthcare enterprise and interdepartmental integration. She has experience building and working with cross-disciplinary teams.

Laurie also has special interests in languages, linguistics, morphology and learning. She taught writing as a freshman seminar instructor at Cornell University, and programming as a teaching fellow at Harvard Extension and Harvard Summer School. She's studied French, German, Latin and Old English, and tutors nonnative speakers of English whose other languages include Armenian, Russian, and Spanish.

Laurie serves on the board of Project Literacy.

Her professional associations include the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) and the Software Process Improvement Network (Boston SPIN).