Management Team

Bernard Louvat, President and Chief Executive Officer

Bernard is responsible for the strategic direction and management of the company. Upon his appointment as new CEO of TouchCommerce in early 2005, he developed a new vision of assisting large companies to put salespeople on their websites to recreate great in-store experiences online and increase ecommerce revenue. In 2005 he reshaped the company to execute on that vision and built a team of senior executives with experience in selling and delivering BPO and SaaS analytics solutions to Fortune 1000 companies, designing online user experiences, managing contact centers, and developing cutting-edge web technologies. Bernard brings new business formation, retail, and consumer technology experience as founding CEO of two corporate retail ventures (The Disney Store France and Office Depot France) and two U.S.-based, venture-backed e-commerce and software ventures (Bizbuyer.com and Evolution Robotics, AN IDEALAB! COMPANY). He was also a General Manager with CitySearch, an IAC company; a marketing executive with L'Oreal; and a consultant with Bain & Company. Bernard holds an MBA with Distinctions from Harvard Business School and a BA in Business Administration from HEC, Paris, France. He lives in Southern California with his wife, two daughters, and two sons.

Rick Hoefert, General Manager, Executive Vice President Operations and Client Services

Rick Hoefert, GM, EVP Operations and Client Services, is an accomplished executive with 20+ years of experience in designing, developing, and executing large-scale marketing and product/service sales and BPO initiatives. His experience includes solutions designed and managed for Dun & Bradstreet, Sears, Wells Fargo, Sun Microsystems, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T, and IBM, to name a few. He also managed CRM operations for numerous Fortune 500 clients in the telecom, financial services, technology, and retail industries. Rick’s experience focuses on customer lifecycle management initiatives executed through telesales/telecare, and email and live chat customer-contact channels. Most recently, Rick was Vice President, Global Operations for TeleTech Holdings Inc., a global business-services company that provides a full range of front- to back-office outsourced solutions, including customer management, BPO, and database marketing services, to enhance clients' core customer-management processes. TeleTech generates in excess of $1 billion in annual sales. Rick was responsible for managing several Fortune 500 accounts with global operations across North America, South America, Asia, and Europe. Prior to TeleTech, Rick was President and COO of Zacson Corporation, a business-to-business marketing services company that served the technology, telecom, and financial services markets. During Hoefert's tenure with Zacson, revenue grew almost fourfold as they acquired majority interest in companies in Belgium and Mexico, and created joint ventures in Japan with Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) and in Canada with Saskatchewan Telephone. Prior to Zacson Corporation, Rick was Regional Manager, Credit Marketing, at Sears, where he developed numerous Sears credit and service-marketing initiatives.

Jim Van Baalen, Chief Technology Officer

Jim has spent the last 11 years as a technology leader for public and private Internet technology service providers to the enterprise and SMB markets. Prior to joining TouchCommerce, Jim spent 9 years as the CTO for WebSideStory (a Top 50 global ASP for 5 consecutive years), where he led the development of WebSideStory’s industry-leading enterprise web analytics solution, HBX. During his time at WebSideStory, Jim performed as the technology leader, managed the engineering and network operations teams, and developed HBX from inception to an industry-leading product which led to a successful Initial Public Offering. Prior to WebSideStory, Jim was the director of engineering at ATMnet, where he designed, built, and ran a production IP network over ATM cell relay to deliver voice, video, and data services to medium-to-large businesses and small ISPs. Prior to ATMnet, Jim spent 6 years as a senior scientist at Naval Oceans Systems Center (NOSC). At NOSC, prior to the existence of the public Internet, he participated in the design, build, and management of a wide area, IP-based network that connected government research laboratories in the U.S. and overseas. Jim received a Master of Applied Mathematics and a BA in Music Performance from the University of Wyoming.

Tony Rodriquez, Chief Financial Officer

Tony is responsible for the management and oversight of all financial functions within the company. He is in charge of overseeing the company’s accounting practices and directing the company’s financial strategy, corporate development, and human resources functions. Tony has spent the last 20 year as a financial leader in both private and public corporations managing all aspects of finance and accounting. Prior to joining TouchCommerce, Tony was a CFO Partner at Tatum LLC, where he provided financial, strategic, and operational leadership consulting to publicly traded companies. Before joining Tatum, Tony served as the Interim CFO at Efficient Frontier, Inc., a technology-based search engine marketing solutions company, and as CFO at Nextera Enterprises, Inc. and its operating subsidiary, Woodridge Labs, Inc, a publicly-traded consumer products company. Tony was the Chief Accounting Office at Capstone Turbine Corp., a publicly traded leading producer of low-emission microturbine systems. Before joining Capstone, he spent five years as the Vice President of Finance at ValueClick, Inc., one of the world's largest integrated online marketing services companies, where he managed the accounting and finance department and SEC reporting and helped lead over a dozen acquisitions during a period of revenue growth from $40 million to $500 million. Tony began his career at KPMG LLP, where he serviced international public and private companies in the manufacturing, retail, distribution, and technology sectors as an assurance senior manager. Tony is a certified public accountant (inactive) with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting from California State University, Northridge.

Steve Dille, Senior Vice President Marketing

Steve joined TouchCommerce in 2010 and is responsible for the company’s marketing strategy and execution, including competitive positioning, product marketing, marketing communication, and demand generation. A seasoned executive and software-industry veteran, he has a proven ability to identify trends, quantify market segment opportunities, design products, and execute growth strategies. Prior to joining TouchCommerce, Steve was Senior Vice President of Products at AdPortal (sold to Glam Media) and was responsible for the company's software product strategy, engineering, and marketing. Steve joined AdPortal from Kickfire (sold to Teradata), where he was VP of Marketing and Product Management for this MySQL data warehouse appliance pioneer. Prior to that, he was on the operating committee and was executive director and global head of marketing at Morgan Stanley Capital International/Barra, a $350M public risk management analytics, software, and data provider for the investment management industry. Previously, as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales for Viador Inc., Steve led a 45-person sales and marketing team from $1M in revenue to a successful IPO and a $1B market valuation. He held progressively increasing responsibilities at Sybase which culminated in his role as Director of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence, where he managed marketing for this $100 million business. While at Sybase, he launched Sybase IQ, the first column store database for data analysis, which is still the leading product in this category 15 years later. Steve also held executive technical and product management positions at HP and NCR. Steve holds a Bachelors of Science degree with honors in Computer Science and Math from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Kamal Kirpalani, Vice President EMEA

Kamal is based out of the TouchCommerce Paris office and is responsible for defining and executing the European go-to-market strategy. Kamal brings 15 years of experience in setting up European sales and business development operations for U.S.-based technology companies. Prior to joining TouchCommerce, Kamal was the managing director of international sales for Bazaarvoice, a leading provider of SaaS based social commerce solutions for the ecommerce industry, where he was responsible for establishing the company’s European market presence. Kamal expanded the Bazaarvoice footprint in the region from one office to five and from limited presence in Western Europe to 85 customers consisting of the top ten regional ecommerce companies in each territory, including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Scandinavia. Before Bazaarvoice, Kamal oversaw the European sales and partnership activities for Lombardi Software, a business process management (BPM) solutions provider. Prior to that, he established the EMEA offices for BetweenMarkets, an innovator in the B2B data quality management space. Earlier in his career he was responsible for enterprise sales in the UK, BeneLux, and Scandinavia for Motive, a provider of self-care solutions to the telecoms industry. Prior to joining Motive, Kamal was responsible for EMEA business development at Trilogy Software, where he oversaw Trilogy’s entry into the airline industry. He speaks English, German, French, and Norwegian. He has lived and worked in the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Denmark. Kamal holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Boston University.