KINGSTON, R.I. — March 29, 2017 — The University of Rhode Island’s annual innovation and entrepreneurship lecture will feature two speakers who share much more than just their creative, entrepreneurial business practices. Thomas J. Chisholm, CEO of Chisholm Ventures and T. Brett Chisholm, CEO of NeuraFlash, are not only father and son, they are also URI College of Business alumni.
The two will return to the Kingston Campus to participate in an interview-discussion entitled “Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Bots, and the Evolution of Great Customer Service.” Moderated by Professor Nancy Forster-Holt, the engaging talk will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 13, 2017. Free and open to the public, the lecture will be held in the Galanti Lounge at the University of Rhode Island’s Robert L. Carothers Library and Learning Commons, 15 Lippitt Road on the Kingston Campus.
The father and son are co-founders and leaders of NeuraFlash, an innovative Salesforce.com consulting partner that provides intelligent, personalized and predictive capabilities to customers utilizing Artificial Intelligence. NeuraFlash’s A.I. solutions leverage NLP based Chatbots, Machine Learning and Salesforce Einstein to improve the customer experience while increasing sales, self-service and employee productivity. NeuraFlash was recently selected to be part of the Salesforce® A.I. Incubator Program.
Thomas Chisholm ’68 is a technology entrepreneur who invests in early stage companies and helps other entrepreneurs through consulting, investing and mentoring. He is chairman at NeuraFlash and CEO of Chisholm Ventures LLC. He previously founded Viecore, Inc. a consulting, software development and systems integration firm in the call center and customer interaction field. When he sold the company to Nuance Communications in 2007, he was asked to remain as senior vice president of enterprise products and services.
Like his father, T. Brett Chisholm ‘ 94 has started and led many successful, innovative companies. Before creating NeuraFlash, Brett was Vice President of Sales for a Salesforce® Technology Partner called HeyWire in Cambridge, Mass. HeyWire was the leading cloud messaging service for businesses that pioneered use of texting and messaging apps across many platforms. NeuraFlash was acquired by Salesforce.com this past year. Prior to that, he led sales organizations for large enterprise and startup organizations including Nuance Communications (NUAN).
Both Tom and Brett have been long time supporters of their alma mater. Tom serves on the URI College of Business Administration Advisory Council and has been a featured speaker at the College of Business Career Day. Tom also established the Thomas Chisholm Business Teaching Endowment to support teaching excellence in the College of Business and made significant gifts to the Ballentine Hall Campaign, the Student Athlete Development Center, and the URI Annual Fund.
The annual Anthony J. Risica Lecture Series invites prominent leaders in engineering and business to share their knowledge with the campus community and public. The series was established in 2003 with a generous gift from Anthony Risica, a University of Rhode Island engineering alumnus.