About us
Acquired by NiCE Technologies and merged with Atlas in 2024, Verse is a next-generation lead conversion platform leveraging conversational AI and our highly-skilled human concierge team.
A fully-managed solution, we engage, qualify, and convert inbound leads for marketing and sales teams.
Our mission is to maximize lead conversion and drive significantly higher revenue for our customers – while giving their prospects a better experience along the way.
Our leadership team
Mike Bills
General Manager
Dr. Mike Bills, an enterprising leader and innovator, serves as the general manager of Verse. Formerly CIO at Feature Films for Families, he skyrocketed revenues to $70M. He co-founded Call Assistant, achieving $13M revenue in 2 years. A higher education advocate, Mike founded ConexED, elevating virtual student services.
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With a Ph.D. from Antioch University, his research bolsters higher education governance. An avid athlete, Mike embraces mountain biking, road cycling, and skiing.
Scott Coccaro
Director, Professional Services
Combining technical and business expertise, Scott Coccaro leads Verse’s high-performance professional services team that helps our clients realize their business objectives. With experience leading teams through successful acquisitions, mergers, and post-merger integrations, Scott enjoys developing teams that consistently increase performance under increased demand.
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Outside of Atlas, Scott is the founder and coach of Evolve Lacrosse, developing a positive, inclusive, and fun environment where boys of all skill levels can enjoy lacrosse. He is dedicated to fostering teamwork, sportsmanship, and love for the sport for young athletes — as well as their personal growth both on and off the field.
Dennis Eaton
Director, Contact Center Ops
Dennis brings over 20 years of experience in workforce management, training, quality, project management, and vendor management. Dennis has led large-scale operations of care organizations up to 2,500 at companies like Nike, Oracle, ADP, and Walt Disney World.
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Dennis has the ability to connect with his teams to drive a positive culture while improving overall performance. Dennis holds a BS in Management Information Systems from the University of Central Florida and an MBA from Rollins Crummer Graduate School of Business. In his spare time, Dennis enjoys snow skiing, surfing, golf, hiking, riding his KTM, and spending time with his family.
Bridgette Ferrier
Manager, Business Operations
Bridgette Ferrier is a strategic leader with over a decade of experience driving operational excellence, financial transparency, and organizational growth across both corporate and nonprofit sectors. Combining strong financial stewardship with people-centered leadership, she helps organizations navigate complex challenges and scale sustainably.
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In addition to her corporate work, she has served on nonprofit boards, leading finance, governance, and community engagement initiatives with a strong commitment to women’s empowerment and impactful community service.
Drue Hull
Head of Engineering
Drue is the Co-Founder of Atlas (now merged under Verse.ai) and Head of Engineering at Verse.ai, where he spearheads product development, platform architecture, and technical infrastructure. With over two decades of experience in software engineering and technology leadership, Drue combines technical mastery with purposeful oversight to deliver high-performance, AI-powered customer engagement solutions.
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A lifelong engineer at heart, Drue’s curiosity for how things work has driven him from hands-on hardware tinkering and residential construction—including building his own home—to architecting sophisticated software systems.
Outside the office, you’ll find Drue on the soccer field, supporting his three soccer-enthusiast children or playing as a defensive center midfielder for the Vikings—a Utah Men’s League soccer team he has been a part of for more than 25 years.
Cassandra Pazderny
Director, Customer Success
Cassandra Pazderny is an accomplished customer success leader with over 15 years of experience in marketing and sales technology. She is known for her ability to build and lead high-performing teams that create exceptional customer experiences while delivering measurable business results.
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With her vast expertise across multiple verticals, market segments, and regions, Cassandra has collaborated with thousands of companies to drive rapid revenue growth for their organizations. Cassandra is based in Austin, Texas and has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration with a major in marketing. She enjoys travel, hiking, outdoor adventures and time with family outside of work. Her proven track record of success is a testament to her passion and commitment to excellence in customer success leadership.
Damien Swendsen
Head of Sales and Marketing
Damien is excited to bring over 20 years of experience in Sales, Marketing, and Management to Verse. He has helped run Sales in small, midsize, and enterprise companies. Coming to us most recently from Demandbase, Damien was responsible for all aspects of their Data and Sales Intelligence lines of business, including Sales, Marketing, Partnerships, and Product.
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Before then, he oversaw the successful acquisition of InsideView, where he led Sales and grew a mid-market organization into a successful Enterprise platform. Prior to that, he sold at Oracle, as well as managed teams at Pivotal and Onyx Software. Damien was born and raised in San Francisco, and now lives in San Jose with his wife and four children. He enjoys spending time with his family, playing soccer, hiking, and anything athletic or competitive.
Avi Tal
Senior Director, Product
An original co-founder of Verse, Avi leads Verse’s Product team. Prior to launching Verse, Avi founded a WiFi media network in Latin America by partnering with hotel chains to inject hyperlocal content catered to business travelers on hotel WiFi authentication pages.
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This product was quickly adopted and scaled to over 150,000 hotel rooms across Mexico. The business eventually merged with a venture capital-backed company. This was Avi’s first foray into the exciting world of Silicon Valley, where he learned about developing technologies, building teams, and raising venture capital. After witnessing firsthand how merging the best abilities of technology and people helped businesses create the most timely, effective, and authentic connections with their prospects, Avi went on to launch Verse in 2013 with his brother, David Tal. Avi lives in Mission Beach, where you can catch him riding some waves during his lunch break on a sunny day.
How it all began
In 2013, digital marketing professionals David and Avi Tal noticed a frustrating gap in lead conversion. Many companies have gaps in establishing meaningful contact with leads that marketing spends so much money and time to generate—let alone qualifying, nurturing, and converting them into sales.
Founded by the Tals as a startup company, Verse bridges this gap by fully managing truly authentic conversations, through two-way text communications and instant switches to human reps at the right times.
With experts in communications technology, AI, NLU, data science, and contact center management, Verse was born to optimize lead engagement, qualification, nurturing, and conversion.
In 2024, Verse’s potential was recognized and then acquired by NICE Technologies. While David exited and moved on to other ventures, Avi Tal remains the Head of Product at Verse.
As a NICE company, Verse has integrated with another NICE AI solution, Atlas. Under the Verse brand, Atlas operates in the lead conversion space for homebuilders.
Today, Verse’s mission remains the same, with the powerful backing of NICE.
Together, Verse and Atlas operate as fully-managed, AI lead conversion solutions. We help a variety of industry-leading companies achieve better customer experiences, improved lead engagement, and greater revenue generation.
Our core values
Happy
We believe that positivity, gratitude, and good vibes are essential to make work enjoyable and keep the culture thriving. At Verse, we lift each other up, focus on cultivating gratitude, and keep each other motivated with positive energy.
Humble
Though we're a highly intelligent team, we value being down-to-earth. Despite our achievements, we aim to stay curious, coachable, and quick to own our mistakes. Teammates aren't afraid to say, “I was wrong” or “I can do better.”
Hungry
Hunger is that unstoppable drive to succeed, both for ourselves and the team. Since our startup days, we've been a team of self-starters who push through obstacles and chase growth.
Horsepower
Like a racecar hugs the track, we tackle our challenges with energy, grit, and pride in our performance. Horsepower makes us smart, capable, and strategic operators.