ISSIP (the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals) held its semi-annual Progress Call to the Board July 27, 2022.

Earlier this year, ISSIP recognized 11 winners of ISSIP’s Distinguished Service recognition awards and the three coveted Service Innovation Excellence with Impact to Innovation, to Business and to Society. We are grateful that Cisco’s Balaji Venkatraman was able to join ISSIP Board Director, Ammar Reyes, to accept the two 2022 Service Excellence awards impressively won by Cisco this year. Depicted adjacent are Balaji and Ammar receiving the awards from ISSIP’s Jim Spohrer:

• ISSIP Award for Excellence with Impact to Innovation for their work on ‘Advanced Automation with Machine Reasoning,’ and
• Service Innovation Excellence with Impact to Business with Cisco Customer Experience (CX) Business Critical (BCS) Design Insights.

Our thanks to UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Extension Dean PK Agarwal and, UCSC’s HCI (Human Computer Interface) Program Director, and ISSIP Board Director, Yassi Moghaddam, for hosting our hybrid event at their beautiful UCSC Event Center.

ISSIP 2022 President Terri Griffith welcomed board directors and members of ISSIP from around the world, via zoom from Vancouver, B.C. where she serves as Keith Beedie Chair for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University, and introduced ISSIP’s new Executive Director, Michele Carroll.

From Japan Science & Technology’s (JST) Washington D.C. office, Kazuyoshi Shimada, attended on behalf of JST Board Director Yasunori Kimura. (Pictured below L to R: Michele Carroll, ISSIP Executive Director, Jim Spohrer, ISSIP, Yassi Moghaddam, UCSC SV, Kazuyoshi Shimada, JST)

About ISSIP:

The International Society of Service Innovation Professionals, (pronounced ‘IZip’) is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit membership association, for individuals and institutions, on a mission to advance people-centered, data intensive, service innovation of benefit to people, business, and society. Founded in 2012 by a small cadre of thought leaders from universities, and industry innovators IBM, Cisco and HP, ISSIP collaborates with world-leading foundations, including Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), National Science Foundation (NSF), and more than 200 universities in 40 countries and is recognized for the value of its regular Discovery Summits, Ambassador collaborations with other organizations and the prestigious ISSIP Excellence and Distinguished Service Awards in Service Innovation. For more, please go to www.issip.org.