Inspired by customer service
Judy dropped out of high school in El Paso, TX her junior year to get married and move to Germany with her husband. Judy lived as an army wife but would return to El Paso the next yearto finish her studies and get her high school diploma, returning to Germany and her marriage. That would be the end of Judy's formal education, but that did not stop her from believing that she could do anything.
While cleaning offices to support two children as a single mother, Judy first saw a device that would become one of the first commercially available personal computers. Judy asked her boss if she could take the computer home with her on weekends to learn how it worked.
Judy learned about word processing, using spreadsheets, configuring serial and LPT devices. She made herself an expert on the device and was promoted from cleaning the office to the go-to customer training and support specialist at Burroughs. Judy travelled across the country, helping to install the first electronic banking systems. Judy was known for her glowing personality and postive attitude. Judy had a gift for bringing out that positivity in the users she trained, many of the users were having their first experiences with computers.
Judy would say that her inspiration to become an entrepreneur came from her customers dreaming during her trainings; “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just speak to the computer, and it would do what you say?”
During her travels, Judy came across Dragon Naturally Speaking. Originally, Dragon was built as an accessibility tool for computer users. Dragon had just started targeting professionals like doctors, lawyers, and police that could use the software for transcription. Judy took a big risk, quit her job and hit the road selling and training people to use Dragon.
While selling Dragon, Judy met a chiropractor in Minnesota that told her she should demonstrate her product at Northwestern Health Sciences University Homecoming. This was 1997, and Judy had one of the only booths at the entire tradeshow with a computer. Her demonstration of speech recognition earned her the nickname ‘The Dragon Lady.”
Chiropractic documentation and speech recognition became a big hit. During her travels, Judy was approached by the husband of a chiropractor that had developed a program to interface with Dragon to make SOAP notes a SNAP! Judy began selling DC Talk, and after a couple of years, bought the source code and hired her own developers to make the improvements that her customers were asking for.
Years passed, DC Talk grew and became Chart Talk. Now, Chart Talk Practice Management Software is used across the country in chiropractic clinics for billing, scheduling, reporting, documentation, patient reminders, and credit card processing. Speech recognition is now built right into the software and users don’t even need Dragon anymore.
Through it all, what Judy accomplished was amazing. From the single mother of two trying to pay the bills cleaning offices to the president of her own software company with only a high school diploma. Judy treated every customer with dignity and respect. Judy’s goal was to take the complexity out of computer work and explain things in real world terms.
Judy’s vision, to always keep the customers experience as our guiding star remains after she has left. We are honored to follow in the footsteps of such a wonderful teacher.
