About Us

The Directra team has been involved with the design and development of enterprise and consumer software for almost 20 years. Enterprise software includes network optimization and natural language interfaces that were licensed globally by Nortel Networks. Forté also created email management software to facilitate the processing of and automated response for high volumes of corporate email. This application lead to the acquisition of Forté by Genesys later Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) in 1997.

Charles Dazler Knuff · President

Charles is the founder of Forté and has served as the President and CEO since 1987. Previously Charles was the founder and Managing Partner of Natel & Co., a telecommunications consulting firm. Prior to founding Natel, Charles was in the system design and engineering group at International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). Charles holds a BA from California State University, Fullerton and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Christopher Beck · Architect

Chris was the Vice President of Software Design at Forté since 1990 and was the principal architect of Forte's email processing application, Adante. After the acquisition of Forté, Chris worked with Crosspoint Ventures as an entrepreneur in residence. Chris holds a BA in Information Science from California State University, Fullerton.

Salli Salem · Sales

Salli was the Vice President of Sales at Forté since 1987 and was responsible for building the sales teams for both enterprise and consumer products. Salli holds a BA in Communications from San Diego State University.

Thomas Gold · Operations

Tom was the Vice President of Development at Forté from 1992 to 1997 and oversaw both the consumer and enterprise software development organizations. Prior to joining Forté, Tom was the Director of Research and Development at Calma, a division of General Electric. Tom holds a BA in Mathematics from UCLA, and an MA in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, San Diego.

Mark Sidell · Engineering

Mark was the Vice President of Engineering at Forté since 1990 and was the principal architect of the Agent newsreader. Mark was the former Director of Application Development at Dragon Systems, a human speech recognition company. Mark holds a BS in Computer Science from Yale.

James Powers · Engineering

Jim was the Vice President of Product Development at Forté since 1991 and was the principal architect of Forté's 3D animation products. Before joining Forte, James was employed by TRW as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff. James holds a BS in Biological Science and a BS in Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.