News Release

Spok appoints Brett Shockley to board of directors

Brett Shockley Photo

New director has expertise in cloud-based Software-as-a-Service offerings

SPRINGFIELD, Va. (June 18, 2020) – Spok Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPOK), a global leader in healthcare communications, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Brett Shockley to the Board and its Nominating and Governance Committee, effective immediately. Mr. Shockley is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Journey AI, Inc., a private software company that provides a trusted identity platform delivering security, privacy and frictionless customer experience solutions to the contact center industry. Prior to Journey AI, Mr. Shockley served in senior executive roles with Avaya Holdings Corp. and Cisco Systems, Inc.  At both companies, Mr. Shockley was directly involved in corporate strategy, business development and software innovation.  Mr. Shockley also currently serves as the Lead Independent Director of eGain Corporation (NASDAQ: EGAN), a provider of subscription-based customer engagement software solutions.

“The Board welcomes Brett and looks forward to his contributions,” said Royce G. Yudkoff, Chairman of the Spok Board. “As Spok pivots to cloud-based software solutions, Brett’s knowledge of the SaaS business model and his expertise in R&D and cloud-based software marketing will make a valuable contribution to our Board’s expertise.”

The appointment of Brett Shockley to the Spok Board is the third addition to the Board since January 2020 and comes after engagement with our stockholders regarding the composition of the Board during which Mr. Shockley was identified by one of our stockholders, White Hat Capital Partners LP. In connection with the appointment of Mr. Shockley, the Company and White Hat Capital executed a Cooperation Agreement with customary terms, including a commitment by White Hat Capital to vote its shares in favor of the Board’s nominees at the 2020 Annual Stockholders Meeting.

Prior to founding Journey AI, Mr. Shockley held various positions at Avaya Holdings Corp (NYSE:  AVYA), a technology company specializing in enterprise communications, from October 2008 to December 2014. From May 2013 to December 2014, Mr. Shockley served as a Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Corporate Development and Chief Technology Officer. Prior to working at Avaya, Mr. Shockley served as Chief Executive Officer, President and a Co‐Founder of Spanlink Communications, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ:  SPLK), a provider of contact center technologies and network infrastructure implementations, from August 1988 to October 2008.

“I look forward to working with the Board and executive team at Spok to help bring to market Spok’s innovative communications solutions for the healthcare industry,” said Mr. Shockley.

About Brett Shockley

Brett Shockley is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Journey AI, Inc., a private software company, that provides a trusted identity platform delivering security, privacy and frictionless customer experience solutions to the contact center industry. Prior to founding Journey AI, Mr. Shockley held various positions at Avaya, a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, from August 2008 to December 2014, including Senior Vice President and General Manager of Software and Emerging Technologies, and Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, Strategy and Chief Technology Officer. Before joining Avaya, Mr. Shockley was the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Spanlink Communications, a contact center software and services business, which he brought through an initial public offering on Nasdaq. In 2007, Mr. Shockley co-founded Calabrio, a workforce optimization software company which was acquired by KKR in 2016. Prior to Calabrio, Mr. Shockley was the Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Customer Contact Business Unit. In addition to holding patents in social networking and telecommunications, Mr. Shockley has an M.B.A. in Marketing from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology. Mr. Shockley was a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award winner, University of Minnesota Alumni Lifetime Achievement award winner in 2006 and 2008 Minnesota High Tech Association Emerging Technology Company award winner. Mr. Shockley has served on the Board of eGain Corporation since January 2015 and has served as eGain’s Lead Independent Director since September 2017.

About Spok

Spok, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Spok Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPOK), headquartered in Plano, Texas, is proud to be a global leader in healthcare communications. We deliver clinical information to care teams when and where it matters most to improve patient outcomes. Top hospitals rely on the Spok Care Connect® platform to enhance workflows for clinicians and support administrative compliance. Our customers send over 70 million messages each month through their Spok® solutions. Spok enables smarter, faster clinical communication.

Spok is a trademark of Spok Holdings, Inc. Spok Mobile and Spok Care Connect are trademarks of Spok, Inc.

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act: 

Statements contained herein or in prior press releases which are not historical fact, such as statements regarding our future operating and financial performance, are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to be materially different from the future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expectations include, but are not limited to, our ability to manage wireless network rationalization to lower our costs without causing disruption of service to our customers; our ability to retain key management personnel and to attract and retain talent within the organization; the productivity of our sales organization and our ability to deliver effective customer support; our ability to identify potential acquisitions, finance, consummate and successfully integrate such acquisitions, and achieve the expected benefits of such acquisitions; economic conditions, such as recessionary economic cycles, the impact of trade disputes, tariffs and other trade protection measures,  higher interest rates, inflation and higher levels of unemployment; risks related to our overall business strategy, including maximizing revenue and cash generation from our established businesses and returning capital to stockholders through dividends and repurchases of shares of our common stock; competition for our services and products from new technologies or those offered and/or developed from firms that are substantially larger and have much greater financial and human capital resources; continuing decline in the number of paging units we have in service with customers, commensurate with a continuing decline in our wireless revenue; our ability to address changing market conditions with new or revised software solutions; undetected defects, bugs, or security vulnerabilities in our products; our dependence on the United States healthcare industry; long sales cycle of our software solutions and services; our reliance on third-party vendors to supply us with wireless paging equipment; our ability to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners; our ability to protect our rights in intellectual property that we own and develop and the potential for litigation claiming intellectual property infringement by us; our use of open source software, third-party software and other intellectual property; our reliance on data centers and other computer systems, hardware, software and satellite networks and telecommunications systems infrastructure (collectively, “IT Systems”) and technologies provided by third parties, and technology systems and electronic networks supplied and managed by third parties; cyberattacks, data breaches, system disruptions or other compromises to our or our critical third parties’ IT Systems (as defined below), data, products or services; our ability to realize the benefits associated with our deferred income tax assets; future impairments of our long-lived assets or goodwill; risks related to data privacy and protection-related laws and regulation; and our ability to manage changes related to regulation, including laws and regulations affecting hospitals and the healthcare industry generally, as well as other risks described from time to time in our periodic reports and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although Spok believes the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. Spok disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Media Inquiries

Al Galgano
+1 (952) 224-6096
al.galgano@spok.com