High-powered exec leaves Voalte

SARASOTA — Local executive Rob Campbell, who worked for both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at different points in his career, has left his top leadership position at Voalte, a fast-growing health care IT firm.

Campbell, the Sarasota-based company's original CEO and mentor to founder Trey Lauderdale, couldn't be reached for comment. The company, in a March 14 statement, says Lauderdale has been promoted to president from his previous title of vice president of innovation. Campbell isn't mentioned in the release, but a local marketing firm that works with Voalte confirmed the departure.

Lauderdale also couldn't be reached for comment, though in the release he says he will continue to focus on Voalte's growth strategy. The firm uses a network of software applications on smart phones to turn a hospital floor's central desk into a high-tech switchboard for incoming and outgoing messages. Nurses text info and data to each other or update a shift supervisor on a patient care issue — tasks that can take hours through traditional communication methods. The company's name, pronounced like “volt,” is derived from voice, alarm and texting.

“Since I founded Voalte five years ago the company has grown tremendously, and Voalte is now used throughout many leading hospitals across the country,” Lauderdale says in the statement. “That growth is a credit to the hard work and dedication of everyone involved at Voalte.”

Some of that credit goes to Campbell, who semi-retired to the Sarasota area after a career in Silicon Valley. Campbell and Lauderdale met at the University of Florida: The executive was a guest lecturer in a business school class and Lauderdale was a student. Lauderdale worked out his idea with Campbell, and by 2008 Voalte was under way.

More than 20,000 clinicians now use Voalte's technology nationwide, and the company has about 50 employees. That includes four executives who recently joined the firm, according to the statement regarding Lauderdale's promotion. Those executives include chief architect Don Fletcher, who previously worked for Google, where he helped launched that company's telecommunications service, Google Voice.