Executive Team
Bill Townsend, PhD - President & CEO
Bill Townsend has fostered an exceptional team culture that is leading Barrett into the future with a robust product pipeline. Bill founded Barrett in 1988 with early funding from investor, Julianne Barrett. The company has pioneered world-class drive technologies that are at the heart of any robot: unmatched servomotor controllers and high-performance (gearless) transmissions. These two technologies have led to robotic arms and hands with exceptional grace and responsiveness. Bill has 20 patents worldwide with licenses to companies like MAKO/Stryker Medical. Bill won the prestigious Joseph Engelberger Award for his 1987 design of the first haptics-capable robot, named the WAM® arm and credited in the Millennium Edition of Guinness World Records (p170-171) as the “most advanced robotic arm”. He earned his PhD and MS degrees in engineering at the MIT AI Lab (now CSAIL), with a minor in business, attended at the Sloan School of Management and the Harvard Business School. Finally, the 5-year BS Coop program at Northeastern University exposed Bill to industry early in his career.
Matt Rigby, MS, OTR/L - CCO
Matt Rigby is the Chief Commercial Officer at Barrett Technology. Matt cut his teeth in sales at Johnson & Johnson; and before joining Barrett, he was VP of Sales at Bioness, directing large capital, consumer, and surgical sales divisions. He rolled out several of Bioness’s flagship products including the Vector, Bits, H200, and L300. At Barrett, Matt has thoughtfully articulated Barrett’s message to align it more closely with the incredible value Barrett’s products offer customers. He hired both Mark Levin and Guy Brown with whom he had years of prior experience, and under Matt’s leadership they have grown Barrett’s sales pipeline substantially. Matt understands customers’ needs intimately, beginning his career in the treatment of adult and pediatric populations with neurological disorders as an occupational therapist for seven years. He is a published author in the field of Occupational Therapy Assessment and has taught at the graduate level. He earned his BS from the University of Utah and his MS in Occupational Therapy from the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he studied under and published with Dr. Gary Keilhofner.
CJ Valle - COO
CJ Valle is Barrett’s COO. He builds teams and processes to solve complex problems. CJ previously worked at Philips Healthcare, where he gained valuable experience in medical-device design, manufacturing, and regulatory compliance. After starting at Barrett in 2015, he directed the mechanical and electrical development of Burt®, including several patented innovations, as well as the IEC 60601-1 regulatory-approval process. He designed the production-line, customer-support, and sales-process infrastructures to launch the product commercially. Today, CJ manages all production, engineering, finance, regulatory, and HR functions, as well as the product-development pipeline and strategic engineering projects. He earned his BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. While there, he honed his leadership skills building a team for the design, fabrication, and validation of off-road race cars. During his tenure, the team rose from a bottom-20% ranking to a top-10% ranking worldwide.
Sales Team
Guy Brown - West Regional Sales Manager
Guy Brown, PT DPT, learned rehabilitation equipment sales while reporting to Matt Rigby at Bioness for seven years. Guy later moved to Barrett, in April of 2023, to once again report to Matt Rigby, where Guy is Regional Sales Manager for the western US. He is passion driven to treat neurological patients, where he has 25 years of experience as a physical therapist. He knows the rehabilitation therapist extraordinarily well having treated and managed patients in the acute rehabilitation and outpatient neurologic settings. Today, he enjoys the teaching aspect of his sales position, leading therapists to discover new and innovative ways of leveraging the Burt® system to address their individual requirements. Guy earned his BS from the University of Evansville and his DPT from Northern Arizona University.
Mark Levin - Director of Strategic Growth
Mark Levin, MS, OTR/L, has covered Burt® sales for the eastern US since December of 2022 as Director of Strategic Growth. He is a proven clinical sales leader and has held positions at all levels giving him a robust knowledge of the rehabilitation landscape. Mark previously worked with Matt Rigby for 13 years at Bioness. Before his sales career, Mark was a practicing occupational therapist for 12 years, helping individuals recover from neurological injuries and diseases. He has been an invited guest speaker at multiple universities for students of physical and occupational therapy on the subjects of robotics, functional electrical stimulation, and evaluation and treatment of spinal cord injuries. Mark earned his BA from Gannon University and an MS in Occupational Therapy from Tufts University.
Engineering and Operations
Jim Ammirato - Mechanical Technician
Martyn Baranauskas - Manufacturing Engineer
Bailey Noack - Electrical Engineer
Nelson Antony - Robotics Technician
Craig McDonald - Lead Robotics Engineer
Lisa Revette - UX & Game Development Engineer
Brian Zenowich - Senior Robotics Engineer
Emily Austin - Game Developer
Alex Lioulemes - Senior Robotics & Computer Vision Engineer
Michael Salvatore - Production Manager
Alvin Yen - Hardware Engineering Manager
Finance
Dorota Miller - Controller
Dave Wang - Accountant