About SoundThinking
SoundThinking, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSTI) is a leading public safety technology company that combines transformative solutions and strategic advisory services for law enforcement and civic leadership. We are trusted by more than 250 customers and 2,000 agencies to drive more efficient, effective, and equitable public safety outcomes, making communities healthier. Our SafetySmart™ platform includes ShotSpotter®, the leading acoustic gunshot detection system, CrimeTracer™, the foremost law enforcement search engine, CaseBuilder™, a one-stop investigation management system, and ResourceRouter™, software that directs patrol and community anti-violence resources to help maximize their impact. SoundThinking has been designated a Great Place to Work® Company.
ShotSpotter® changes corporate name to SoundThinking and launches SafetySmart Platform.
SoundThinking’s SafetySmart Platform
Our Purpose
“Earn the trust of law enforcement to help them provide equal protection for all and strengthen the police-community relationship, ultimately improving public safety.”The community is at the heart of our business. Helping law enforcement make communities safer is not just a job. We are passionate about how our products contribute to a safer world and that is ingrained in the culture of our company.
Our Story
The company originally known as ShotSpotter was founded in 1996 while physicist Dr. Robert Showen, (or “Dr. Bob,” as he is affectionately known), was working on determining the location of earthquake epicenters at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California. One day, after hearing gunshots in a nearby neighborhood, Dr. Showen had the idea of applying the similar sound wave principles he was using for his earthquake research to detect and locate gunshots. He teamed with two engineers, Dr. Robert Calhoun and Jason Dunham, and the company was born.
The company was founded as a mission-based organization focused on improving community safety and attracted those who came from public service or wished to join the cause.
Over the next 15 years, the team was able to raise money, develop the technology and deploy the system in about 20 cities. In 2010, the company hired its current CEO, Ralph Clark.
Ralph Clark saw great potential in the system and made several key changes that ultimately accelerated adoption. First, the system would be sold as a subscription rather than a capital hardware purchase to significantly bring down the cost. Second, he brought the critical role of independent human reviewers of potential gunshots in-house by establishing a centralized Incident Review Center (IRC), a process which was previously done by the police departments themselves. This enabled a more systemized approach with specialized training and tools as well as performance metrics for greater quality and speed. Finally, he created a customer success group to ensure customers would realize the full value of their purchase and get the best outcomes. This team provides strategic guidance based on best practices from other agencies around the country.
From 2010 to 2019, the company significantly improved the accuracy of the system, went public, and reached the 100-customer milestone.
Since that time, the gunshot detection service has consistently achieved an NPS (Net Promoter Score) score of over +55 putting it in a distinguished group of companies nationally that are recognized for customer loyalty and satisfaction, and the product now serves over 150 cities.
In 2020 the company began work on its Data for Good program to broaden its impact beyond law enforcement.
The initiative enables non-law enforcement entities to better deliver community-focused solutions including social services and economic assistance to help cities address the root causes of violence.
Over the last few years, the company has acquired and developed several additional solutions that go far beyond gunshot detection.
In 2023 the company announced a corporate rebranding from ShotSpotter to SoundThinking to reflect its broader mission and launched the innovative SafetySmart Platform to help both law enforcement and civic leadership achieve better public safety outcomes.
Questions? Check out our rebrand FAQ to learn more.
Leadership
Ralph Clark has been leading SoundThinking (formerly ShotSpotter) since 2010 as President and CEO. Clark led the transformation of ShotSpotter to a SaaS based business model ultimately taking the company public in 2017 and expanding it to become a leading platform based next generation public safety solutions company engaged with over 250 public safety agencies globally.
Ralph has more than 30 years of corporate, financial and organizational leadership and was most recently prior to SoundThinking, the President and CEO of GuardianEdge Technologies Inc. where he drove a successful exit with its acquisition by Symantec. Earlier in his career he worked for IBM as a larges systems marketing representative and manager and post business school as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.
Ralph received the 2019 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® Award for Northern California. Community service is a priority. He is a former board member and chair of Pacific Community Ventures, former board member and chair of the Oakland Boys and Girls Club, former trustee and Vice-Chair of the Oakland Museum of California, and former trustee of the American Conservatory Theater. Ralph currently serves on the Board of Directors of TriNet (TNET), a leading public company PEO firm, where he chairs of the Nomination and Governance Committee, is a Board member of Glowforge, a Seattle based venture capital backed connected 3D laser printing company and serves on the Harvard Business School’s California Advisory Board. He holds a B.S. in economics from the University of the Pacific and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Alan R. Stewart serves as Chief Financial Officer bringing a strong background in mergers, acquisitions and corporate finance to the company. Prior to joining SoundThinking, Stewart served as Managing Director of RA Capital Advisors, LLC, a private investment bank specializing in mergers and acquisitions, private financings and restructurings. From 2004 to 2014, he served as Chief Financial Officer and then Chief Development Officer of Epsilon Systems Solutions, Inc.
Since 2008, Mr. Stewart has served as President of FIT Advisors, LLC, a boutique consulting firm that offers temporary CFO services and served clients from start-up ventures to large private companies in vertical industries spanning government contracting, software, retail, healthcare IT, banking and Internet applications.
Stewart was selected as San Diego Business Journal’s CFO of the Year in 2007 and again in 2013. Both awards were in the large private business category. Prior to his business career, Stewart served over ten years as a submarine nuclear engineer in the United States Navy. He received his B.S. in Oceanography, with distinction, from the U.S. Naval Academy and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Golzadeh has more than 18 years of leadership in operations, software implementation and professional services in a variety of industries. She has created, led and scaled high-performing teams and implemented effective, efficient, repeatable and consistent service delivery and operational processes.
Prior to joining SoundThinking, Golzadeh was in charge of Operations and Professional Services for CentralSquare Technologies (formerly TriTech Software Systems), a leader in Public Safety software. The company delivers complex enterprise, mission critical solutions to thousands of law enforcement, fire and EMS agencies worldwide. During her 14 year tenure, she led consistent professional services revenue growth, drove operational excellence, continuous process improvement and high customer satisfaction while the Operations group experienced 10-fold growth.
Prior to CentralSquare, Golzadeh held leadership roles in banking, manufacturing, software, and higher education.
Golzadeh has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, an M.S. in Software Engineering, and an M.B.A.
Paul Ames, a 25-year technology veteran, joins SoundThinking as Senior Vice President, Products and Technology, to lead the product development, software, hardware and operational engineering teams. Before SoundThinking, he founded Deckchair Software LLC, to conceive, develop and market consumer facing mobile apps.
At Premier Retail Networks (PRN), a division of Technicolor, Ames served as Vice President of Product Development, responsible for driving development of a $100MM yearly revenue video advertising platform.
Paul started his career in the UK and has held senior technology leaderships roles across a broad range of industries including communications, financial, professional information and media. He received his Computer Science education at the Polytechnic of South Wales and post graduate studies in Electronic Sound at University College, Cardiff.
Gary Bunyard brings over 25 years of public safety technology sales, marketing, operations, and executive leadership experience to SoundThinking. Today, Gary heads up the SoundThinking public safety sales and customer success teams. Before joining SoundThinking, he served as Vice President of Sales for TriTech Software Systems and Vice President of Sales and Chief Operating Officer for VisionAIR, Inc.
Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Sales, Chief Operating Officer, and subsequently, President and Chief Executive Officer at Tiburon Corporation. Bunyard started his career at IBM, where he held several sales and sales management positions.
Bunyard holds a B.B.A. in International Business and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.
After nearly 27 years in federal law enforcement, Tom joined SoundThinking to help promote and support the integrated use of the company’s vast data holdings and comprehensive public safety solutions. He leads a team of experienced professionals committed to supporting robust and effective application of SoundThinking’s products in investigations, forensics, and litigation.
Tom is a licensed attorney. He retired from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) as a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES). He spent his last year as Chief Operating Officer (COO). Over the course of his career, he enforced a wide range of federal criminal laws, especially related to firearms and violent crime. He worked undercover extensively and frequently testified in federal court as both an expert witness and a fact witness. He played an integral role in promoting the U.S. Department of Justice’s adoption and use of Crime Gun Intelligence tools and tactics.
He has a BA in Criminal Justice from Marshall University in Huntington, WV; an MS in Criminal Justice from Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, KY; and a JD from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Tom is dedicated to helping make this a safer world.
Larry S. Jackson is a solution focused executive with more than 25 years of experience working with companies to optimize their operations by implementing new technology platforms, digital capabilities, and data analytics. He leads SoundThinking’s world-class Customer Success and Field Engineering team helping customers get maximum value from SoundThinking’s solutions from initial service deployment through customer onboarding with best practices and community engagement.
Prior to joining SoundThinking, Larry held leadership positions with IBM Consulting and Accenture. His business transformation efforts have included customer experience strategy development, application solution design, business process automation and change management to ensure end user adoption.
In addition, Larry is involved in local bay area community activities including serving as a Board Member for Stanford Medical Partners.
Larry is graduate of Stanford University and earned an MBA from Atlanta University. He is an avid sports enthusiast who enjoys cycling and rooting for his favorite Bay Area teams.
Sam Klepper leads product strategy and M&A activity for SoundThinking. Sam has been with the company since 2018 and was previously SVP, Marketing & Product Strategy for SoundThinking. Sam has 25 years of marketing, product and business leadership experience working for innovative, fast-growing technology companies.
Klepper was previously VP of Sales and Marketing at EnerAllies, a SaaS-centric IoT energy management platform. He was President and CEO of Lavante, a leader in SaaS supplier management solutions. As CMO for Redwood Systems, a lighting controls and IoT provider, he helped the company grow revenues 15x over two years. As CMO at eMeter, a smart grid enterprise software company, Klepper led the creation of a new product line and transformed company positioning prior to a successful acquisition by Siemens. Prior to eMeter, Klepper was a GM at Microsoft responsible for a $500M portfolio of online subscription businesses. He was also part of the team that grew WebTV Networks recurring revenues from $0 to $200M. At Intuit, he developed the strategy and led product teams to enter the SMB accounting (QuickBooks) and payroll markets that today generate over $2B in revenues. He began his career with Bain & Company.
Klepper has a bachelor’s degree in History and Science magna cum laude from Harvard University and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
Gregg Makuch (“May-kish”) leads marketing for SoundThinking. Gregg is a results-oriented marketing executive with over 25 years of marketing, product and business leadership experience working for innovative, fast-growing technology companies. His experience ranges from startups to global, billion-dollar organizations.
Previously, he had CMO and marketing leadership roles at multiple tech startups. Most recently, he was part of a senior management team relaunching an HRTech company, resulting in growing the customer base 7X (633%) culminating in a successful $5.4MM funding round. Makuch was also VP of Marketing at Entomo, a channel management SaaS company, where he drove a 2x increase in traffic, 100% increase in active prospects and 3X growth in closure rates, in addition to developing strategic partnerships. He also had executive and leadership positions at Widemile (acquired by WebTrends), aQuantive (acquired by Microsoft), and RealNetworks, where he launched the company’s first SaaS offering in the streaming media space. Before RealNetworks, he was a brand manager at Kraft, where he achieved brand-of-the-year honors.
Makuch also has broad change management and strategic consulting experience from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte Consulting.
Makuch has a B.S.E in Industrial Engineering magna cum laude from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
Anne Mueller joined SoundThinking in 2023 to lead the Human Resources and Talent team. With over 20 years of Human Resources expertise, Anne specializes in building and cultivating dynamic, high-performing teams within fast-paced and evolving organizations.
Prior to joining SoundThinking, Anne served as Senior Vice President, Head of People at Forge Global (NYSE: FRGE), where she played a key role in expanding the company’s headcount by 11 times over four years, was instrumental in taking the company public, and led the first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) efforts. Prior to Forge Global, Anne held HR leadership roles at Pensco Trust, Conifer Securities, and mFoundry, Inc. Collaborating closely with leadership, she shaped thriving cultures and led comprehensive HR M&A efforts. Anne’s career began in recruitment, which has granted her unique insights into the talent acquisition landscape.
Anne’s leadership style is defined by her commitment to fostering strong, inclusive cultures, while prioritizing the employee experience. The core of her approach to building top-performing teams is to provide guidance, inspiration, and continuous development.
Anne holds a B.A. in Organizational Communication from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has lived in the Bay Area for 25 years and she loves spending time at the beach with her family, friends, and dog.
Directors
A veteran of numerous successful technology start-ups, Ralph A. Clark brings 30 years of extensive corporate, financial and organizational leadership to his position as SoundThinking’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Most recently, Clark was CEO of GuardianEdge Technologies Inc., where he led the transformation of the company into a leader in endpoint data protection and was instrumental in its recent acquisition by Symantec.
Prior to GuardianEdge, Clark served as vice president of finance for Adaptec through its acquisition of Snap Appliance, which he helped engineer. He was responsible for worldwide financial planning and analysis of Snap Appliance, serving as its chief financial officer. Previous to his role at Snap Appliance, he worked at several venture capital backed start-up companies, leading several to successful acquisitions. Early in his career, Clark held executive sales and marketing roles at IBM; post business school he was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, where he was instrumental in many successful technology transactions.
He is a member of the board of directors for PrintRoom and Tactical Survey Group, and also serves as a trustee at the Oakland Museum of California. Clark holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of the Pacific, and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
Mr. Bratton is currently Senior Managing Director of Teneo Holdings, a global CEO advisory firm, and Executive Chairman of its Teneo Risk division. Mr. Bratton also serves as the Vice Chairman for the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council.& Mr. Bratton has over 40 years of experience in law enforcement, including as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and Commissioner of the New York City and Boston Police Departments. Mr. Bratton previously served as a member of ShotSpotter’s Board of Directors, from April 2013 until December 2013, when he resigned in order to serve his second appointment as Commissioner of the New York City Police Department.
Deborah (Deb) Grant, is a visionary senior executive and one of the country’s foremost experts in Diversity. She is the President and CEO of Corporate Playbook™, a company that provides leaders with strategic direction to elevate diversity, inclusion, philanthropy, and culture in the workplace.
Deb was GE’s first-ever black female corporate officer. Her role as Global Chief Diversity Officer placed her in the top 185 of 300,000 employees. In Deb’s decorated thirty-year career at General Electric (GE), she led GE’s philanthropic efforts through the GE Foundation’s $130M budget and GE Volunteers, to tackle some of the world’s most critical challenges across health, education and skill attainment.
Deb has received numerous accolades, including 50 Most Powerful Women in Philanthropy from Inside Philanthropy, Women of Excellence Legacy Award from the National Association for Female Executives, and Women of Power Award from the National Urban League.
Deb received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, from Louisiana State University and a Master of Public Administration, from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
Deb serves as an independent director at DJE Holdings (Edelman) www.edelman.com and Lucid www.luc.id. She is on the board of directors at the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute (NOCHI) and the Louisiana State University Foundation. Deb is also a member of the National Black MBA Association, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and The Links, Incorporated.
Roberta S. Jacobson is a senior advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group. She served as the White House Coordinator for the Southwest Border from January through April 2021. She was the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico from May 2016 until her resignation in May 2018, retiring from the State Department after more than 30 years. In fall 2018, she taught at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics as a Pritzker Fellow. Ms. Jacobson previously served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs since March, 2012. She held various positions in the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Bureau, embassies in Argentina and Peru, and the White House during her career. Ms. Jacobson holds a Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1986) and a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University. She is the author of numerous articles, including, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About U.S. –Latin America Relations” (Americas Quarterly; 2013), “Women and the Rule of Law: A View from the Americas (The Fletcher Forum; 2014) and “The United States and the Western Hemisphere: A Relationship on the Rise” (The Ambassador’s Review; 2015)
Pascal Levensohn is the Managing Member of Levensohn Venture Partners LLC (1996 -Present), the CEO of Levensohn Global LLC (1996- Present), and the Senior Managing Director of Dolby Family Ventures (2012 – Present). Pascal specializes in aligning interests and resolving conflict among the different stakeholders of closely held enterprises to optimize their potential for success. He is a former director of the United States’ National Venture Capital Association (2007 – 2011). With his partners, he currently manages a global technology portfolio of over 70 startups across four vintages of single-LP funds, the most recent having been launched in 2021. Pascal holds an AB in Government, cum laude, from Harvard University (1981) and is a graduate of the Lawrenceville School (1977, with Academic Distinction). He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former Trustee of the American Academy in Berlin, and a former co-chairman of the Aspen Institute’s Socrates Society.
Marc has more than 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, lawyer, professor, legislator, Mayor, President of the US Conference of Mayors, and now CEO of the National Urban League, the nation’s largest civil rights organization. Among his many accolades, Morial was widely credited with the 1990s renaissance of New Orleans. While Mayor of New Orleans, he had strong success attacking the city’s vast urban problems, including dropping violent crimes and murders by 60%. He left the office with a 70% approval rating.
Morial has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University. A history, arts, music and sports enthusiast, Morial has an adult daughter, and is married to CBS broadcast journalist Michelle Miller. Together they have two children.
Ruby is a Managing Partner of RNB Strategic Advisors, a strategic advisory firm, and also an advisory board council member for reacHIRE, a technology company focused on changing the trajectory for women in the workplace. She retired as senior partner at Ernst & Young LLP after 15 years where she worked with multi-national Fortune 500 corporations and founded The Center for Board Matters, a global strategy and execution infrastructure for governance services to boards and the C-suite.
She also worked as a Fraud Investigations & Dispute Services Partner at EY & Anderson, working with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and other regulatory organizations on complex issues involving white-collar crime.
A Fellow Chartered Accountant, Ruby is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist on corporate governance topics. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Delhi University and has also attended Executive Education program for EY Partners at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Founders
Dr. Showen is SoundThinking's (formerly ShotSpotter) founder and patent holder on the technology. With over three decades of acoustic and geophysics research experience, it was Dr. Showen’s initial vision of helping police curb gunfire and urban crime that caused him first to conceive of ShotSpotter. Engineer, scientist, and teacher, Dr. Robert L. Showen attended San Jose State University, University of California at Berkeley, and Rice University. He obtained degrees in electrical engineering and space physics and won a fellowship to the Max Planck Institute. He has taught astronomy and physics at the University of Puerto Rico, performed experiments to heat the ionosphere at the world’s largest RADAR, participated in the development of over-the-horizon RADAR at SRI International, and studied the effects of lightning on the ionosphere. LinkedIn Profile
Jason Dunham
Jason Dunham is an engineer, a software specialist and a co-founder of SoundThinking (formerly ShotSpotter). Jason’s specialty work is in vibration analysis as applied to components of nuclear plants. He has programmed in C, Pascal, FORTRAN, FORTH, Mathematica, and LabVIEW. He is the owner and founder of San Francisco Industrial Software Inc. which has an extensive local and statewide clientele. He has written a majority of the software used in the Trilon Technology gunshot location system, and is a co-inventor with Dr. Showen on patent applications for ShotSpotter technology. Jason earned his BS, Mechanical Engineering from MIT and his MS in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. LinkedIn profile
SoundThinking Careers
You can make the world a safer place. We do every day.
Find your place at SoundThinking — browse job postings on our Careers page.
Awards
Best Gunshot Detection System
Noble Technology Award
Fast 500 winner
Entrepreneur of the Year – Northern California
Listed on GovTech 100
Environmental Impact and SoundThinking Labs
We want to be a force for good in the world. The company has created a new unit called SoundThinking Labs that supports innovative uses of its gunshot detection technology to help protect wildlife and the environment. See SoundThinking Labs details here.
Rhino Poaching
SoundThinking donates its technology and time to combat rhino poaching.
We released our 2022 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report.
Blast Fishing
Blast fishing threatens a majority of tropical reefs and the food supply of a billion people. Fish blasters bomb above reef areas rather than use traditional methods of netting or spearing. By bombing over the reefs they destroy the reefs and hence the homes of the fish, which takes years to recover.
SoundThinking researchers have been working with the international environmental coalition Stop Fish Bombing (www.sfbusa.org) to develop blast location capability to enable marine law enforcement to intercept the illegal blasters. In coordination with legal and social reforms, timely reporting of blast locations to law enforcement can help prevent blast fishing.
