In his new role, McCall “will be responsible for driving the company’s AI strategy, oversee initiatives, and spearhead the development of innovative solutions to help forward-thinking businesses become ‘AI First’ organizations,” the company said in a news release. Launch touted McCall’s “proven track record in driving sales and market strategies, most recently focusing on autonomous AI solutions based on machine learning and digital simulation.” The company also cited McCall’s “deep understanding of supporting technologies” including deep learning, the Internet of Things, and data services.
“We are thrilled to welcome Kevin to the Launch team,” said Brian Ganser, president of Launch Consulting. “Kevin’s remarkable wealth of knowledge, expertise, and unwavering passion will accelerate our mission to help our clients revolutionize their businesses through the transformative power of AI.”
McCall told Industry Insider — California that his talents and experience are a good fit for Launch, whose government clients include the California Department of Technology, the California Highway Patrol, the Department of General Services and the Department of Health Care Services, among others.
“After working with AI technologies as a cloud provider, I’m extremely excited by the opportunity to accelerate the business transformation of Launch’s customers by applying AI in both strategic and tactical domains,” McCall said. “I believe there are nearly limitless opportunities to do this in practical, productive, and responsible ways, and I’m excited to get started.”
McCall told Industry Insider how he sees AI helping state and local government in California.
“While there are complex and emerging AI technologies that frequently make the headlines, the most commonly deployed AI applications today target narrowly defined scenarios that perform boring, repetitive or administrative tasks on behalf of humans,” he said. “These uses of AI aren’t replacing workers; they are performing routine tasks that allow them to better focus on their overall role objectives. This is applicable to every public-sector entity in California, where automating routine tasks can allow the state to provide better services faster to every citizen without increasing staff.”
During his tenure at Microsoft, McCall managed worldwide AI sales and a strategy team that primarily leveraged reinforcement learning and complementary supervised learning methods.
“I am comfortable architecturally with a wide array of AI products and technologies, and strive to consultatively apply AI tools and technology to solve the evolving challenges of modern, distributed enterprises,” McCall said in his LinkedIn profile. “I have historically spent concentrated time in domains including AI, database and data analytics technology, IoT and security. Significant time on systems and robotics programming in C++ and AI algorithm and more general data science programming in Python.”
McCall, based in the Pacific Northwest, is an alumnus of the University of Washington, where he received his bachelor’s degrees in economics and business administration. In addition, McCall has numerous professional credentials and certifications.
