Dottie Verkade is head of Aetna’s Speech Innovations group, part of the company’s National Customer Operations, Member and Provider Services. In this role, she oversees the company’s leading speech portal -- Aetna Voice Advantage™, Aetna’s speech-enabled, interactive voice response system. There are currently about twenty speech self service and call routing applications for Aetna’s medical, dental, Pharmacy, Mail Order Drug, and other business segments handling more than 50 million calls annually.

Ms. Verkade has extensive Customer Service and Healthcare Operations experience. She was responsible for Aetna Navigator™, the company’s secure self-service member website, which grew to 10 million registered members under her leadership. She joined Aetna as an Information Technology Project Manager in the Personal and Financial Services Division. She gained additional operations experience through other roles at Aetna, including Business Process Reengineering Consultant, and Member Services Program Head.