Meet Acrolinx
Acrolinx is a company where science, technology and language unite. It all started with world leading experts in natural language processing who set out to solve tough content challenges for large organizations. We solved those challenges by creating an AI-powered software platform that improves the quality and effectiveness of enterprise content.
Did you know? — The name Acrolinx is built from the Ancient Greek word ἄκρος (akros) and the word “links”. ἄκρος means “the best” or “the most”. The idea behind the name is that content is the link between companies and their customers — not to mention within the enterprise itself. We help our customers build the best content that connects people across the globe, and “links” to your business goals. After surveying more than 100 people worldwide, the name Acrolinx was a clear winner. Hooray!
Trusted by the companies who care the most about writing standards
“Acrolinx is our content insurance policy”
Mission & people
Our Mission — We envision a world connected by amazing content. So our mission is to supercharge the billions of enterprise content touchpoints that power the global customer experience.
The platform maximizes the value of your content, boosts its quality and effectiveness, and gives you time and money back to reinvest in other higher value activities.
Our People — We’re Luminary Linguists. Scientists of Sentences. Grammar Geeks. Content Crafters, Support Superheroes, Technical Troubadours, Code-conspirators.
We help some of the world’s most valuable brands meet complex content challenges at immense scale — across writers, languages, and cultures. And we have fun while doing it!
Headquartered in Berlin, with offices in the US, our employees work from over 16 countries around the world.
What makes us, us?
These are the values we’ve committed to live by as a company:
Committed to Customers
Our customers are our greatest source of pride, and our collective reason to go to work every day.
Respect and Care
We’re committed — both in and out of the workplace — to promote respect, dignity, fairness, caring, and equality.
We Do What We Say
We focus on keeping and exceeding our commitments, and being fair and honest with the people around us.
We’re Creators
We use our strategic vision, curiosity, creativity, and experience to continually improve the value of everything we do.
We Thrive Together
We’re aligned as a team and we work across departments to create impact and value for our customers.
Lead With Urgency and Agility
We believe that doing our best means we need to evolve quickly and be flexible when a new challenge arises.
Corporate responsibility
We’re committed to becoming a more sustainable business.
Together with our investors, our customers, and our employees, we share the firm belief that it takes action from all of us to achieve peace and prosperity for people and the planet.
We’ve developed a sustainability framework that aligns with our company values and focuses on three main areas: the environment, diversity and inclusion, and social responsibility.
Our entire organization is committed to taking action and investing in these initiatives.
Be the part of the Acrolinx history and the great journey
2022
February - Acrolinx launches new Content Cube capability
May - EMH Partners acquire a significant minority share in Acrolinx
2021
August - Christopher Rummel and Dan Nutburn join as VP EMEA Sales and VP Partners
September - Acrolinx Marketing team wins silver Stevie Award
December - Britta Mühlenberg joins as first Chief People Officer
2020
January - Volker Smid joins as Chief Executive Officer
June - Season one of Content Insiders podcast goes live
2019
February - Acrolinx wins Best Content Marketing Solution at MarTech awards
March - Berlin office moves to Invalidenstraße in central Berlin
September - We earn our KCS Aligned Certification
2018
April - Acrolinx 5.4 launches
October - Shane Cumming joins as first Chief Revenue Officer
November - CMI votes Acrolinx as #1 AI tool for Content Marketers
2017
July - GENUI makes $60 million majority acquisition and equity growth investment
September - Chris Willis joins as Chief Marketing Officer and Jörn Woywat as Chief Financial Officer
November - Acrolinx moves into a Boston-area office
2016
March - We undergo a major rebrand
August - Acrolinx 5.0 launches
2015
November - We host our first user conferences in North America and Berlin
December - Microsoft becomes an Acrolinx customer
2014
February - Acrolinx 4.0 hits the market
2013
May - We kick off our partnership with RWS (formerly SDL)
2012
April - Acrolinx IQ becomes Acrolinx
May - Gartner names Acrolinx a “Cool Vendor”
2011
March - Our platform supports Swedish and Chinese
May - Acrolinx IQ moves to the cloud
2010
August - Acrolinx IQ 2.0 launches with new collaboration features
2009
July - Viewpoint Capital Partners invests to accelerate our global growth
December - Oracle, Caterpillar, and IBM become Acrolinx customers
2008
January - Acrolinx adds support for Japanese
March - Cisco and Adobe become Acrolinx customers
May - Acrocheck becomes Acrolinx IQ
2007
March - Acrolinx moves to a larger office in Friedrichstraße, Berlin
December - Huawei becomes Acrolinx’s first Chinese customer
2006
July - Acrocheck 3.0 launches with new Terminology support
December - Our revenue exceeds $1 million
2005
April - Acrolinx adds support for ASD STE
2004
March - We release our first product, Acrocheck 1.0
October - Symantec becomes Acrolinx’s first U.S. customer
2003
January - We open our first office in Novalisstraße, Berlin
July - Ulrich Callmeier joins as Chief Technology Officer
2002
February - Acrolinx is born! Founded by Andrew Bredenkamp, Sabine Lehmann, and Hans Uszkoreit
Meet the leadership team
Years of experience leading high-growth entrepreneurial companies.
Volker Smid
Chief Executive Officer
Shane Cumming
President
Britta Muhlenberg
Chief Operating Officer
Jorn Woywat
Chief Financial Officer
Curt Raffi
Chief Product Officer
Stefan Kamphausen
Sr. Vice President, Engineering
Noah Weiner
Sr. Vice President, Customers
Mariana Just
Vice President, Marketing
Jillian Wilhelm
Vice President, Global Customer
Jessica Berger
Vice President, People & Talent
Vice President, Sales
Christopher Rummel
Vice President, Sales
Paul Bongers
Vice President, Product Strategy
Jennifer Pohland
General Counsel
Ulrich Callmeier
Co-founder & Advisor
Volker Smid
Chief Executive Officer
Volker Smid is the CEO of Acrolinx and has over 25 years of management experience in the technology and media industry. Before joining Acrolinx, as the CEO of Searchmetrics, Smid contributed his extensive knowledge of the online sector to drive the ongoing international expansion of the Berlin-based group. Before his time at Searchmetrics, Volker Smid was the Head of Digital & Technologies at the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, CEO of Hewlett-Packard GmbH, Vice Chairman of BITKOM, President EMEA and Asia/PAC at Novell Inc. in London, SVP Sales Midmarket Parametric Technology in Boston, Munich, and Tokyo and SVP at POET Inc. in San Mateo, California.
Shane Cumming
President
Shane Cumming is Acrolinx’s President, responsible for alignment and execution across all aspects of the company’s go-to-market model. He leads marketing, new business sales, expansion with existing customers, as well as Acrolinx’s partner strategy.
Shane brings over 20 years of leadership experience in the technology sector. Before joining Acrolinx, he held leadership roles in start-up, mid-size, and large technology organizations, including IBM, Intentia, Lawson, Infor, and Confirmit. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University, Canada.
Britta Muhlenberg
Chief Operating Officer
As Chief Operating Officer, Britta leads Acrolinx’s customer division by ensuring customer retention and satisfaction, and all people-related activities and processes from the talent development and acquisition of employees. Britta has more than twenty years of leadership experience in human resources and operations and she currently leads Acrolinx in aligning to evolving global frameworks such as environmental, social and governance, sustainability, and compliance strategies. She is also responsible for overseeing IT operations, policies and business applications, InfoSec, and Site Reliability Engineering.
Prior to joining Acrolinx, she was the Chief Operating Officer at Searchmetrics, after serving as its Vice President of Human Resources. Before Searchmetrics, she worked in several different HR and people roles at Grand Hyatt Berlin and Höffner Möbelgesellschaft, and was an HR-focused Management Consultant at Accenture. Britta has a record of building, developing, and nurturing high-performance teams. She brings a deep understanding of the importance of caring for an organization and its people, particularly during high-growth periods.
Jorn Woywat
Chief Financial Officer
As Chief Financial Officer, Jörn Woywat is responsible for managing the financial aspects of Acrolinx. He brings over 20 years of financial management experience at high-growth technology businesses. Prior to Acrolinx, Jörn held several positions as VP of Finance and CFO at software companies including Asdis, Swyx, and Schad. He holds a degree in Business Administration from the University of Göttingen.
Curt Raffi
Chief Product Officer
Curt brings more than 20 years of SaaS experience and has a proven track record in leading product management transformations at Bottomline Technologies, Endurance International Group, and Ericsson. Curt has led international product, UX, engineering, data science, marketing, sales, finance, and support teams.
Specializing in product strategy, innovation, and global product management, Curt’s customer-driven approach ensures that Acrolinx continues to meet market and customer needs, while creating sustainable value. Curt is based in the Boston area, has five children, and loves working on old cars in his spare time.
Stefan Kamphausen
Senior Vice President, Engineering
With a degree in Physics from the University of Göttingen, Stefan adds over 20 years of software development and engineering leadership to the Acrolinx team. He started his professional career implementing and publishing AI algorithms, which were applied to pharmaceutical research, financial, and medical data analysis. He also worked in enterprise software development, including SAP. Stefan joined Acrolinx in 2012 and oversees the engineering team. He is also an Open Source advocate and contributor, an author, a conference organizer, and is very fond of Linux, Lisp, and Emacs.
Noah Weiner
Senior Vice President, Customers
As Senior Vice President, Noah is focused on the sustainable facilitation of collaborative accountability across all areas of the organization to maintain and exceed Net Promoter Score, Net Revenue Retention, and Customer Lifetime Value targets. Noah’s extensive leadership oversees Customer Success, Professional Consulting Services, and Technical Account Management, to Customer Support, Support Operations, and Customer Success Program Management at Acrolinx.
With over 20 years of experience in the SaaS industry, Noah was previously Senior Vice President, Client Success at Be Found Online (BFO) and Vice President, Operations & Client Services at SIM Partners. Noah is a passionate, cross-disciplinary manager and change agent with result-oriented fluency in building new operations and growing revenue. Noah brings a record of success with designing and coordinating sales and support initiatives, establishing marketing strategies, building SaaS operational processes for maximizing ROI, and ultimately, maintaining peak customer satisfaction.
Mariana Just
Vice President, Marketing
As Vice President of Marketing, Mariana Just leads Acrolinx’s Global Marketing Strategy. Mariana works alongside Product Marketing, Content Marketing, Demand Generation, and Business Development to drive growth for Acrolinx. She’s passionate about aligning sales and marketing under one common goal and empowering teams to work together to grow revenue.
Mariana has over 15 years of experience and has held key marketing roles at Constant Contact, Biscom and FirstBest Systems (Guidewire). Prior to leading the entire marketing function, Mariana was VP of Demand Generation at Acrolinx, where she played a key role in building and scaling demand generation and business development efforts. Mariana holds a bachelor of Science degree from Northeastern University.
Julian Wilhelm
Vice President, Global Customer Success and Professional Services
As Vice President of Global Customer Success and Professional Services, Jillian is responsible for the entire customer success and services organization at Acrolinx. Jillian works alongside the Customer Success Managers and Linguistic Consulting teams to delight Acrolinx customers and align to the value they expect from their investment in our software.
Content has always been at the forefront of Jillian’s work, which makes her tenure at Acrolinx no surprise. With over 10 years of experience in the SaaS industry, Jillian previously worked in digital marketing and specialized in the SEO space as Director of Client Success at BFO and SEO Team Lead at Oneupweb. Jillian brings a record of success with designing and overseeing customer initiatives and has spent the past five years maintaining and growing Acrolinx’s customer base.
Jessica Berger
Vice President, People & Talent
In her role as Vice President of People and Talent at Acrolinx, Jessica is an effective human resources leader, fostering the growth of teams and individuals alike. Responsible for managing all areas regarding People and Talent, Jessica has a proven track record of driving organizational success through the formulation and execution of strategic people initiatives, underpinned by a hands-on approach.
Prior to joining Acrolinx, Jessica was Head of Human Resources at the Tech Consultancy Core SE and Instrument Systems, a subsidiary of Konica Minolta Japan. Her professional journey also includes pivotal roles at Condé Nast Verlag, Bain & Company, and IFCO Systems, where she honed her expertise across diverse industries. Jessica holds a Master of Science in Economics Psychology, complemented by two Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Management and Personnel Management.
Jeff Hankin
Vice President, Sales – North America
As Vice President of Sales in North America, Jeff is responsible for taking Acrolinx to the market and leading a group of exceptional Account Directors in North America. Jeff manages the pipeline at Acrolinx, while maintaining and prioritizing customer happiness. Fun fact, Jeff has the longest tenure of any Acrolinx employee in North America having spent almost a decade at the organization.
Jeff has an extensive background in content management. In previous roles, Jeff helped companies manage, store, and publish content and now at Acrolinx he helps companies improve the quality of their content. Prior to joining Acrolinx, Jeff was an Account Executive at FatWire Software, as well as Oracle and managed the sale of Web and Document Management, Portal, and Workflow.
Christopher Rummel
Vice President, Sales – EMEA
As Vice President of Sales in EMEA and Asia Pacific, Christopher is responsible for taking Acrolinx to the market and leading all European and Asian Account Directors. Chris also manages the pipeline at Acrolinx, while prioritizing customer happiness.
Christopher has more than 20 years experience in the software industry and vast international experience, working and living in multiple countries. Christopher previously served as a Vice President of Sales at Cloudera, Ellucian, and PTC and has an in-depth understanding of the markets in Japan, Asia Pacific, and Europe. Christopher has a record of building, developing, and managing highly effective sales teams in complex and competitive environments, as well as cultivating lasting customer and partner relationships.
Paul Bongers
Vice President, Product Strategy
Paul Bongers is Vice President of Product Strategy at Acrolinx. Paul is responsible for developing and executing Acrolinx’s product vision.
Paul brings over 10 years of SaaS experience to Acrolinx. Paul is a SaaS all-rounder, having held leadership positions in product, sales, marketing, strategy, and strategic partnerships. Throughout his career he has been based in Berlin, London, New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Austin. He holds Master of Arts (MA) degrees from Lunds University in Sweden and Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.
Jennifer Pohland
General Counsel
As Acrolinx’s General Counsel, Jennifer heads the legal team and is responsible for the company’s legal affairs, including those related to revenue activities, procurement, and GDPR.
Jennifer has over 20 years of experience, including international work experience with a focus on commercial contracts, software licensing, SaaS, and data protection law. Before working at Acrolinx, she was the Director of Legal Affairs at Searchmetrics and General Counsel at Abu Dhabi Media Company. Jennifer holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.) from the University of Texas School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma.
Co-founder & Advisor
Co-founder & Advisor
Acrolinx co-founder, Ulrich Callmeier, is a strategic advisor on Artificial Intelligence. Ulrich has more than 25 years of experience designing and implementing advanced natural language processing systems and holds a master’s degree in Computer Science with a minor in Computational Linguistics from Saarland University.
As a former Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Acrolinx, Ulrich led all R&D, Engineering, and Product Management. Prior to Acrolinx, Ulrich helped lead the development of a new natural language analysis component for customer self-service software provider YY Technologies in Mountain View, CA, and was also part of the research staff at Saarland University.
Compliance at Acrolinx
We understand that compliance isn’t just a checkbox; it’s a cornerstone of our commitment to sustainability. Compliance aligns our operations with the highest ethical and environmental standards. This isn’t just about meeting legal obligations — it’s about being a good corporate citizen and holding ourselves and our suppliers accountable for our actions.
Our dedication to compliance strengthens our relationships with employees, customers, and stakeholders and underscores our pledge to conduct business with integrity. Join us in navigating a sustainable future, where compliance is more than a requirement — it’s a testament to our shared values and our vision for a better, more responsible world.
Whistleblowing policy
Our Whistleblowing Policy guarantees safe, trustful, and quick handling of reported misconduct or observed breaches of our values, policies, and/or laws. We’re partnering with NAVEX EthicsPoint for the collection and processing of cases.
The policy aims at protecting the person reporting a case and potential witnesses from retaliation, providing a framework within which Acrolinx handles misconduct. It applies to any Acrolinx stakeholder: employee, alumni, customer, vendor, and partner.
Compliance resources
For more information relating to Acrolinx’s compliance policies, please see the resources below:
- Acrolinx Code of Conduct
- Supplier Sustainability Policy
- Whistleblowing Policy
- NAVEX EthicsPoint
Get in touch with compliance@acrolinx.com if you have any questions or would like to make a report.
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