Responsibilities Include Accelerating Aventiv’s Corporate Transformation and Improving Consumer Experience with Expanded Suite of More Affordable Products and Services

Aventiv Technologies today announced that Alex Yeo has joined the organization as its inaugural Chief Product Officer and General Manager. In this role, Yeo will help accelerate the company’s multi-year transformation and oversee all Aventiv product offerings across the company’s various business lines, including Technology, Media & Communications; Payment Services, Monitoring Solutions; and Post-Incarceration Services. His focus is on enhancing the customer and consumer experience through new product innovation; existing product improvement; and improved affordability and accessibility. He is also charged with expanding touch points for listening to incarcerated individuals and their families.

“Our consumers deserve high quality, reliable products and Alex Yeo has a proven track record of creating outstanding consumer experiences. He has done it in challenging environments while ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, and affordable prices,” said Dave Abel, President and CEO of Aventiv Technologies. “We look forward to working with and learning from Alex as we improve services and expand our product portfolio to better serve our customers.”

“I am thrilled to be joining Aventiv Technologies and working alongside a talented, forward-looking team,” said Alex Yeo, General Manager at Aventiv Technologies. “Our technology is modernizing a previously archaic industry and I look forward to accelerating our focus on the consumer experience. I’ve already initiated a review of our product portfolio and I’m excited to deliver even more affordable and accessible services for our consumers”

Yeo will work closely with Russell Roberts, leader of Aventiv’s correctional agency customer team, to strengthen commitments to both customer and consumer stakeholders. This partnership will help Aventiv continue to increase the affordability of their communication products, while providing correctional agencies with the support they need to protect public safety.

Yeo is a seasoned C-suite executive with over ten years of leadership experience. He was most recently President for Canadian Retail at The North West Company, where he serviced rural and developing communities in Northern Canada.

In a past role, Yeo was responsible for operations strategy across 1,300 restaurants at McDonald’s and was key in growing the business through initiatives like online ordering and digital marketing. He also led and delivered multiple large, digital enterprise transformation engagements as an executive consultant at McKinsey & Co.

Yeo is the latest addition to Aventiv’s new and increasingly diverse leadership team. Last year, the company added four new executives from a range of industries and backgrounds. Earlier in 2021, the company announced that Yusef Jackson joined the company as a senior executive and advisor to the ownership team. Aventiv has also partnered with Korn Ferry to broaden recruitment efforts for the company’s entire workforce.

The leadership changes come amid Aventiv’s broader corporate transformation, which is centered on deepening the affordability and accessibility of the company’s products and services. In 2021, the company made significant strides against its goals, including:

  • Providing 95 million free connections between incarcerated individuals and their loved ones since the beginning of the pandemic, increasing accessibility at a time when in person visitation was limited by COVID-19.
  • Reducing the average per minute cost of calls to an all-time low of $0.13, down from almost $0.15 per minute one year ago.
  • Renegotiating more than100 contracts with corrections agencies to reduce costs and eliminate the company’s highest historic outlier rates.
  • Offering more cost saving initiatives, such as discounted stamp packages, free eCards, free-reply-Wednesdays as well as free and discounted premium media were provided in 2021 than in any previous year.
  • Conducting a thorough review of all products and services to ensure that they are aligned with new affordability commitments, resulting in withdrawn patent applications and plans to eliminate outdated services.

Aventiv will announce the full range of transformation achievements reached in 2021, as well as its expanded goals and commitments for 2022, in the coming weeks.