Management Team

Paul Klimek

Paul Klimek

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Paul is an American business and social entrepreneur who has held various positions before becoming CEO at Apptical Corp.

Paul began his career in 1987 at List Industries. He implemented Material Requirements Planning II (MRP II) where three predecessors with a combined 60 years of data processing experience had been unsuccessful.

While at List Industries, he earned his MBA from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida until he founded Apptical in 1988. Apptical provided data processing services for Credit Unions. Paul led the implementation of numerous solutions including data on demand in 1992 and an upgrade from microfilm to image storage in 1998. The data processing operation was acquired in 2001 by Intercept, a publicly traded company.

In 2002, Apptical acquired the Assets of JR Health, a teleunderwriting provider serving Life Insurance companies. The firm had had no automation relying on pen and paper to collect data, file cabinets for storage, fax for communications and a basic a phone system with cassette tape recorders by each phone. Paul designed and developed the initial version of Apptical’s telephone interview platform from the ground up. After teaching himself to object oriented programming, he was the system architect and wrote every line of code for Apptical’s three flagship products: LiveApp, SoundDecisions, and PURE. Some of the products are still in use at the firm today. In 2010 Paul added nine software development positions to the company and currently oversees the team as they develop and enhance the succeeding version of the company’s flagship products.

Paul has performed various duties as a volunteer at Ronald McDonald’s Children’s Charities, The American Cancer Society, The Boca Raton Youth Athletic Association, The Soccer Association of Boca Raton, Boca Hoops, and currently sits on the Board of Directors of The Best Foot Forward Foundation.

Paul currently resides in Boca Raton, Florida, with his wife and three sons.

Alison Douglas

Marketing Director

She previously served in the accounts receivable for management services at United Biscuits Ltd UK.

Some of her accomplishments include:

  • Designed and created Apptical’s new corporate website.
  • Has established excellent relationships with convention management teams.
  • Submitted a logo napkin design idea for the AHOU insurance convention, which was accepted and given first right of refusal annually, to be used throughout the entire convention.
  • Was promoted in one month to the live lead department where she was responsible for representing and selling at least one business opportunity a month ranging from $20,000- $30,000.

Alison has been involved with the Missing and Exploited Children’s Foundation for 6 years and has been responsible for organizing and participating in various fundraiser events. Most recently she has become involved with Camp Boggy Creek, a camp for chronically sick children.  The camp runs solely on donations and does not charge the children or the parents to stay at the camp. She also helps manage three basketball teams every year.

Alison studied an Advanced Diploma in Business, Admin, and Finance Level 3 and graduated with distinction from Southport Technical College, Southport, UK.

She currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida with her husband, Paul, and three sons.

Ann Dudte

Director of Professional Services

Ann is responsible for developing the requirements and conversion to the new versions of Apptical's software as well as acting as the business sponsor in the agile development environment that Apptical uses.

Previously, she was Manager of Model Office/Production Support at Great American Insurance and Business Technical Consultant at Nationwide Insurance.

Some of her accomplishments include:

  • Chosen for and graduated from the Nationwide Leadership Development Program in 2004
  • Chosen as a corporate award winner for Customer Service/Professionalism in 2001
  • Acted as the primary business partner for major system enhancements -- providing requirements, determining impact, and managing service center system communications.
  • Created a programmer business education at Nationwide that was widely received and attended. Introduced similar program at Great American.

Ann enjoys helping out at the local food pantry and organizes a social support group for Infertility Awareness.

She graduated from Marietta College in 1996 with a BS in Mathematics and received an MBA from Franklin University in 2000.

Ann is married, lives in Amelia, Ohio and enjoys camping, travelling, and attending live sporting events.

Peggy Bartraw

Peggy Bartraw

Director of Operations

Peggy Bartraw has numerous years in the business to business customer service, management and training fields. She started out with Olan Mills as a sales rep and has worked her way into executive management. While at Olan Mills, she was a primary driver for fund raising in support of the Children’s Miracle Network and supported her church youth department. She also served as the Director, Customer Service for Medtech and Director of Customer Service/Operations Source Access Inc. Prior to Apptical, she served in a business analyst role at Chesapeake Insurance in Oklahoma City.

Some of her previous accomplishments include:

  • Improving photographic quality from poor to above average while regional photographer supervisor Olan Mills.
  • Successfully developed, tested and implemented new software for Medtech.
  • Helped to start Source Access, Inc.
  • Developed a plan for a company wide scanning project that was met ahead of schedule while at Chesapeake insurance.

At Apptical, she has already successfully converted from a brick and mortar to a virtual call center, reducing average wait times to less than 30 seconds.

She is active in many local charities and is currently involved in a fundraising project for CMN. 

Peggy is a Certified Paralegal from Oklahoma Christian University and is married with three children, all who have all served in the armed services.

Rodrigo Bastias

Director, Information Technology

Rodrigo has successfully migrated Apptical systems to work in the cloud and has worked on virtualization of the production and development environments.

Previously, he served as Software manager / Architect for Bankrate Inc. and Senior Software Engineer for Phoenix Software systems.

Some of his accomplishments include:

  • Designed and implemented a secure and highly reliable/available Cost Per click (CPC) system changing the business paradigm from a flat fee schema to a cost per click model. This system interacts with most of the business systems already in place.
  • Implemented a custom CMS system to help management and distribution of articles. This data is then used to create custom feeds in a variety of formats. (Xml, rss, custom)
  • Microsoft .NET Framework early adopter. (Microsoft Campus, Redmond, WA)
  • Designed / Implemented a system to store, manage and publish rate information utilized throughout the enterprise in its core rate listing products.

Rodrigo completed a Software Architecture Professional Certification from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007.

Rodrigo lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and enjoys the beach, hockey and travelling.