Wttw:About

Word to the Wise was founded by Laura and Steve Atkins in September 2001. Their flagship software product, Abacus, is the first product specifically designed for the needs of an abuse and security desk. Since it's release in 2001, it has helped networks organize and prioritize the handling of millions of complaints across the US and Europe.

Coming from the semi-conductor industry, Steve brought a strong technical background and coding skills to the company. Immediately prior to founding Word to the Wise, Steve worked as system architect at UltraDNS (now Neustar) designing and implementing a databased backed DNS distributed DNS system. Steve is active in MAAWG and IETF, contributing to the DKIM standard and other groups.

Before founding Word to the Wise, Laura worked at MAPS (now part of Trend Micro) leading their outsourced abuse desk group. Her experience with abuse desk complaints and dealing with customers led to consulting on best practices for email. With her background in molecular biology, Laura is well suited to investigating and troubleshooting complex processes. Her talent for bench research has led to her proficiency in tracking down and fixing email delivery problems for a variety of different sender types. She works with clients to determine what their specific goals are for email, then suggests policies that further those goals.