The future before the future: OPTX’s Steve Bright discusses AI
co-Founder & co-Chief Executive Officer Brooke Fiumara is the co-Founder and co-CEO of OPTX, the award-winning casino data platform in the gaming industry. Brooke brings a wealth of gaming industry experience and leadership to OPTX, having shaped, and defined gaming solutions and innovation for a wide range of notable hospitality and resort properties across the country. Prior to co-founding OPTX, Brooke served as the Chief Marketing Officer for Warner Gaming overseeing all marketing and business intelligence operations for Warner Gaming’s managed and owned properties, from Four-Diamond destinations to local gaming and tribal properties. Brooke is a proud alumna of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and uses her vast knowledge and expertise in casino operations, marketing, and technology to drive day-to-day operations for OPTX. Brooke’s drive and passion for finding a complete software solution for the gaming industry lead OPTX to a Global Gaming Awards 2022 nomination for Land-Based Product of the Year. With her hands-on involvement in the development of products, she has ensured that OPTX’s cutting-edge technology provides operators with innovative solutions while increasing revenue and profitability Brooke co-chairs the Marketing Committee for the nonprofit organization Global Gaming Women, which supports, inspires, and influences the development of women in the gaming industry along with being a moderator of a lean-in circle, one of the organization’s mentorship programs. Brooke is known for her hands-on approach to leadership, inspiring her team with her passion for service both to her clients and to her team. Brooke was honored by Las Vegas Weekly for being an influential 40 under 40 and was nominated as American Executive of the Year by the Global Gaming Awards in 2022. Brooke’s significant impacts in the casino gaming industry were recognized by the Innovation Group as an honoree of the Emerging Leaders of Gaming 40 Under 40 in 2023. As co-Chief Executive Officer for OPTX, Tom Rafferty is responsible for the development and implementation of OPTX’s overall strategic initiatives. Renowned as a gaming industry thought leader, Tom specializes in identifying specific solutions to eliminate issues for casino operators and gaming developers. With his natural-born intuition and ability to pinpoint emerging technologies, Tom hopes to revolutionize the gaming industry with the OPTX product. Prior to joining OPTX, Tom helped lead growth and innovations for numerous notable companies, including Interblock Gaming – the largest electronic table game manufacturer in the industry and Worldpay from FIS – one of the largest financial technology companies in the world. Tom’s robust resume also includes stints as a software developer, Deputy General Counsel at the Scientific Games Corporation, where he oversaw numerous groups including Intellectual Property and all litigation, and Chief IP Counsel of Vantiv (now Worldpay from FIS). At Vantiv, Tom also oversaw an innovation lab that focused on driving new technologies into the payments industry. Accompanied by a strong understanding of federal procedures, Tom is a registered patent attorney with the prestigious United States Patent and Trademark Office. Tom holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Case Western University and a Juris Doctor from Emory University School of Law. Rukku Rupanagudi brings over 18 qualified years of technical and innovative knowledge to OPTX. He brings extensive experience of casino marketing software languages and player development utilities to the company, offering clients an incredibly diverse range of expertise working with customer relations, cloud adaptation, and data integration. Before joining OPTX, Rukku served as the Senior Engineering Director for Scientific Games – a world leader in the gaming entertainment market – where he oversaw the implementation of innovative loyalty and bonus platforms and developed the gaming industry’s first cashless platform for slot machines. His creative insight led to the development of the casino specific Web Content Management (WCM) – the first cloud solution to update the casino floor in minutes. He is also responsible for creating applications, including Tournaments, Virtual Racing, and Player Boutique, while also creating and deploying a Serverless Mobile App solution and building machine critical, high-performance software for both Cloud and on-site usage. Rukku’s ingenuity and groundbreaking products have pioneered the casino gaming industry and helped his customers gain worldwide acclaim in the Guinness Book of World Records. He holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from India. Rukku was nominated for Top Tech Awards Las Vegas 2022 which honor those who convey outstanding leadership and demonstrated innovation and creativity in delivering lasting results. Steve Bright leads OPTX’s Data Science team, which designs, develops, tests, and monitors new Artificial Intelligence (AI) features for OPTX’s data modules. The data intelligence used by OPTX creates actionable recommendations for casino operators, provides real-time individualized insights to ensure that no actionable player is missed, and empowers teams to spend less time compiling the data and more time implementing strategies that increase guest visitation, revenue, and profitability. Prior to joining OPTX, Steve Bright worked as a Data Scientist in many different industries, and has over 30 published papers in fields ranging from Experimental High Energy Physics to Pharmacovigilance (Drug Safety). He also has several years of experience applying Data Science to problems in the Gaming Industry, including Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to forecast and optimize slot floor performance. Steve holds a B.S. in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago. Steve is also a recreational poker player, gambler, and an avid runner. Steve is a long-time resident of Las Vegas where he lives with his girlfriend Julie, and two German Shorthaired Pointers, Vonnegut and Joey, who are often running together in Las Vegas, training for the next half marathon. Paul Rose’s player development experience spans over 21 years in Las Vegas. As the Vice President of Player Development at OPTX, Paul ensures continued customer success through the platform, facilitates in-depth client trainings and serves as the liaison between the client and the OPTX technical team. Prior to joining OPTX, Paul oversaw all functions of player development for multiple properties with Station Casinos for nearly a decade. Paul served as Vice President of player development for Palms, Red Rock and Green Valley Ranch Resorts, the premier hotel, spa and casino properties within the Station Casinos’ portfolio. As an expert in player development, Paul has established customer relations for casino operators with a focused approach to user experience and information optimization. Paul’s education in business management transcends every area of player development including: data analysis, business development strategy and team management techniques. Founded by former casino operators, we know the difficulties that come with inefficiency. So, we built a company filled with passionate operators that seek to innovate and find better ways to work with data. OPTX is partnered with casino operators across the United States. Our clients range from small, single property operations to large, enterprise operations. OPTX has a solution no matter your property’s size. Other platforms made us jump through hoops to actually get to the data and analytics we needed, so by the time we were ready to act, our team was exhausted. OPTX does all the hard work, so we can utilize the easily accessible analytics and recommendations, in order to take swift action. Being able to use an intuitive tool, like OPTX, to increase our hosts’ productivity is necessary for us to be able to provide the best experience for our players. Our team is ecstatic to have a marketing tool that produces powerful insights to streamline all our campaigns and events. We are thrilled with the powerful analytics and recommendations the Slots and Slots AI solutions provide allowing us to optimize our slot floor, so it just makes sense to expand with more OPTX products for Marketing, Player Development, and Slot Dispatch. Consolidating our other tools into one seamless product will improve the overall guest experience and team member productivity across the casino floor. Our dedicated team is constantly seeking forward-thinking products to increase our profitability, performance and relationships with our guests. This partnership with OPTX will allow us to optimize our casino floor with continuous slot change recommendations, player insights, and visualizations culminating with increased revenue opportunities. We needed to connect all of our casino departments with a modern and powerful tool, and the innovative OPTX solutions provides that and more. We are excited that we will have OPTX’s advanced proprietary AI to guide and assist us as we continue to grow and expand. I have never witnessed a host team so engaged with a product and using it to the best of their abilities. OPTX is the most disruptive technology in the Brick & Mortar and Online casino marketplace. OPTX is a transformative tool for our property helping us modernize the way we measure and manage our business. What impressed us most was that the OPTX team has been in the casino arena and OPTX reflected the solution to the issues that we, as operators, face. With OPTX’s unique single operational approach to data we will be able to optimize our slot floor, marketing campaigns and player development efforts. I can’t say enough about this amazing product. It’s going to be the next generation of successful player development. OPTX positions the property for the future while helping us better manage our operations today. I’m so impressed with the OPTX PD AI tasks, they continue to generate immediate incremental profit for our property. Using the connect feature I was able to select 304 guests, filter out those without email, and do not contact flags within 15-20 seconds, saving me 3 to 4 hours of my night. OPTX is the only platform designed to bring all the data from our land-based and online systems into a single operational solution. The OPTX Platform is next-level! Our team is excited to have a solution that provides powerful insights, an easy way to segment and run campaigns on the database, and an opportunity to view live attributes about our guests. Every piece of our operation will now be streamlined, making us more efficient than ever. OPTX is the only platform that brings all the data into a single operational solution for every level in the organization – General Manager to line level.
Meet Our Team
Brooke Fiumara
Tom Rafferty
co-Chief Executive Officer
Rukku Rupanagudi
Chief Technology Officer
Steve Bright, Ph.D.
Vice President of Data Science
Paul Rose
Vice President of Client Success
Founders’ Story
Our Customers
Testimonials
Kara Sandoval
IT Director and former Interim General Manager
John Meacham
Vice President of Marketing
Adrianna Jiron
CEO
Jim Wild
General Manager
Bryan deLugo
General Manager
Mike Adams
Assistant General Manager
Matt Smith
Chief Marketing Officer
Tim Morrissey
General Manager
Bob Little
General Manager
Jay Tindall
Chief Financial Officer
Sarah Kazhe
Director of Marketing
Eric Barbaro
Executive Director of Casino Marketing
Javier De La Rosa
General Manager
Logan Lovsmith
Player Development Manager
Steven Nino
Chief Information Officer
David Sikes
General Manager
Joe Woody
Chief Financial Officer
Matthew Mingrone
General Manager
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