1. An apparatus comprising: a storage device configured to store portable voice profiles; and a computer-based system coupled to the storage device, the computer-based system including (1) a speech recognition engine configured to utilize the portable voice profiles in recognizing speech from various speakers, wherein each portable voice profile is associated with and customized to a particular speaker, and enhances an-accuracy with which the speech recognition engine converts the particular speaker's speech to text, and the speech recognition engine includes speaker identification logic to analyze voice signals to identify the particular speaker and then dynamically select a particular portable voice profile associated with the identified speaker; (2) a local group manager-configured to facilitate establishing a local user of the apparatus as a member of a group and to manage access privileges to a portable voice profile associated with the local user according to connections between the local user and other members of the group and instructions of the local user; and (3) a local voice profile manager configured to facilitate an exchange of the portable voice profile associated with the local user with another user that is a member of the group, wherein at least one of the portable voice profiles includes data derived from use with a variety of speech recognition engines.