Leading with Kognitive Networks

Michael Small is a chairman and co-founder of Kognitive Networks. He is a wireless industry veteran, most recently serving from 2010 to 2018 as President and CEO of Gogo Inc, an inflight wireless company that went public in 2013 at a valuation of $1.4 billion. Prior to that, Michael served as CEO of Centennial Communication Corp from 1999 until it was sold to AT&T for $3 billion in 2009. He has twice received the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2005 and 2012, and the Illinois Technology Association CEO of the year award in 2013. He has a BA in history from Colgate University and an MBA in finance from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Anand Chari is a CEO and co-founder of Kognitive Networks. He is a wireless industry executive and technologist, most recently serving from 2003 to 2019 with Gogo Inc in various roles, from the first employee of the commercial aviation division to Executive Vice President and CTO.

His track record of innovation includes: over 20 patents; deployments of the first CDMA network in the US, superconducting technologies, and carrier-grade VoIP; and the design, development and deployment of air-to-ground and satellite inflight internet networks.

He has an MSEE from Iowa State University and an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Bryan Lauer is the CTO of Kognitive Networks. He brings over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry and has a proven track record of innovation with over 50 U.S. patents awarded. Prior to joining the K4 team, Bryan was one of the founding employees with Gogo, Inc. where, from 2006 to 2020, he was instrumental to the design, deployment and operation of the first at-scale, global inflight Internet service.

Prior to Gogo, Bryan was an architect for Alcatel Lucent in the wireless mobility division, where he optimized the core service controller for the first widely deployed 3G wireless data system for Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS.

Bryan has a PhD in Physics from Iowa State University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the search for the Higgs Particle at Fermi National Laboratory 20 years before its eventual discovery at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Rishi Potdar is the CFO of Kognitive Networks. He is a Finance, Strategy and Operations leader in Consulting and Industry, most recently serving from 2017 to 2019 as the CFO of the $2+ Billion revenue Sears Online Division.

He held prior roles in Finance and Strategy with Gogo, United Airlines and Booz Allen.

He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering, an MS in Industrial Engineering, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Sanjay Kr Bhartiya is the CRO of Kognitive Networks.  He has over 30 years of experience spanning various leadership roles in building and leading large, globally diversified sales and go to market teams. In his most recent role, he was Chief Commercial Officer for Harman International’s DTS business unit, a subsidiary of Samsung, and was responsible for driving the sales, marketing, and partnerships strategy.

Prior to Harman, Sanjay has led multiple teams at Wipro, Aricent (acquired by Cap Gemini), and Tata Elxsi. He has extensive cross-industry experience spanning Telecom, Retail, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Energy, fire and safety and Banking sectors.

Sanjay holds a BS in Computer Science from Michigan Technological University.

Craig Sylla is a Senior Architect at Kognitive Networks. He has extensive experience in creating embedded systems for the telecommunications and gaming industries.

His prior experience includes two decades in the highly regulated gaming industry, where he was a leader in creating new technologies and platforms for WMS Gaming. During his time in gaming he was named as an inventor on over 100 issued patents covering gameplay, security, and reliability.

After leaving gaming Craig joined Gogo, where he was involved with the next-generation platform and the wireless seatback system in use by Delta Airlines on their new Airbus A220 regional jets.

He has a BS of Computer Science and Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Jared Simon is the Director of Products at Kognitive Networks and brings with him a wealth of experience in RF Design, Electronics Manufacturing, Product Strategy, and Operations.

Before joining Kognitive, Jared worked in Radio Astronomy on frequency synthesizers for the Expanded Very Large Array, electrically steerable antennas (ESAs) for radar and satellite communications in the Phased Array group at Ball Aerospace, and solar-powered tracking devices for IoT and telematics at Telular/AMETEK.

He holds a BSEE from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Justin is a technology leader with more than 2 decades of experience. Over his long career, Justin served as a Network Engineer, Director of Core & Customer Network Engineer, and Director of Solutions Engineer for companies such as General Motors, UnitedHealth Technologies, Aston Technologies, Call One, and Peerless Network.

Prior to joining Kognitive Networks as the Director of Solutions Engineering, he worked as the Director of Solutions Engineering at Peerless Network, a telecommunications firm. During his tenure at CallOne Inc, Justin successfully managed the MPLS Backbone, Voice, Enterprise, Security, and Development Teams.

Justin is a Computer Science graduate from City College of Chicago- Harold Washington College.

A seasoned business development professional, Darryl has held leadership roles in top organizations and has demonstrated continuous sales growth in the marine industry.

Using his extensive knowledge and understanding of consumer behavior, Darryl’s vast network of connections as well as his successful track record have made him an authority in the marine industry.

As such, Darryl brings a unique 360-degree perspective to developing new marine business opportunities for Kognitive Networks.

Rukmani Loganathan is the Director of Engineering at Kognitive Networks. She has extensive experience in defining System Architecture and delivering Software for the Datacom/Telecom and Aviation industry.

Her prior experience includes managing larger team of System Architects and Software developers at Aricent Technologies, responsible for Software deliverables to various clients in the Datacom/Telecom industries ranging from Access routers to Terabit Core routers.

After working for more than a decade on the Datacom industry joined Gogo, where she took multiple roles as Lead System Architect for Airborne Software, Director for Data Center & Proof of Concept Team, Director for Airborne Software development. During her tenure at Gogo, she has been pivotal for many key initiatives like Multi Link Balancer, Wireless Seatback interface, Connected Aircraft Service (IOT), Service Provider Integration, SW to OEM vendors like Airbus/Boeing/Bombardier, to name a few.

She has BS in Computer Science Engineering from India.

Ravi Eticala is an expert in the Embedded and Telecom domain with more than 12 years of experience in the industry. He has served in many functional roles at various high-growth companies. He is highly experienced in containers, cloud-based technologies, monitoring tools, network optimization, load balancing, policing, and performance enhancement.

Prior to joining Kognitive Networks as a , Ravi worked as a Sr. Software Engineer at Comtech EF Data, where he architected and prototyped a southbound interface with capabilities of transactions, telemetry, and transport agnostic protocol. He is technology expert in Golang, C++, YANG, ygot, docker, NATS, Satellite communications etc.

Ravi has a Master’s degree in Embedded Systems from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad.