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Our Executive Team
Telecom Partners
Backed by an experienced management team that has built and operated multiple national wireless systems, NextNav is revolutionizing urban and indoor positioning for public safety and commercial applications.
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Ganesh Pattabiraman
As the Co-Founder and CEO of NextNav, Ganesh is leading the mission to enable the future of geolocation. He is passionate about bringing scale to technologies. Over his twenty+ year career, spanning companies such as Qualcomm, he has led various initiatives in launching terrestrial, satellite based (GPS and LEO), proximity-based location systems into mass market devices – including GPS and sensor based technologies.
Ganesh has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from George Mason University.
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Arun Raghupathy
Arun Raghupathy, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Engineering, runs the development side of NextNav’s operations and oversees its staff in Bengaluru, India. Prior to NextNav, he worked on GPS technologies as an engineer at both Texas Instruments and Qualcomm. He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.
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Christian Gates
Christian Gates, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Development, leads the business development team, manages the company’s corporate partnerships, and contributes to its policy outreach efforts. Prior to NextNav, he was VP of Strategy at SkyTerra. Mr. Gates’ background includes a range of telecommunications and technology ventures, after starting his career in finance. Mr. Gates is a graduate of Dartmouth College.
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David Knutson
David Knutson, SVP of Network Operations and Deployment, is responsible for manufacturing, designing, building and operating the NextNav network. Prior to joining NextNav in 2011, David worked for multiple startups. At American Personal Communications/Sprint Spectrum, he helped launch the first PCS network in the United States. At Telecorp PCS (AT&T Wireless’ largest affiliate), he was the head of Engineering and Operations from inception until its sale to AT&T in 2001. At Cyren Call Communications, he helped pave the way for what is now FirstNet. David also held roles as SVP Outsourcing, EVP Sales and Business Development and COO for a global $250 million revenue services business unit of Wireless Facilities Inc (WFI) focusing on wireless network design and deployment for major carriers around the world.
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Ashish Fanse
Ashish Fanse, Head of Finance, has over 20 years of experience in finance, strategy, and operations with his most recent role as SVP of Finance and Administration at Proteus Digital Health. At Proteus, Ashish helped scale the company from 100 employees to ~300 employees, managed investor relationships, and partnered with the Board & Executive team to help launch the first-ever Digital Medicine platform. Ashish has an MBA from University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s in electrical engineering from UCLA.
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Dan Hight
Dan Hight, VP/GM for Data Partnerships, leads efforts to build sustainable partnerships, leveraging NextNav’s next generation location infrastructure and service for consumer applications, gaming, and other AdTech/MarTech solutions. Prior to NextNav, Dan Hight was an executive at mobile location platform GroundTruth and advisor to media companies, technology platforms and associations. A location media veteran, Hight has created strategic partnerships for the past 20 years.
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Ashutosh Pande
Ashutosh Pande, Vice President of Metropolitan Beacon System Services, has unique industry experience in taking bleeding edge B2B and B2B2C products to market. A specialist in market creation for new technology, Ashutosh pioneered the integration of GPS with cellular phones as early as the mid-1990s and went on to establish SiRF as solution for GPS in mobile phones. He holds over 60 applied and issued patents in area of mobile telephony, positioning technology, and mobile payments. He has a Masters in electrical engineering from the University of Alberta and bachelors from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra.
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Ben Ball
Ben Ball, Head of Marketing, is responsible for establishing and developing NextNav’s brand as it brings a new generation of geolocation products to market. Prior to NextNav, Ben led the marketing content team at BlueCat and ran product marketing for the government vertical at Crossmatch (now part of HID Global). Ben started his career in the US government, where he was a Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State and a Senior Policy Advisor with the Department of Homeland Security. Ben has a MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is a graduate of Pitzer College.
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Jaya Maharajah
Jaya Maharajah, Director of Human Resources, is responsible for employee success at Nextnav. She oversees all HR functions including talent acquisition, culture, and employee development. Jaya has 20+ years of experience in Human Resources with a strong focus on talent acquisition, talent management, executive coaching, and employee development. Prior to NextNav, Jaya led talent acquisition, US immigration, global relocation, and benefits for Knowles Intelligent Audio. Before Knowles, she spent most of her HR career at Cisco Systems, where she worked on multiple HR teams. Jaya joined Cisco through the acquisition of Growth Networks, where she led Talent Acquisition and was instrumental in growing the team. Jaya has a strategic HR leadership certification from Cornell and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Toledo. She is trilingual.
Our Investors
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Gary Parsons
Gary Parsons, the Chairman of NextNav, spent over 45 years in the telecom industry and is noted for the founding or early stage development of a number of innovative telecom companies, including XM Satellite Radio, SkyTerra, TerreStar Networks, Telecom*USA and MCImetro. He served as the founding CEO and then Executive Chairman of XM Satellite Radio from 1997 through its merger with Sirius in July 2008, and continued as Chairman of the combined Sirius XM Radio until 2010.
Gary was a pioneer in the deployment of fiber optic networks in the 80s and 90s and hybrid satellite-terrestrial technologies (such as XM Radio, SkyTerra and TerraStar) during the 2000s. In addition to NextNav, Mr Parsons also serves on the Board of Directors of Omnispace LLC, Siden Inc, Devas Multimedia Pvt Ltd, and is Executive Chairman of Torad Engineering, LLC. He holds a Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Science from Clemson University, a Masters in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina, and is Co-Chairman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Mr. Parsons was inducted into the US Space Foundation’s Space Technology Hall of Fame in 2002.
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Dr. Rajendra Singh
Dr. Rajendra Singh is the principal owner and Managing Director of Telcom Ventures, LLC, an investment firm specializing in telecommunications and related information technologies, and founder of LCC International, Inc., one of the largest wireless telecommunications engineering consulting firms in the world. He has co-founded numerous successful domestic and international wireless operators and was an early stage investor in XM Satellite Radio and Aether Systems. Dr. Singh received a B.S. from the Indian Institute of Technology, earned his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maine, and holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University.
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Peter Barris
Peter Barris joined New Enterprise Associates (NEA) in 1992 and was the firm’s Managing General Partner from 1999-2017. During his 18 years at the helm, NEA’s assets under management grew from $1B to over $20B and the organization scaled its operations to become one of the world’s largest venture capital firms. He has been named several times to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors, Crain’s Chicago 50 Top Tech Stars, Washington Tech Council’s Hall of Fame, and the Washington Business Hall of Fame. Peter serves on the board of public companies Groupon (GRPN) and Sprout Social (SPT) and is currently a director of several private companies including Berkshire Grey, Catalytic, NextNav, Tamr, Tempus, ThreatQuotient, Upskill, and ZeroFox.
Peter is Vice-Chair of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees and serves on the boards of In-Q-Tel and The Brookings Institute. Peter previously served on the Executive Committee of the Board of the National Venture Capital Association and was also a founding member of Venture Philanthropy Partners, a philanthropic organization in the Washington D.C. area. Peter received his BSEE from Northwestern University and his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
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Jim Fleming
Jim Fleming focuses on investments in the cybersecurity, media, and mobile sectors. He is currently a Partner at Columbia Capital, and a director of CPG, Deep Edge, High Band Holdings, Karousel, LB Spectrum, Local Media, Omnispace, SoundHouse, and Vivacity Networks. The Tennis Channel, Tristar, and Extenet. He previously held board seats with AB Spectrum (wireless assets sold to T-Mobile), Altamira (acquired by ClearSky), Baja Broadband (acquired by TDS), ExteNet Systems (acquired by Digital Bridge and Stonepeak), Presidio (acquired by American Securities), Nuvox Communications (acquired by Windstream), TVCC and CCTV (acquired by Light Squared), Mobile Satellite Ventures, XM Satellite Radio, ICG Communications (acquired by Level 3 Communications), Taqua (acquired by Tekelec), WCS Wireless (acquired by NextWave Wireless), and WNP Communications (acquired by XO Communications), and has worked closely with a number of former Columbia portfolio companies including Digital Television Services (acquired by Pegasus Communications) and NeoWorld (acquired by Nextel). Jim received his B.A. from Stanford University.
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Bandel L. Carano
Bandel L. Carano is a Managing Partner at Oak Investment Partners, which he joined in 1985 and became a General Partner in 1987. Bandel is currently on the Boards of Airspan Networks, Centric Software, MobiTV, Mojix, NeoPhotonics, NextNav, nLight, and SmartDrive. Bandel has also led investments in and/or served on the Boards of 2Wire, Avici, CoreTek, Endwave, Fiber Tower, Good Technology, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Netopia, Phononic Devices, Picture Tel, Polycom, Presidio, Protean Electric, Qtera, Sentient Networks, Solarflare Communications, Tegic, Trapeze Networks, Wellfleet, Entropic, Illustra/Informix, Sybase, Tele Atlas, Actel, Airgo Networks, CommQuest, Kenet, Level 5, NanoH2O, NemeriX, Newport Media, Resonext, SMIC, Synaptics, Virata, Interconnectix, Parametric, Synopsys, Tensilica, Wavestream, and Zayo.
Bandel received BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He currently serves on the Investment Advisory Board of the Stanford Engineering Venture Fund.
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Tamara Casey
Tamara Casey has been actively engaged in engineering, operations and technology development of wireless networks since 1985. She is a seasoned, C-Level executive with an extensive network in the wireless, wireline, satellite and technology verticals. Tamara spent a significant portion of her career with Nextel Communications where she was widely recognized for her technical leadership and technology development work. Since leaving Nextel when it merged with Sprint, Tamara has been a successful start-up founder (currently with AURA Network Systems and formerly 4DK Technologies, sold to Radius Networks in 2014) and trusted advisor to globally recognized investment firms. In her work as a technology advisor, Tamara has led technical diligence on opportunities such as Blackberry, Pacific Data Vision (Anterix), Lightsquared (Ligado Networks), SubCom, a carve out of a Mexican wireless company, and many others. As a result of her diligence work on Lightsquared (Ligado Networks) she was asked to be the Chief Technology Officer for two years (upon the company’s exit from bankruptcy). Tamara was appointed to the Board of Director of NextNav in 2019. She holds a Strategic Business Leadership certificate from the Georgetown McDonough School of Business and attended Laney College, where she studied Media Communications (specifically audio and video engineering). Tamara has a wide variety of personal interests and involvement in entrepreneurial ventures. She is currently an active song writer, formerly owned a successful ballroom dance studio and also runs an equine business. Tamara is a licensed, multi-engine rated pilot and an ASA certified sailor.
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Ganesh Pattabiraman
Ganesh Pattabiraman is the CEO and a Co-Founder of NextNav. Ganesh currently holds seven patents and boasts over fourteen years of experience in technology development and management. Prior to founding NextNav, he was the Product Manager of Qualcomm’s location-based services and Director of Product Management at Mobio. He is currently a Board Member at ATIS. Ganesh holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from George Mason University.