KEITH COWAN

Keith Cowan is the Chief Strategy and Development Officer of Rivada Networks Inc., a global developer of satellite and 5G terrestrial broadband communications networks and a provider of wholesale and open access wireless platform services.

He currently serves as a Board member and a member of the Strategic Review Committee of Globalstar (GSAT), and as the Board Chair of several privately held companies (including Aegex Technologies and Cobra Legal Solutions). He also serves as the Chief Executive Officer of NVR3 LLC (doing business as “Venadar”), a privately held strategic advisory firm that provides outsourced business development services to both public and private company clients, with an execution emphasis on accelerating growth and innovation through cross industry partnerships and through partnerships with or investments in emerging growth companies with innovative products, capabilities, solutions, and technologies. Venadar has served over 40 Fortune 500 companies in the past ten years, including industry leaders like AT&T, Nestle, Tyson Foods, Kimberly-Clark, Cigna Healthcare, and The Coca Cola Company.

Prior to 2014, Keith spent eighteen years as an executive officer in the telecommunications industry with Sprint Corporation (President of Strategic Planning and Corporate Initiatives) and BellSouth Corporation (Chief Development Officer), specializing in strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and joint ventures, corporate venture capital investments, intellectual property management, marketing, and network operations. During his careers with both BellSouth and Sprint, Mr. Cowan was responsible for structuring, negotiating, and obtaining board and shareholder approval for over thirty joint ventures, including several of the largest and most complex transactions in the telecommunications industry, including BellSouth’s joint venture with SBC (creating Cingular Wireless, now AT&T Wireless), Sprint’s multi-party alliance with Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others to build the first 4G network in the U.S. (Clearwire), and Sprint’s sale of control to Softbank.

Prior to joining BellSouth in 1996, for fourteen years, Keith was a practicing attorney and partner of Alston & Bird LLP, focused on the execution of capital markets and M&A transactions, and providing corporate governance and general Board advice.

Keith also serves on several foundation, educational and civic boards, including serving as the former Chairman of the Morehead Cain Scholarship Fund in Chapel Hill, N.C., as a Trustee of the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut, as the Vice Chairman of the Board of the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, and as the Vice Chairman of the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance. He previously was a long-time member of the Board of the Metro Atlanta YMCA and the Georgia Conservancy.

Keith was born in Hartford, Connecticut. His parents were both from Springfield, Massachusetts, and he was raised in Windsor, Connecticut, the oldest town in Connecticut being founded in 1633. He attended the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut, before attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar, and from which he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science. He also has a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.