Leadership bios

Bob Plaschke - Chief Executive Officer

Bob Plaschke recently served as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Sutter Hill Ventures focusing on wireless investments. Before joining Sutter Hill Ventures, Bob was senior vice president of worldwide client services at InfoSpace, where he was responsible for the implementation of wireless data solutions for the company's worldwide group of carriers. Before joining InfoSpace, he was Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Business Development at Prio, a wireless and wireline promotion infrastructure company. Bob earned an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago and received his undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Northwestern University. back to top

Joakim Wiklund - Chief Technology Officer
Joakim Wiklund is a wireless technology veteran. He was one of the founding members of mobile giant Ericsson's GPRS team based in Stockholm, Sweden that built and delivered the first GPRS end-to-end network solution, Joakim had full responsibility on the technology aspect of the product. In his 15 years at Ericsson, he fulfilled technical, product and line management roles. Joakim moved to the U.S. in early 2000 as Director of Ericsson's Wireless Center in Silicon Valley. He was instrumental in guiding the Ericsson Sonim OEM relationship and Sonim's contribution to the Push To Talk over Cellular (PoC) standard development. back to top

Hossein Saadat – Executive Vice President, Operations/Manufacturing & Engineering
Hossein Saadat has over 18 years of experience in global operation & supply chain management.  He started his career as a professor of Applied Mathematics at Southern University  in Louisiana from 1984 till 1989.  He then joined Solectron Corporation, where the company was operating only in one site. Hossein continued his career at Solectron over seventeen years where he held many different executive positions and by year 2000 Solectron was world largest contract manufacturer in EMS industry.  Prior to his departure, he was the VP of Worldwide Operation for Enclosure and System Integration division.  From 2006 to 2007, he was the President of Enclosure System division at Sanmina-SCI.  Hossein is the author of CFT (Customer Focus Team) through cross functional team where in 1994, he was interviewed by NPR (National Public Radio). back to top

Jonathan Michael – Chief Financial Officer
Jonathan Michael brings 20 years of financial management expertise to Sonim. His background includes a wide array of accomplishments in both corporate and start-up environments.  Prior to joining Sonim, Jonathan served as the Chief Financial Officer of Solyndra, a high performance photovoltaic company.  Jonathan guided Solyndra in securing the financial support of leading venture capital firms. 

Jonathan's background also includes experience in mobile technology, having served as CFO at IXI Mobile, a leading provider of innovative mobile software and devices.  During Jonanthan's tenure at IXI, he was involved with significant growth of the company.   In addition to Jonathan's many accomplishments in financial management, he is an active athlete, dedicated to conquering the world’s toughest climbing terrains on his bike. back to top

Jan Erik Forslow - Vice President, Product Management
Prior to joining Sonim, Jan co-founded ipUnplugged, a Mobile-VPN startup with funding from Swedish and Japanese investors. With ipUnplugged Jan developed a new kind of router and corresponding PC software for mobile users. During his four years at ipUnplugged Jan acted as CTO and represented the founders on the company board. During Jan's leadership, ipUnplugged signed contracts with clients such as NEC, Cisco, CapGemini and NorskHydro. Jan has also worked as a Product Manager for Ericsson Datacom and System Leader for Ericsson Radio, and as Senior Research Engineer for Bellcore. Previously, Jan was the Assistant to the Attaché at STATT (Swedish Technical Attaché Office) charged with reporting news from the US telecommunications industry. Jan has a Master of Science degree in Industrial Economics from Linköping Institute of Technology, Sweden. During Jan's first year He has been directly responsible for Sonim's strong involvement in the Open Mobile Alliance Push-to-Talk standardization efforts, and for developing Sonim's patent and product strategies. Jan grew up in Sweden and is currently living in San Francisco. back to top

Javor Kolev - Vice President, Mobile Phones
20 years wireless telecommunications experience: 16 at Ericsson and Sony Ericsson Mobile phones and 4 at Sonim in a start-up Silicon Valley environment. Javor started his professional career at Ericsson Mobile Phones in Sweden 1988 and built the first Ericsson mobile phones. Worked on SW development managerial positions in Sweden and, form 1995, in NC, where he managed SW Systems for the SE handset portfolio. At present, Javor is a VP Mobile Phones and a Total Handset Program Manager responsible for the design, development, industrialization, commercialization and manufacturing of a portfolio of highly specialized Sonim-branded VoIP-enabled GSM handsets. The program involves own D&D in India, design house and manufacturing in China. Javor holds a MS in Computer Science from Lund Technical University, Sweden, and is multilingual. back to top

Rakesh Verma - General Manager, IDC
Rakesh has a total of 25 years of experience in software industry and he brings in core experience of more than 12 years in telecommunication and mobile devices development. He started with Indian Space Research organization where he worked on pre-launch checkout of India's indigenous satellite launch vehicle PSLV from 1983 to 1990. After the R&D stint, he moved on to services industry. At Siemens, he worked in telecom domain to get the Siemens network management project moved to Bangalore. He joined Wipro in 1998 and was in the startup team when Wipro started the Embedded systems group in 1999. He was sub-vertical head of Mobile Development and Applications (MDA) group at Wipro Technologies and later moved to MDA group when it became separate vertical. As Director, Engg in Kyocera Wireless,India, he headed the Software business unit and later handled hardware, mechanical, industrial engineering, systems engineering and human factor engineering verticals for development of low, mid and high tier CDMA handsets. Rakesh was in the management team of Kyocera Wireless India Development Centre, during which Kyocera India grew strategically to double its strength. Before joining Sonim he was working as freelance consultant. Rakesh did his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad in 1983. He did a condensed MBA program at Wipro organized with the esteemed Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He has been a process pioneer all through and is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt.