Our leadership and management teams encompass some of the top minds across the aviation, telecommunications, engineering, media, and ecommerce industries. Gogo wouldn’t be the world’s inflight connectivity leader without them.
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Oakleigh Thorne currently serves as chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president of Gogo. Thorne has approximately 30 years of leadership experience with significant operational and financial expertise including serving as CEO of two prior public companies. He has served on the Gogo Board of Directors since 2006 and was a member of the Aircell Board of Directors, Gogo’s predecessor company, from 2003 until January 2007.
Thorne previously served as chairman and CEO of eCollege.com, an early software as a service business providing learning management solutions to online universities, from May of 2000 until July 2007, when the company was sold to Pearson PLC for $550m.
Thorne also served as the CEO of Commerce Clearing House, Inc. a leading provider of tax and business law information, software, and services. Thorne led the sale of CCH for $1.9 billion to Wolters Kluwer, a Dutch publishing company, in January of 1996.
In 1996 Thorne founded Thorndale Farm, LLC., which oversees the Thorne family’s investment portfolio, including its investment in Gogo and a diversified portfolio of private equity, absolute return, long-only equity and fixed income funds portfolios.
He currently serves as a director of the Duchess Land Conservancy.
Thorne received an MBA from Columbia University and Bachelor of Science in journalism from Boston University. He started his career as a journalist for the Boston Globe and Baltimore News American.
President & Chief Operating Officer
Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Jessica (Jessi) Betjemann serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Gogo Businss Aviation. As CFO, Betjemann leads Gogo’s financial operations including financial planning and analysis, accounting, treasury, tax, and internal audit.
Betjemann brings more than two decades of experience building financial value and managing investment decisions for a variety of companies. She previously served as Gogo’s Senior Vice President of Finance, Chief Accounting Officer and Treasurer since August 2021, after joining the company as Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis in August 2016. Notably, Betjemann helped lead Gogo through the sale of its Commercial Aviation division to Intelsat in December 2020, transforming Gogo into a private aviation-centric business.
Prior to joining Gogo in 2016, Betjemann served as Vice President of Strategic Business Planning at Nokia in 2016 and held several senior leadership roles in strategy and business operations at Alcatel-Lucent from 2007 to 2015. Prior to that, Betjemann held progressive strategy and finance roles at Lucent Technologies and AT&T.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and economics from Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., and a Master of Business Administration degree in finance, marketing and international business from the Stern School of Business at New York University.
She resides in Naperville, Ill., with her husband and has two daughters currently attending college.
Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary
Executive Vice President & Chief People Experience Officer
Karen Jackson serves as Gogo’s Chief People Experience Officer, overseeing Human Resources, Internal Communications, Facilities and Safety, joining the Gogo team in 2015.
Previously, Karen was with Accenture as the Senior Vice President for Human Resources for Acquity Group, a leading Digital Marketing and eCommerce Services company. In this role she was responsible for evolving the company’s vision and talent strategy to support Acquity Group from a start-up through its initial public offering and ultimately, its acquisition by Accenture. Karen previously worked as a consultant and in various operational roles for twelve years helping organizations develop and execute digital transformation initiatives that included strategy development, technology selection and implementation and organizational/talent models to support digital business. Karen has a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
Senior Vice President,Production Operations
Senior Vice President,Business Development
Senior Vice President, Customer Operations
Dave Glenn is senior vice president of customer operations for Gogo Business Aviation. In his current role, he directs many of the company’s customer-facing teams including tech and field support, aircraft applications engineering, network operations, training and data analytics. He drives a customer-centric approach to all aspects of the business, and his teams ensure Gogo’s products, processes and people support the best experience possible. In his time with Gogo he’s overseen the team that ranked No. 1 in customer support for avionics in the Product Support Survey conducted by Aviation International News (AIN). In 2021 Gogo earned top billing in the annual survey, the ninth time Gogo finished first in the past 11 years. Glenn has a diverse background with 25 years of experience across various industries including aviation, internet service provision and software support. Prior to Gogo he held leadership positions with the US Air Force, Covad Communications, and NICE Systems where he led global customer operations and support organizations. He has led global customer operations and support organizations that consisted of more than 1,000 personnel supporting customer bases of 500,000 and greater. Additionally, Glenn has accumulated more than 3,000 flight hours as an evaluator navigator in the United States Air Force. He was a navigator aboard the C-130 Hercules, and was an Air Force 2 crewmember on the VC-137 in the 89th Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy; and a Master of Arts from Webster University.
Senior Vice President, Product & Marketing
Chief Strategy Officer
Senior Vice President, Sales
Senior Vice President, Technology & Operations
Michael Syverson is the senior vice president of technology and operations at Gogo Business Aviation. In this role, he oversees the design, development and delivery of the products and services Gogo provides to the business aviation marketplace. More specifically, Syverson is responsible for product engineering (both software and hardware), certifications, application development, program management, supply chain, manufacturing, and production operations. During his tenure with Gogo, he’s overseen the development of a multitude of products including Gogo Vision, Gogo Text & Talk, and Gogo Biz 4G, in addition to business systems products. Syverson has more than 20 years of experience developing and delivering technology and operations excellence across several industries including aviation, Internet and telecommunications. Prior to joining Gogo, he led various technology and program management organizations for several leading brands including U.S. Cellular, Orbitz, KPMG, and McDonnell Douglas. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from the University of Missouri and is a certified public accountant by the state of Missouri. In addition, he holds Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.
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