Meet our
Senior Leadership Team

Philipp is a German-Australian entrepreneur with in-depth technology expertise honed through his BSc IS and MSc IS in Business Information Systems from universities in Germany, Australia and the US, and establishing and working for companies across Europe, APAC and North America. From the seed of an idea, alongside Sascha Poggemann and Benjamin Mayr, he founded Cognigy in 2016 to revolutionize enterprise customer and employee experience through Conversational AI.

Prior to founding Cognigy, Philipp held positions at SAP and Sitecore, where he established Sitecore’s presences in Australia, New Zealand and later leading sales for all global markets. His passion for excellence runs through Cognigy’s DNA and under his leadership as CEO, the company has grown exponentially since its formation.

Sascha is an expert and leading voice in the Human + AI movement, focusing on seamless human-machine interaction in enterprise applications. After achieving his MSc Information Technology, prior to co-founding Cognigy he held senior positions including Head of Technical Development at iExergy. During this time, he headed up new products, services and business models, leading international teams in areas including technology scouting, business development, team management and project development, along with IoT and cloud technology development. 

Owing to his technical expertise and experience as a founder, Sascha is much sought after as a speaker on emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship. He is also an Executive Board member of Bitkom, Germany’s digital association, representing more than 2,000 companies of the digital economy and with membership spanning more than 1,000 SMEs, over 500 start-ups and virtually all global players.

Benjamin has extensive expertise in designing and building highly scalable software systems that run on Kubernetes. His knowledge of containerized software systems is one of the driving factors behind the success of Cognigy and its products. He holds a BSc in Software Engineering and was an early adopter of containerized software solutions before this became an industry standard.

Prior to joining Sascha and Philipp in their mission, Benjamin worked as a Software Consultant and developed individual software solutions for a range of different industries, including medical, automotive, gaming, and social media. Over the past few years, he has not only introduced all the relevant software development processes for an Engineering department of more than 50 people but has also ensured that Cognigy continuously delivers innovation to their customers.

From a professional perspective Philip is a digital native with more than twenty years of professional experience in the digital industry at Bertelsmann Multimedia, comdirect and AOL. After that Philip switched to the strategy consulting side with focus on digital transformation and M&A. With this experience he took his first CFO position for a gaming start-up that he successfully sold to a strategic investor.

For the last ten years he lead Content Fleet to an exit to STRÖER as a CFO and grew the company based on a buy and built strategy as a CEO. Philip holds a degree in Economics and Game Theory and developed a profound skillset to scale companies efficiently. 

With over two decades’ experience in the contact center and unified communications space, Hardy’s past leadership roles include serving as CEO and CFO as well as holding senior positions in business development, partnerships, strategy and corporate development at industry-leading companies including AVAYA, Intradiem and AVST. In his current role, Hardy works closely with Cognigy’s co-founders and its senior management team to develop the company’s strategic priorities, secure and activate partnerships, and implement the optimal business processes to achieve Cognigy’s strategic and financial objectives.

Residing in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife Diana, Hardy’s many personal activities include cooking, cycling and spending time with his five children.

An innovative HR leader, Alexandra has strong experience of delivering impactful HR management across a diverse range of industries, including 10+ years in Tech. Her particular expertise lies in the implementation of successful change management and performance management tools, designed to support and develop organizations from start up to scale up to meet the demands of hyper-growth companies.

Passionate about diversity, inclusion, effective training, development and recruitment processes, Alexandra’s focus is on driving performance and retaining talent in the global economy. In addition to her in-depth practical experience, she holds a Master of Management in Human Resource Management and Marketing, and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences.

With a career spanning 30 years, Alan has held a variety of sales, marketing and leadership roles, both in start-up and large enterprise software companies. Before joining Cognigy, he led global market development at LivePerson where, during his six-year tenure, revenues doubled from $223m to $470m. As Cognigy’s VP Marketing, Alan’s focus is on leading and inspiring his high-performance global team to deliver programmes across branding, product marketing, demand generation, events and social media.

Alan is also responsible for leading market expansion in high growth regions such as the USA and UK, and building a global community of Cognigy advocates, including customers, industry experts, partners and prospects. In his spare time, he is a volunteer puppy trainer for the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People charity and was a coach and referee at his local junior rugby club for 11 years. Alan maintains that training dogs is easier than children!

Thijs’ wealth of experience includes working as an Enterprise Integration Architect at one of the leading Mulesoft (Salesforce) partners in Benelux and as a Management Consultant in Germany. As one Cognigy’s first employees, he was instrumental in building up the Enablement and Presales teams globally. He currently leads a global team of Solution Architects and Sales Engineers to help Customers and Partners get optimum benefits from the Cognigy platform. In his role, Thijs also works closely with Product and Product Marketing on R&D and new features, supports Sales and Customer Success management to run successful pilot projects, and helps technology partners to utilize ecosystem synergies effectively.

Whether it’s 3D avatars or the latest in AI, Thijs is passionate about new technology, and enjoys tinkering with it and finding new applications. In line with his professional qualifications, including ITL Foundation Certification, Professional Scrum Master Certification and AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder, he thrives on working with strategic concepts, while also being hands-on when trying out new ideas.