Executive changes come as the company works to go public via combination with a SPAC
Direct-to-satellite company Lynk has made several major executive changes, bumping up its current COO, former Sprint executive Dan Dooley, to the role of CEO and adding a new president of strategic development, Dr. John M. Olson.
Lynk’s co-founder and now-former CEO, Charles Miller, is now taking the role of chairman of the board.
The changes are effective immediately, Lynk announced.
“As the co-founder of Lynk, I feel extremely fortunate to have built the team that discovered and invented satellite direct-to-standard-phone technology,” said Miller in a statement. “We proved the technology, changed national and international policy, and created a new category within the satellite and mobile wireless industries that could impact the lives of billions. Dan (Dooley) is the right person to take Lynk into the next phase. I am thrilled to support Lynk and Dan in a transition to scale the company to new heights.”
Miller will continue to “evangelize” Lynk’s technology as well as “provide strategic guidance to ensure the company’s transition from an innovative technology company to a scaled commercial success,” according to the company.
Dooley, who joined Lynk in 2021 and whose resume includes a stint as president of the international and wholesale division at Sprint, is now accountable for Lynk’s strategy, all day-to-day operations and commercial activity.
As COO, he has focused on building Lynk’s strategic partnerships with mobile network operators. Lynk says that it is “currently being deployed commercially based on more than 40 MNO commercial service contracts covering approximately 50 countries.”
“Lynk’s mission is to enable MNOs to eliminate connectivity gaps for all of their existing and new subscribers globally, expanding beyond the geographical and economic limitations of terrestrial cell towers,” said Dooley. “As CEO of Lynk, our team will continue to build on our commercial success and focus on scaling our satellite development process—both are key to Lynk’s growth.”
Lynk also brought in Olson as president of strategic development—which includes the government sector. Olson recently retired as a two-star U.S. Air Force general and last served as mobilization assistant to the Chief of Space Operations in the United States Space Force, Lynk said, adding that Olson brings “a pedigree of success scaling and delivering innovative technologies, integrated mission solutions, and world-class commercial services across public and private industries, multiple government departments and agencies, and a broad array of international customers in the space, communications, consumer, and commercial sectors.”
In April of this year, Lynk signed a five-year contract with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to enable U.S federal agencies to purchase its services for unmodified smartphones over the next five years. The U.S. government, including the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies which use satellite services, purchases them through DISA. Lynk’s DISA contract covers an initial period of five years, with another five-year extension possible. Lynk services available under the contract included text messaging, emergency cell broadcast alerts and weather and information broadcast services through Lynk’s LynkCast service.
Olson said in a statement: “I look forward to rapidly implementing innovative and responsive solutions across our public, private, and government client ecosystems to unleash the power and potential of this disruptive technology while positioning Lynk for long-term success in close partnerships with our customers, the entire Board and leadership team, and our key partners across the globe.”
The changes in Lynk’s leadership come following news in late August that the company’s go-public partner, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that was established by former baseball player Alex Rodriguez and the founder of Antara Capital, Himanshu Gulati, was being de-listed from the Nasdaq because the anticipated merger between the two companies was not happening quickly enough.
Lynk and the SPAC, called Slam, had signaled their intention to combine in December of last year, as Lynk’s path to being a public company. SPACs are formed solely for the purpose of merging with another company to take it public, and Slam was formed in early 2021. According to Nasdaq rules, a SPAC must complete one or more business combinations within three years of its IPO in order to stay in good standing with the exchange. Slam made enough progress toward a combination with Lynk that it received an extension of its deadline from the Nasdaq; but because the merger wasn’t completed by August 26, 2024, Slam’s stock was de-listed from the exchange.
While the two companies have said that they still intend to merge and shrugged off the de-listing as a procedural measure that wouldn’t interfere with that process, Lynk did offer a disclaimer in its leadership change announcement that “There can be no guarantee that the parties will successfully or timely consummate the business combination.”
