About Us

Cognota is the first Learning Operations platform.

It allows corporate Learning & Development leaders
to make data-informed decisions and business cases,
while their team members enjoy a more efficient
workflow. We do this by bringing important parts of
their daily work, such as training intake and design, that are typically scattered across
tools into one software.

Our Mission

Enable more people to learn and grow, by
powering L&D across the enterprise.

Learn About Our Values

Join Our Team

Visit our Culture Blog

Meet Our Leadership Team

Ryan Austin

CEO
Samson Zhao

Samson Zhao

VP of Finance & Operations
brad marcoux CISO cognota

Brad Marcoux

CISO

Rebecca McDougall

VP of Customer Success & Education

Darren Card

VP of Product Management & Product Design

Ara Cruz

VP of People Ops & Culture

Liz Vertheim

VP of Sales

Matt Ball

VP of Engineering & Data Science

The Six Core Values, Which Guide Everything We Do

Embrace Uncertainty

We aim high, and think big. Roll up your
sleeves, and don’t be afraid of pursuing
a challenging goal.

Break Down the Walls

We encourage everyone to share their
ideas and contribute in new ways.

Keep it Win-Win

Each interaction is a partnership in
which everyone wins — be they
customers, employees or other
stakeholders.

Enjoy the Ride

We know that building a great company
is hard work. So, while we push
ourselves, we make work fun.

Be Better than Yesterday

We learn by facing challenges most
people would run from. By pushing these
boundaries, we’re always improving.

Drive the Wow Factor

We are obsessed with creating great
experiences. Every decision offers the
opportunity to go that extra mile to make
magic happen.

Our Story

From Training Services to Learning Operations

Cognota was founded in 2015. Ryan Austin was running a training services business when he learned, firsthand, how difficult it was to produce high-quality training at scale. Processes were manual, time-consuming and generally inefficient.

His plan to build software that would bring the Learning & Development workflow into one platform got media coverage in Austin, Texas, where he was working. A Fortune 10 company got wind of the article and became Cognota’s first customer before the product was even built.

Today, Cognota’s many customers do much of their daily work in the platform, generating insights for L&D leaders to make defensible, data-informed decisions. On top of this, to empower L&D organizations to develop strong and scalable learning operations processes, customers rely on Cognota services such as CLO coaches and our LearnOps® community. By offering all this, Cognota powers L&D across the enterprise.

Ryan Austin founded Cognota to solve a problem he was experiencing running a consulting company that developed learning solutions for its customers.

Managing and developing training programs was time consuming. And using different tools for intake, planning and design — such as spreadsheets and project planners not built for L&D — created more slowdowns and collaboration issues.

A local paper got wind of what Ryan was considering developing to solve this problem and asked for a meeting. After hearing the vision, and before a line of code was written, Cognota had its first customer.

Reach out to learn more.

To learn more about Cognota and our mission, feel free to reach out or follow our social channels.

Reach out to learn more.

To learn more about Cognota and our mission, feel free to reach out or follow our social channels.

About Us