Ranjit Sen (Founder, Chairman and CEO)
Ranjit Sen was born in Kolkata, India, and permanently moved to the U.S. in 1964.
He was educated in India, Germany, and the U.S. In 1976 he founded Diversified Engineering,
an engineering firm specializing in industrial automation systems. In April 1998
Diversified Engineering was acquired by U.S. Filter Corporation, a public company.
After the acquisition he worked for U.S. Filter Corporationas Vice President and
General Manager until 1999.
Continuing his entrepreneurial streak, Ranjit founded CXI in 2000, at the age of
61. Over the next 7 years, Ranjit successfully led CXI to grow it into a leading
provider of diversified IT services in the mid-Atlantic region.
In his current role as the Chairman and CEO of CXI Inc. (CXI), Ranjit continues
to set the long term vision for CXI, and guides the executive team at CXI on strategic
initiatives.
In addition to being a successful serial entrepreneur with numerous business interests,
Ranjit is a recognized social leader and influencer.
He is a member of the following non-profit and social organizations:
- Appointed by Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine to the Board of Commissioners at
the Virginia Port Authority.
- Board member of American Red Cross
- Board member of Maymont Foundation
- Former board member of Downtown Presents (served in various committees)
- Board member of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Foundation
- Board member of Virginia Performing Arts Foundation
- Board member of Greater Richmond Technology Council
- Member of the Board of Trustees of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of
Business Foundation
- Member of the Board of Directors, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College Educational
Foundation
- Founding Trustee for the Hindu Center of Virginia. Served for 15 years on the Board
of Trustees. Chairman for Festival of India for 13 years
In addition, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College named their new “Smart
Class” in honor of Ranjit and Inge Sen.
Shu Dasgupta (President and COO)
Shu Dasgupta joined CXI in 2000 as one of its first group of employees. Starting
as a sales and recruiting manager, Shu progressively took on more responsibility
as the company grew. Over the past 10 years he has made significant contributions
to CXI’s success in various roles including VP of Sales and VP of Operations, prior
to being appointed in his current role as CXI’s President and COO. The versatile
and hands-on management experience at CXI has given Shu a unique perspective and
ability to lead CXI to its continued growth. He is recognized by employees as well
as customers for his knowledge of the industry, strong interpersonal skills, vision
for growth and leadership skills.
Prior to CXI, Shu held positions of area sales manager at HCL Comnet Systems & Services
Ltd., and business development manager at Ashtech Infotech Ltd., India, where he
was primarily responsible for the business development, sales and marketing of software
and services.
Shu has an MBA in marketing from Rowan University and a BS in computer engineering
from D.Y Patil College of Engineering, India. He also worked as a technical software
professional for 11 years, prior to entering sales and management roles.
Laura Kesler (Vice President, Staffing Solutions)
Laura Kesler joined CXI in October of 2008, and has been a welcomed addition to
the CXI Executive Leadership Team. Laura’s years in the IT Staffing/Solutions industry
have brought a wealth of experience, huge network of loyal contacts and friends,
alogn with a long-standing superior reputation.
Laura started her career in the IT Staffing and Solutions industry with The Experts
(which became CPI and later, MODIS) as an Account Manager. In a short time, she
proved herself to be a consistent top producer, while successfully opening many
new accounts, and grewing her knowledge base in the IT industry. After launching
her career in IT Staffing, Laura moved on to serve an Executive Director at Mindbank
Consulting, where she grew her footprint in revenue to over $25 million. At this
stage, Laura decided to take on a new challenge, which was to build and manage a
new office for Princeton Information in Richmond, VA. After successfully building
the Sales and Recruitment team and sustaining consistent growth over her 10 year
tenure with Princeton, she joined as Vice President of Staffing for CXI. Laura is
an expert in the Staffing industry that brings tremendous value to her clients through
her experience and creative approach to the business.
Laura graduated from the University of Maryland, and resides in Richmond with her
husband.
Terry Hucks (Vice President - Sales)
Terry joined CXI the first of 2010 as Vice President of Sales. Terry has over 30
years of information technology experience in multiple industries; manufacturing,
retail, pharmaceutical, financial, insurance, IT outsourcing companies, and state
and local government. Over the years Terry has managed segments of information technology
departments for fortune 500 companies and also spent 16 years as Senior Vice President
and CIO for Heilig-Meyers Furniture. Merger & Acquisitions experience has been a
major part of Terry’s responsibilities throughout the years. Managing the planning
and installation of large-scale networks, satellite technologies, large-scale system
implementations and implementing multiple of ERP technologies has been his responsibility
in the past. During the course of his career he has spent several years as a consultant.
Over the past several years Terry has been focusing on sales for IT Consulting services
firms delivering solutions that meet customer needs. A salesperson with a delivery
focus applying 30 years of IT business experience for customer’s that may need a
resource to a managed services solution.
Terry attended Wingate University, Virginia Commonwealth University and the Executive
Business Leadership Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Robert D. Walters II (Chief Technology Officer)
Rob joined CXI in 2000 and has been providing system design, development, and testing
of mission critical IT systems for over 20 years. He has in-depth knowledge and
experience working with organizations in the transportation, manufacturing, and
software industries. For more than a decade, he has been analyzing business processes,
developing predictive models, statistical analysis, and data mining. His experience
includes developing interfaces and integrating software applications with enterprise-wide
systems such as SAP, Oracle Applications, PeopleSoft, as well as, numerous custom
applications. Rob has more than 10 years experience integrating new and existing
enterprise systems using technologies including EIP, EAI, OLAP, Data Warehousing,
and XML/XSL. Rob is a gifted communicator and tireless leader of technology teams.
He received a B.S. in Computer Science from the George Mason University.
Sujoy Sarkar (Vice President, SAP)
Mr. Sujoy Sarkar joined CXI in 2001, and is currently the VP for SAP Consulting
Services at CXI. Sujoy has four years of experience in SAP program management and
nine years experience in IT project management and Systems Administration. He has
managed various IT project teams consisting of 20 or more functional analysts and
programmers.
Prior to 2001, Sujoy was worked in the field of mechanical engineering design. He
started his career as a trainee engineer at Uhde India Ltd. located in Mumbai, India
where he designed pressure vessels.
He received a BE in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India
in 2001.
Jose A. Castanos (Vice President – Business Intelligence)
Mr. José A. Castanos has been providing innovative Information Technology solutions
to a variety of organizations for over 15 years. He is a portal expert with experience
in SharePoint, Websphere, and Viador. He has considerable expertise in areas such
as project management, data warehousing, business intelligence, relational and dimensional
database modeling, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), distributed and client/server
computing, Service Oriented Architecture, GUI design, application development, programming
languages, SQL, object-oriented programming, database administration, operating
systems, and network and telecommunications infrastructure.
Prior to joining CXI as a result of acquisition of IndigeTech, a company he co-founded,
José served as the Practice Director for Ciber’s Richmond office. During his five-year
tenure with Ciber and its predecessors, José held positions of increasing responsibility
– including Consultant, Senior Consultant, Data Warehousing Practice Leader, and
Practice Director.
Preceding his stint at Ciber, José worked for The Petroleum Finance Company, Ltd.,
a Washington, D.C.-based oil industry consultancy where he developed the Competitor
Analysis Program – a database management system to track financial, production,
refining, and exploration information for oil companies around the world.
He received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland at College
Park.
Loyal Pridgen (Vice President - Applications)
Loyal has been developing web based applications for over 12 years and Windows-based
applications for over 14 years. He has another 9 years of experience developing
large scale UNIX based applications. Loyal has considerable expertise in a vast
number of areas including data warehousing, programming languages, database modeling,
SQL, Web development, N-tier development, fault tolerance assessment, SQL reporting,
OLAP reporting and managing an NT enterprise. Loyal has 20 years experience with
object-oriented analysis, design, and development. His knowledge of a large number
of technologies allows him great flexibility in choosing the best solution for a
given situation.
Prior to CXI, Loyal was a Principal and founding partner with IndigeTech. Before
founding IndigeTech, Loyal worked with Ciber, where he was recognized to be the
“Center of Knowledge” for Enterprise Information Portals within the entire organization.
Loyal has also spoken at conferences such as Fawcette’s Intranet 97 conference in
San Diego and at Microsoft’s Discovery Days on Visual Studio 6.0. Loyal also spoke
at the Greater Richmond Technology Council breakfast on the topic of Managing Digital
Content.
He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and a M.S. in Computer Science
from Johns Hopkins University
Shankar P. Sarkar (General Manager, Technical Services & Operations)
Shankar Sarkar is a PMP certified Project Manager, joined CXI in October 2002, and
is currently in charge of the Technical Services group and Operations in India.
Shankar has been developing web based applications for over 10 years; he has considerable
expertise in e-commerce web development, retail software, inventory systems, dashboards
using various Microsoft Technologies like .Net, SQL, SharePoint, ASP, VB etc. He
has managed offshore Technical Services project groups in India consisting of 25
or more programmers, testers and leaders for over the last 8 years.
Starting as a Sr. Software Engineer, Shankar has progressively taken on more responsibilities
as the company grew and is currently appointed as the General Manager, Technical
Services and Operations.
Prior to CXI, Shankar held positions with Polar Software Pvt. Ltd as a software
engineer and as Coordinator for imaging group with Inndodata India Ltd.