Robert John Kost

Transformation

Agent

 

rob@robertkost.com


https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjkost


  


summary

I have been a lawyer for 35 years and am currently licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania and before Commonwealth and federal courts.  I have negotiated and written many hundreds of commercial agreements, some with the largest companies in the country. I am also a technology innovator and business leader; a strategist, technologist, marketer, entrepreneur and Certified Business Architect®.  I have counseled a variety of Fortune 500 clients on digital strategy and tactics and have built my own companies by assembling technologies to solve business problems.  I am currently a partner at Thematix, a New York / Silicon Valley boutique consultancy specializing in semantic technologies and business architecture, providing solutions to major banks, pharmaceutical and travel companies.

Experience

General Counsel Online. Founder and Principal Attorney.  Online, on-demand legal services for the start-up and small businessperson.  Fixed price and subscription-based affordability. A re-formulation of the legal business model for the online milieu. 

Founder and partner of Thematix, a business architecture and semantic technology consultancy, serving financial services, travel, retail and entertainment.  Consult to a wide variety of fortune 1000 clients on business transformation; most recently, Boeing, Merck, Nordea (the largest bank in Scandinavia), Sotheby's (auctions), Disney and Wells Fargo Securities.

Founded and built a New York-based, venture-backed, travel booking system – Portaga, the first of its kind multi-supplier-connect that used the Outlook and Google calendars for drag-and-drop travel management.  It was also the first mobile booking engine.  Aimed at underserved small to mid-size business market.



Co-founded and built a public company -- US Interactive (Nasdaq: USITQ), a 'digital agency' to Fortune 500 clientele, such as American Express, UPS, RCA, Toshiba and Royal Caribbean.  Built and ran strategic consulting group and later New York operations.

Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, teaching a graduate school course in systems and business modeling, covering everything from philosophical foundations to org theory to UML.  Students were in a grad program on communications, culture and technology.

 

Started a career in digital technology at Prodigy (an IBM, Sears, CBS company and precursor to the internet).   Senior Counsel and Product Director.  Wrote and filed a pioneer patent.  Designed a B2B online service working with D&B and Mead Data Central.

 

US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.  Ground-breaking reports on technology and intellectual property.