Our Team

Our innovative products combine leading research and technology in order to provide a growth plan for individualized learning in children, ages three and up. A progression of proven techniques is employed to build fundamental skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. As children learn, our software carefully assesses their personal strengths and weaknesses while providing entertaining learning activities that adapt to meet their needs. Tracked progress is analyzed and shared with parents, along with tips about how to help their children reach their potential.

Azhar Khan

CEO & Co-Founder

Before starting Agnitus, Azhar co-founded Riya/Like.com, a visual/image search company that was acquired by Google. At Like.com, he was responsible for building multiple web properties as well as overseeing company's common technology services, infrastructure, product development, business intelligence (BI), search engine, merchant and inventory operations and IT services. He is also the founder and CEO of Cubus Corporation, an Internet technology company focused on providing project collaboration solutions for the design and engineering industry. Earlier, he spent several years in the software industry in a variety of leadership roles. As Managing Director of BuildOnline, he took on the responsibility of setting up a new product development center in Bangalore, India. At Autodesk, Azhar was responsible for developing and launching the Developer Relations program and the AppStore for AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max. Azhar started his career as a Software Engineer with Ithaca Software, which was acquired by Autodesk. He holds five patents and has a bachelor of science in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University, as well as a Masters degree from Stanford Business School, where he was a Sloan Fellow. He resides in San Francisco and serves on the advisory board of the Materials Science & Engineering Department at Cornell University and several technology startups in Silicon Valley.

Haris Khan

Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder

Haris was co-founder and CEO of WorkforceGrowth, a talent performance management company that he bootstrapped and made profitable within a year of founding. Before WorkforceGrowth, he cofounded Zigron and led the strategy group in the areas of product innovation and user experience. At Zigron, he led the design and development of Verizon's Thinkfinity portal for educators and parents to explore and share educational content from National Geographic, Kennedy Center, PBS, etc. Before Zigron, Haris worked as a consultant for Sapient's Fortune 500 clients on technology and branding strategies. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University.

Lance Vikaros

Executive Director of Education

Lance Vikaros started as a developer of educational software for Scholastic, and has since been teaching computer science and innovating in the design and production of educational technology at the MIT Media Lab, Intel, NASDAQ, Lexia Learning, and more. He designed video games for social networks with Large Animal Games while completing an educational doctorate degree and teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. His latest Facebook game achieved over 1 million monthly active users in less than 2 months, and exceeded industry standards for average revenue per customer. Lance, received two bachelor degrees from Cornell University multimedia design and cognitive psychology, as well as an educational technology Masters degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His doctoral research focused on new approaches to embedding invisible assessments into educational video games.

Jillian OrRico

Director of Educational Partnerships

Jillian heads up all educational partnerships, marketing and business development for Agnitus working with parents, organizations and schools in multiple countries around the world. She has spent the past 12 years as the lead business development and sales person for a range of companies including Yahoo and Google. She specializes on launching new products and programs for start-up technology companies within new and different industry verticals, channel partner development, product marketing and online advertising. She was also a teacher at the Lycée Gaston Berger in Lille, France and is still actively involved with her personal passion, early childhood language education in Portuguese, French, Spanish and English. She was a Division I, NCAA Athlete at Clemson University where she graduated with a degree in Language and International Trade. And most proudly, she holds the title of "Mamai" - mother of 2 of our resident Agnitus scholars.

Heather Browning

STEM Game Designer

Heather has an MS from Schumacher College. Her master’s thesis focused on applying games as pedagogy. Specifically how games can be used to foster compassion, create community, and motivate prosocial behaviors. Heather has a bachelor's degree from Hampshire college focusing on cognitive development and pedagogy. Following on research from her advisor’s work at Harvard’s Mind Brain and Education program creating the Lexical Assessment System, her thesis measured the cognitive impact of various teaching methodologies to explore whether it is possible to promote the development of more complex reasoning with different styles of instruction. She used this research extensively in her years as a math and science teacher and has continued to apply this to her work in educational games, including Games for UC Berkeley’s Social Apps lab and San Francisco’s Come Out and Play.