Connectria's Leadership Team

Rich founded Connectria in 1996 and brings more than 30 years experience as a successful entrepreneur and senior manager of both Fortune 100 firms and technology start-ups. Rich began his career in sales with NCR Corporation (acquired by AT&T) and years later established companies ranging from Disaster Recovery Services to Enterprise Systems Management.

Initially created as a technology consulting organization, Connectria evolved into managed hosting through the unique disaster recovery requirements of a client, Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s largest financial institutions.

Since then, Rich has led Connectria to become a profitable company with global reach.

Rich holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration from the University of Missouri, and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Chris is responsible for directing the finance, accounting and human resource operations. Having joined Connectria in 2017, Chris brings with him more than 23 years of accounting and finance experience.

Chris has held positions with organizations, both public and private, ranging from mid-size to Fortune 25 companies, many with significant global reach.

Chris holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from James Madison University and is a Missouri-licensed Certified Public Accountant.

Rusty joined Connectria in 1999, and is responsible for data center operations, engineering and outsourcing services at Connectria. His management responsibilities include the achievement of Connectria’s world-class data centers’ performance metrics and service levels, along with ensuring the availability of the communications and computer infrastructure on a 24 x 7 basis.

Rusty brings 20 years expertise of architecting and managing mission critical systems to help lead Connectria’s technological direction, implementation and operations.

Prior to joining to Connectria, Rusty was an Enterprise Architect, Core Architect, Application Architect and Senior Software Engineer for Financial Services companies, including State Farm, Edward Jones and AG Edwards (now Wells Fargo).

Rusty holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and an MBA from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Kathy joined Connectria in 2018, bringing with her more than 25 years of experience in building and leading metric-based marketing teams that help drive sales pipeline. Her experience spans both the agency and client side, and across numerous industries including consulting, technology, telecommunications, airline, retail, and packaged goods. She’s held high profile positions in several notable companies: Avanade, NTT/Verio, and Ameritech. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Marketing for TierPoint.

Kathy holds a B.S. in Marketing from Marquette University and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. She is also a member of the Executive Club of Chicago, the American Marketing Association, the Direct Marketing Association, the Business Marketing Association and the National Society of Hispanic MBAs.

Amar Patel joined Connectria in 2018 after almost two decades of sales leadership experience in major tech providers including Dell and Rackspace. His experience has spanned across North America and Europe across SMB and Large Enterprises. Amar brings expertise around constructing and scaling sales organizations, building highly engaged and highly performing teams, and creating successful routes to market across geos, verticals, end-users, as well as channel partners.

Amar has a BA in Business Economics from the University of Texas at Austin where he helped found the Beta Kappa Gamma fraternity, a service-based organization that now has seven chapters across the country focused on serving local communities through various philanthropic activities and promoting academic scholarship.