Abel Avellan

Venezuelan-born engineer who founded AST & Science in 2017 after selling Emerging Markets Communications, and has run the company through its 2021 SPAC listing and the BlueWalker 3 and BlueBird build-outs. Holds Class C super-voting stock, so he controls the company's vote as well as its roadmap. The public face of AST: launch commentary, constellation milestones and operator partnerships all come from him first.