Sonny Kirkley

Founder

Sonny Kirkley is an innovator, entrepreneur, designer and co-founder of seven technologies companies, including IU’s first two spin-out companies — Information in Place Inc. and WisdomTools Inc. — where he served as CEO for each a combined 16 years. He is president of two startups in the public safety sector with connections to IU — Zenext (voice AI) and iMixedReality (augmented reality) — and has served as mentor to numerous company founders.

Kirkley has published and presented extensively in the areas of human-computer interaction design, augmented and mixed reality, advanced technologies for performance support and instruction, serious games, and education and training across industry sectors. Much of his career has been focused on learning technologies implementing programs in diverse settings, including Fortune 100 Companies and K-12 schools.

He holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in instructional systems technology from IU Bloomington and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He is an adjunct assistant professor of human-computer interaction in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at IUPUI.