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It was during a family road trip, ‘Griswold Family Vacation’ style, replete with the wood-paneled station wagon when ten year old Sonny Tahiliani ’22 MTL first discovered his interest in science.
“We drove all the way from northern Alberta, Canada to Southern California,” Tahiliani recalls. “Besides going to Disneyland, we caught the first-ever Space Shuttle landing at Edwards Air Force Base in 1981. I was hooked on technology from then on.”
Building a flight deck of varied competencies
After earning undergraduate degrees in electrical and aerospace engineering in Canada and the U.S., Tahiliani interned with the Federal Aviation Administration. He then spent four years as a machine learning product engineer at a large industrial and aerospace company.
Frustrated by the slow pace of development during that era, he left his corporate career to co-found an avionics systems & software company. “I realized the time to take risk is when you are young,” he says.
After seven years of leading, growing and then selling his company, Tahiliani decided to plot a course towards another passion in the financial sector, taking senior investment roles in public and then private equity markets for close to a decade, plus a fascinating stint in government as Head of Capital Investment North America for the UK just after the Brexit vote. He also added a master’s in political and economic history to his academic bona fides.
Today, Tahiliani is an Executive Director of RTX Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of RTX, the aerospace and defense giant composed of Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney and Raytheon. RTX Ventures invests in small, growing companies that are developing dozens of frontier technologies to advance aviation, defense systems and space exploration. “It has been gratifying to come full circle here and combine both technology endeavors and investment considerations,” he says.
Among the innovative initiatives that RTX Ventures supports is the electrification of aviation. One project involves a hybrid-electric regional jet demonstration program where battery and electric motor technologies allow for a 30% improvement in fuel efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction — one step forward to making the world a more sustainable and connected place.
In pursuit of new heights
Central to Tahiliani’s values is his knack for adaptability. Seeking fresh challenges and broadening his horizon, he enrolled in the Master of Science in Technology Leadership (MTL) program at Brown University.
“It’s easy to select a university and degree program based upon the structure and curriculum,” Tahiliani says. But for him, the decision to study at Brown came down to the people who would be involved. “I researched who my faculty and peers would be,” he says. “The engaging community of scholars, students and alumni is why I chose Brown, along with its reputation since 1764.”