Aerial Vantage Announces Board of Directors, Including Newest Member: Senator Heidi Heitkamp
Washington, DC: Aerial Vantage is pleased to announce our Board of Directors, as well as our newest addition former Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND). The board consists of hand-selected, high-powered individuals with expertise and experience that will assist Aerial Vantage in fulfilling its mission. The goal is to automate and improve the extraction of business value from drone missions, empowering organizations to better utilize aerial data to make faster, more accurate business decisions.
Senator Heidi Heitkamp was the first woman elected to the US Senate from North Dakota. She served for six years in the Senate. She served on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. She also served as the 28th North Dakota attorney general and as the 20th North Dakota tax commissioner. Senator Heitkamp is a contributor to CNBC and ABC. She also serves on numerous nonprofit boards. Aerial Vantage is very pleased she has joined the Board.
Currently serving on the Board are the following individuals.
Chairman “Buck” McKeon served on multiple committees and served as Chairman of both the House Education and Workforce committee, as well as House Armed Services committee. While in congress, as an early proponent of the value of unmanned vehicles, Chairman McKeon started the Congressional Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Caucus, which was later renamed the Unmanned Systems Caucus. Chairman McKeon formed the McKeon Group in 2015 after retiring from Congress.
Ben Baldanza is an economist and was the chief executive officer and president of Spirit Airlines from 2005 to 2016, a period in which he led the transformation of the company into an ultra-low-cost carrier.
Chris Brinton, Chairman of the Board, founded Mosaic ATM in 2004 and Mosaic Data Science in 2014. The company is now 100 people and $20M annually in revenue. He leads numerous analytics projects focused on improving the efficiency and safety of the National Airspace system.
Tom Davis, Chief Executive Officer, spent over 36 years at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, directing research in airspace automation including integration of autonomous unmanned systems into the National Airspace System. He retired as the Chief of the Aviation Systems Division at Ames in 2016.
Steve Atkins, Executive Vice President of Mosaic ATM, brings extensive analytics R&D experience for over two decades. He is expert in decision support, advanced analytics and application of new and advanced concepts to increase business efficiency. He is author of numerous scientific publications.
Darryl Jenkins, Senior Economic Advisor was one of the founding members of the George Washington University (GWU) Aviation Institute. He was also the director of the GWU Graduate Certificate in Airline Management and served on the Presidential Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. He is the author of sixteen books and 100 articles. He is the primary author of AUVSI’s Economic Impact of Introducing UAVs into the National Airspace. He is also the author of Drone Economics, and of four forthcoming books on various Drone issues.
According to Chris Brinton, Chairman of the Board of Aerial Vantage, “We are very excited about our Board! They each bring unique abilities, talents and connections that will help propel and accelerate our business toward achieving our objectives.”
Howard “Buck” McKeon, former Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said, “So pleased to be involved in the continuation of work that we helped begin over a decade ago with unmanned vehicles! This is a great opportunity to really open up the industry and bring value across so many use cases.”
About Aerial Vantage: Aerial Vantage, a software and analytics company headquartered in Washington, D.C., has a multi-faceted vision to lead the industry towards safe, efficient, and economically viable VLOS and BVLOS operations. Business capabilities include Accelerate: a Drone Operations and Data Management SaaS Platform, Advanced Data Analytics, and Drone Operations as a Service.
For more information: Mark Thomas, Vice President Sales, mthomas@aerialvantage.us or 703.340.6025