Business CEOs - A New Wave Of Space Leadership

"I haven't heard the equity firms say 'no engineers,' but look at who they've picked," [Armand Musey] says. The list of non-engineer CEOs includes David McGlade at Intelsat, Michael Targoff at Loral Space & Communications, Patrick DeWitt at Space Systems/Loral, Matthew O'Connell at GeoEye, Jill Smith at DigitalGlobe, Andreas Georghiou at Spacenet, Matt Desch at Iridium Satellite, John Kealey at iDirect and Jay Monroe at Globalstar. The clearest example of this new paradigm in leadership came in April 2005 when Intelsat, the world's largest provider of Fixed Satellite Services and which had just been acquired by private equity firms, hired David McGlade as CEO. At 44, McGlade became the youngest person ever to run Intelsat and the first non-engineer. He also was new to satellites, having spent his 24-year career in cable and wireless telephony in a series of entrepreneurial and leadership roles. His specialty was bringing new technologies to market and overseeing converged services to customers. McGlade's leadership was formed early. At 27, he was promoted to president of Cable Ad Net, which was acquired by Liberty Media. He is a former regional president of Sprint PCS and was CEO of O2 UK (previously BT Cellnet) before joining Intelsat. Matt Desch, a former president of Nortel Network's Global Service Providers and Wireless Networks divisions, was hired as Iridium Satellite's CEO in September. Desch, whose background is in computer programming, was the CEO of Telcordia Technologies Inc., a supplier of software and services to telecoms, before joining Iridium Satellite. "The main reason I'm here is because I spent 15 years in wireless, and I grew up through the transition to wireless," Desch says. "I understand the value proposition of mobility and why people are increasingly using wireless devices to connect to each other." Although Desch says, "I fancy myself an engineer," his charge is to bring the business oversight that was missing from the first Iridium. "The most important thing we can bring is the right product at the right price at the right time in the market."