Satellite Connectivity. Building Transparent and Ubiquitous Solutions in LEO for Direct to Mobile Applications

Chris Stott serves as the Executive Chairman of ManSat. Chris cofounded ManSat in 1998 with his father, Bryan, and over the following 20 years grew the company as its President and CEO to become the largest commercial provider of satellite spectrum in the global space industry. Chris also serves as the Chair of IceSat, ManSat’s subsidiary company in Iceland.

In 2000 Chris left his position as Director of International Commercialization and Sales with Lockheed Martin Space Operations to become ManSat’s President. Prior to his work with Lockheed Martin, Chris was an executive with the McDonnell Douglas and the Boeing Company working in International Business Development on the Delta Launch Vehicle program.

Mr. Burgess is the Vice President of Technology and Engineering for Sierra Space (SNC’s Space Systems) located in Louisville, Colorado. Space System’s technology portfolio spans the Dream Chaser lifting body space station Commercial Resupply Services 2 program, advanced spaceflight systems, commercial and US government satellite programs, electromechanical, solar power, environmental life support subsystems, and liquid rocket engines. Mr. Burgess has worked in the Space Community for 34 years, with a particular focus on Space Superiority and unmanned space proximity operations.

Margo Deckard is a Co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Lynk Global, Inc. Her work analyzing BGAN usage data from the 2014 Ebola Pandemic Crisis Response drove the Lynk team to design a global connectivity solution that uses the unmodified phone in everyone’s pocket. Margo leads Public Safety and Government Programs for Lynk. Previously, Margo served as VP of Programs for NexGen Space LLC, where she was the Project Manager for the Ultra-Low-Cost Access to Space Study for the United States Air Force. This study focused on how the United States Government could leverage free enterprise to achieve low cost access to space to meet U.S. National Security needs in the next 5 years. She was the PI for NASA-funded research on the environmental impacts of space solar power (SSP), and co-authored a study for the National Security Space Office on SSP. Margo wrote a web data connector for NetHope to connect data from the United Nations Humanitarian Crisis Response Syrian Refugee Crisis REST APIs and populate Tableau. This product will guide over 43 NGOs in their efforts to meet the needs of the Syrian Refugees. She has a BS in Genetic Engineering from Purdue University and an MS in Systems Engineering from Wright State University.

Pelton joins Iridium from Pryon, an AI company focused on augmented intelligence for the enterprise, where he served as Chief Product Officer.  In this role he was responsible for all aspects of the company’s augmented intelligence product portfolio, leading the engineering team and product development efforts.  Prior to this, Pelton was Vice President of Collaboration and Devices at Avaya, where he managed a portfolio of voice and video endpoints, soft clients and collaboration services.  Before Avaya, he served as CTO and Vice President for Infrastructure Engineering at Polycom and led Cisco’s corporate Technology Center where he worked on the Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) program consisting of developing a router for use in satellites and transitioning of satellite ground networks to multiservice IP networks.

Brian Pemberton leads corporate sales and marketing activities for Omnispace, which is redefining mobile connectivity for the 21st century. In this role, he is responsible for establishing the global distribution strategy, developing the product marketing strategy, and building the brand for the world’s first seamless, 5G-based ‘one global network.’

Brian brings more than 20 years of experience in global wireless, terrestrial and satellite communications to his role. Most recently as the Vice President and General Manager of Iridium Communications Inc.’s Aviation and Maritime businesses, Brian was responsible for ensuring the success of two key global growth initiatives for the company. He led the company’s award-winning broadband initiative, Iridium Certus, which provided unprecedented mobile satellite services for aviation, maritime and terrestrial customers. He also led the development and launch of the Iridium GMDSS enhanced safety service which offered reliable coverage at sea. Prior to that, Brian held senior marketing and engineering roles at commercial and military aviation leader ARINC, which is now part of Collins Aerospace.

Brian holds a master’s degree in business from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech University.

Asanga Wedisinghe is currently a senior director and head of systems engineering at OneWeb. In this role, he is responsible for the end-to-end architecture, specifications, functional flows, and technical baseline of the OneWeb system. Prior to that, he served as head of systems architecture at OneWeb, responsible for the end-to-end architecture, interfaces, and concept of operations of the OneWeb system.

Prior to OneWeb, Asanga served as a Lead Senior Principal Engineer at SiriusXM satellite radio, leading the technical effort for producing, testing, and deploying a combined baseband and ground network of two disparate networks.  Prior to SiriusXM, Asanga served as a technical director in satellite systems engineering at Ligardo Network (formerly known as LightSquared). Asanga spent the early part of his career at Hughes Network Systems, working on modem and end-to-end system development for various satellite systems- Inmarsat RBGAN, Thuraya, and ICO to name a few.   Asanga received a MS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, a BS in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, and a BA in Physics from Ohio Wesleyan University.