STR Leadership & Management

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What’s your professional background, and why were you brought on to lead this team?

I’ve been working in the national security technology sector my entire career. My work has been mostly in the area of radio frequency sensors, processing systems and component technologies. I’ve had the opportunity to play multiple roles in different kinds of organizations. I’ve worked at large companies like Raytheon as an engineer, and I led project teams while at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. I created and led government-sponsored programs while at DARPA, and I’ve grown and led our organization at STR.

Each of these roles has been both rewarding and career-expanding for me. In my current role as CTO of STR, I have the pleasure of working with a talented team doing innovative and important work for our nation.
 

How would you describe your approach to leadership, and how do you plan on building team culture?

I think the best way to lead innovative high-performing teams is to play an active role in the work and to model the behaviors you expect from your team by employing them yourself. At STR, we have adopted the mastery, autonomy and purpose, or MAP, taxonomy to evaluate our team’s work experience. As leaders, we need to provide direction that not only leads to program success but also maximizes employee MAP.

What project or initiative are you most excited to tackle, and why? What impact does it have on the company or its customers?

In my role as STR’s CTO, I have the opportunity to get involved in many initiatives. We have over 100 active programs, so it’s difficult to devote my time to any one thing. Recently, I’ve been working to advance STR’s hardware-based products and products that provide capabilities as a service.

What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced weekly?

Our guiding principle is that clarity at the core enables scale, growth and autonomy throughout the team. Within my group, we reinforce this through a cadence of focused weekly one-on-ones that prioritize unblocking our engineers and actively discussing career development, rather than just running through status updates. By ensuring feedback is continuous, tied directly to our broader mission and aligned with individual growth, we empower the team to make autonomous decisions with confidence.

Which forum or artifact keeps priorities obvious?

Our group all-hands meetings serve as the primary forum for keeping priorities obvious and celebrating our team. We use this time to review our group OKRs so everyone is aligned to our core goals. Beyond the technical priorities, we make it a point to highlight staff program accomplishments, recognize work anniversaries, discuss group marketing activities, and share exciting staff engagement events. It’s a comprehensive touchpoint that connects our daily work to the bigger picture and keeps the team connected.

What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?

What excites my team the most is the transition from advanced research to real-world impact, taking incredibly complex concepts and turning them into scalable, robust technology. We track our progress not just by traditional engineering metrics, but by the successful integration and deployment of our capabilities into environments where they solve pressing, high-stakes challenges.