The hiring of Kevin Hightower to Elsight’s advisory board will bring decades of aerospace experience and new insights into the company.
Critical connectivity technology company Elsight (ASX:ELS) has bolstered its management ranks by bringing in an aerospace veteran to its advisory board.
Kevin Hightower has joined Elsight to help drive the company’s commercial drone operations globally, bringing with him vast experience from previous senior roles in the aerospace and drone industries.
Hightower’s 21 years of aerospace industry experience includes 15 years at Lockheed Martin, and over three years with Wing (Alphabet/Google’s drone company).
Elsight believes that Hightower will be an invaluable addition as a new member of the Advisory Board, as he brings a unique perspective and an ability to sense and identify the impact of new technologies.
Hightower’s skills and expertise will especially be of tremendous value to Elsight moving forward, as the company advances the commercialisation of its flagship “Halo” product.
“I am thrilled that Mr Hightower will be joining our advisory board, and am grateful that we have succeeded in bringing his unmatched skills and renowned expertise to our team,” said Elsight CEO, Yoav Amitai.
Highly credentialed
As product manager at Wing, Alphabet/Google’s drone company, Hightower worked to make drone operations a reality by deploying live, commercial, drone delivery operations in Australia, the United States, and Finland.
His 15 years at Lockheed Martin included an extensive period as CTO, where he focused on designing and deploying air traffic control, airlines and airport systems for aviation regulators in the US, UK, and NZ.
Most recently, Hightower has joined Cirium, the largest, most complete provider of aviation data to the travel, finance, aerospace, and aviation industries, as vice president of Product.
This breadth of experience in the commercial aviation and drone industry will be critical as Elsight navigates the commercialisation of its Halo technology.
Just last month, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a special class airworthiness criteria for Airobotics’s unmanned aircraft (UA), which is embedded with Elsight’s Halo technology for BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) connection capability.
Airobotics is now amongst the first in the world to have been issued the special class airworthiness criteria , which puts them one step closer towards receiving the highly sought after FAA TC (Type Certificate).
Elsight’s partnership with Airobotics further validates the company’s pursuit of the ‘Design Win’ strategy, with Halo embedded as a critical component in the OPTIMUS 1-EX UA.
The Halo technology provides a robust connectivity solution for command-and-control redundancy certification, critical and secure data transmission, and uninterrupted connectivity.
Elsight has previously said that Halo’s capability could have multiple applications across a number of key industries such as oil and gas, mining, infrastructure, industrial facilities and many others.
Upon joining the company, Hightower said: “I am delighted to continue pushing the drone industry forward by joining the advisory board of Elsight.”
“The company is filled with incredibly talented professionals and ground-breaking technology that can be integrated in a variety of different areas in the future, especially areas where reliable, always-on, secure, high bandwidth connectivity is required.”
This article was developed in collaboration with Elsight, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.