Dr. Om Gupta
Director Strategic Market Development - Iridium NEXT

Om Gupta is Director of Strategic Market Development on Iridium NEXT Program. In this role he leads development of market requirements and the business case for Iridium NEXT. Gupta also works closely with the Iridium NEXT technical team in the procurement of Iridium NEXT system. Gupta has over 27 years of experience in Satellite Communication, Aerospace, and Cellular Wireless industry. Gupta joined Iridium in 2004 as Director of Value Added Manufacturing and led the growth in the VAM business, adding many new partners. Prior to Iridium, Gupta was with Paratek, where he was Director of Product Management for smart scanning antennas. Gupta was on the Iridium program at Motorola’s Satcom Group in Phoenix, where he was responsible for the software architecture for the Next Generation Iridium system. He was also Director of business development for the Broadband LEO systems - Celestri and Teledesic, managing distribution of broadband global satellite capacity and broadband services and applications in Asia and North America. Prior to that Gupta was Director for Marketing and Strategy at Motorola HQ in Schaumburg. He was Principal Staff Engineer at Lockheed Martin/GE Americom (now SES Americom), where he led Ground Control Systems development for the GEO satellites. Early roles included Senior Engineer at Singer/ Kearfott on Aerospace projects, and Assistant Professor of Physics at Virginia Tech. Gupta holds a Ph. D. in Physics from the City University of New York, and an MBA from Thunderbird Garvin School of Management, Phoenix.

Funding provided in part by Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration: WIRED Initiative