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Santh Sathya
Founder and CEO Santh Sathya founded LuftCar - a hydrogen powered autonomous air and road mobility eVTOL mobility company in March 2021. He is also the CEO of LuftCar and serves on its board of directors. Santh deeply cares for environment sustainability and is a relentless innovator of technologies that solve complex problems, improve lives, build social equity and fuel progress. Before launching LuftCar, Santh served as the Director of Strategy for L3Harris, managing $ 2B P&L for the Sector CEO. Santh was head of systems engineering at Boeing - Insitu drones, and led Model Based Systems Engineering and digital twin development. He held a position as Vice President of Strategy for Johnson Controls joint venture in Asia Pacific, where he laid out a five year strategy for EVs, Electrification and Smart Cities, increasing revenue by 25% in energy and transportation markets. Santh managed operations for a $ 1B P&L at GE Energy, where he pioneered lean product development. Santh's greatest accomplishment was in developing and building 300 hydrogen fuel cell cars for Ford Motor Company. Santh has core expertise in hydrogen fuel cells, propulsion, AI architectures and lean start up. Santh has an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, MS in mechanical engineering from Ohio University, and BS in Mechanical Engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy. Santh also holds an Artificial Intelligence Strategy Certification from MIT. |
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Alan Spring
VP - Design Engineering As an avid sailor, scuba diver and private pilot, Mr. Spring has combined his excitement of fluid dynamics, engineering, and business development in both his personal and professional lives. Prior to joining LuftCar, Mr. Spring provided consulting for BarberWind Turbines before joining them as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Engineer, bringing a novel wind turbine design from concept to prototype development in 2017. Alan brings a strong entrepreneurial spirit to LuftCar. Leaving the large corporate environment, he joined a three-person engineering start-up in 1995. Thanks to the success and growth of the business, the company was soon acquired by QuEST Global, where Alan continued his career growth leading the successful integration of the two offices, and the continued growth and maturity of the engineering teams and the company as a whole. During his tenure, Alan served as the Engineering Director and Chief Engineer working in the Aviation and Power Generation Sectors covering diverse engineering programs, including multiple new product introductions. Alan holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aerospace from The Ohio State University. |
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Doug Lampe
VP - Customer / Investor Relations and Digital Systems Doug spent the previous six years with Deloitte Consulting where he served as Vice President of Technical Architecture and Chief Architect leading multiple technology platforms. While serving with Deloitte, Doug served as a leader within their Delivery Center practice through a time of growth from 400 to over 2,000 employees. Doug had a distinguished career at Lockheed Martin holding many technology-focused roles and leading teams performing both system integration and application development. His time at Lockheed provided insight into Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Quality Management, Product Support, and Engineering. Doug's leadership in the area of data analytics was instrumental in Lockheed Martin becoming the first Department of Defense contractor to win the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Doug holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Engineering Management and Industrial Engineering from the University of Florida. He is also a graduate of Lockheed Martin's Operations Leadership Development Program. |
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Gao Lio PhD
Technology Advisor He currently is the Lead for the group of Applied Energy Materials at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and his current research focuses on lithium battery R&D. He is the Principal Investigator in the U.S. DOE Battery for Advanced Transportation Technologies Program (BATT) and Solid-State Lighting Program (SSL). He also has been technical advisor and collaborator for General Motors, The Dow Chemical Company, 3M and many other leading global companies since 2001. His work has been published in Advanced Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Natural Communications etc, and received national and international awards including R&D 100 Award in 2013, International Meeting on Lithium Batteries (IMLB) most excellent paper award, University of California discovery grant award, and lately FMC Scientific Achievement Award. Gao has a PhD in Chemistry from Michigan State University and B.Sc. in Chemistry from Peking University. |
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Mini Suri
Advisor - Customer Discovery Mini is currently an advisory board member to LUFTCAR, where she assists in discovering customers and the team to understand customer expectations from a vehicle like LuftCar to make LuftCar a market fit product. Mini is the Co-founder and CEO of Velmeni, which is a visionary tech health startup that is pioneering AI-driven patient care. Mini was also Chief Customer Success Officer at Kore AI, where she led, managed, and scaled 100+ enterprise customers to adopt conversational AI solutions. She is also a board member of TiE Silicon Valley where she supports TiE’s mission of fostering tech entrepreneurship globally, and specifically, to build successful futures for empowering youths and young women. In the past, Mini has played the role as Uber’s COE Lead for Intelligent Automation, where she was responsible for automating manual processes to support business functions across Uber to help bend the cost curve. Prior to Uber, she drove Services Strategy 2020 at Citi as a Senior Vice President. A MBA from MIT, Sloan School of management and Master’s in Information technology from New Jersey Institute of Technology are few of her academic accomplishments. |
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Joe Kolshak
Advisor - Growth Strategy Joe Kolshak is a Customer / Investor Relations Advisor to LuftCar, guiding LuftCar’s business growth strategy. Joe is a seasoned airline and aerospace professional and brings his 40+ years of experience in the industry to support our vision of commercializing the LuftCar concept. He is the former Chief of Operations for Delta Air Lines, Senior Vice President of Operations for United Airlines and Chief Executive Officer for the maintenance , repair and overhaul company, Aveos Fleet Performance. Joe has served on the Boards of MRO Aeromantenimiento, S.A. [Aeroman], MNX Global Logistics, PrimeArc Capital, The President’s Board of the Transportation Center at Northwestern University and The Boys & Girls Club of Atlanta & Chicago. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of Clarendon Capital. Joe has an accounting degree from Marquette University. He is a former Marine Corps officer and pilot. He has flown numerous military, commercial and general aviation aircraft. |
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Ellen Christopherson
Advisor- North America and Europe Regulations and Certifications CEO of clearGrid, which is a division of a leading drone based service provider to heavy industry in Western Canada. Education: M.Sc. in Sustainability Energy Engineering and B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering |
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Durga Murdeshwar
Director - Operations As Operations Director for LuftCar, Durga is responsible for providing strategic guidance and leadership in all aspects of resources and operations functions. Durga provides leadership and direction in the development of LuftCar’s HR policies, while supporting the LuftCar mission. Durga also takes interest in the application of what we know about people, their abilities, characteristics, and limitations to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function, and jobs they perform. Prior to starting her journey with LuftCar in June 2021, Durga has enjoyed working as human factors specialist for 7 years. Durga holds a Master’s degree in Kinesiology from University of Wisconsin, Madison and B.Sc. degree in Physical Therapy from University of Mumbai. |
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Rebecca Kelly
Marketing Executive With her decades of leadership experience in marketing the high technology/energy industries, Rebecca has joined LuftCar and is helping our business to establish and grow in the US and global markets through customer and investor discovery. She will lead business development for LuftCar in private mobility, defense, shared car, cargo and emergency response segments. Rebecca has served on boards such as PLMA (PeakLoad Management Alliance); DistribuTech Advisory Committee; The World Chamber, Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), AIESEC & Women In Business. Rebecca taught leadership, management and marketing coursework at several universities, wrote over 100 editorials (authored/co-authored) on products and services, industry trends; and she received over a dozen awards as Global Marketing Director; PR Woman of the Year; Marketing Executive of the Year. She received her B.A. in Journalism from Wisconsin, her M.B.A. while working as the Marketing Director, Dell Computer in Austin, TX. She has global experience living/working abroad in marketing throughout Asia and Europe. |
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Bari Conte
Marketing Consultant - LuftClinic / LuftRescue Bari is a ‘Marketing Consultant’ for LuftCar. With her passion for Emergency Medicine, Bari creates marketing opportunities for LuftCar in EMS sector while guiding vehicle concepts of LuftCar’s emergency and rescue vehicles, LuftClinic and LuftRescue. Bari is a Certified Medical Transport Executive and notable is her nearly two decades of experience as a flight nurse for rotor wing, fixed wing and ground services. She brings over 8 years of experience as a program manager, business, and outreach coordinator for various air medical programs in South Florida and is currently active with the Florida Advisory Board." Bari is also a CAMTS (Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems) Site Surveyor. Bari has been appointed by the Surgeon General to represent the State of Florida Advisory Council Air Medical and is currently the Educator of FACTS (Florida Association of Critical Care transport Specialist). Bari holds a M.Ed.- Nurse Practitioner from Barry University, FL and an MS in- Education / Leadership |
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Abhay Naik
Digital Marketing Manager As a Digital Marketing Manager for LuftCar, Abhay's core responsibility is to spearhead digital and social media marketing. Abhay in part helps with building the LuftCar brand. Prior to joining LuftCar, Abhay was involved in creating online content for multiple NGO’s and small start-up organizations. In addition to his LuftCar role, Abhay also helps individuals and small businesses solve their tech-related issues. Abhay is currently pursuing his Bachelors of Science undergraduate degree in Management Information System along with a Computer Science Minor at San Jose State University. |
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Mary Olson
Startup Consultant Mary Olson joined LuftCar's team with great enthusiasm for engaging the category-defining brand and start-up venture. Mary says that it is a privilege to share her experience and insights and help shape the messaging. Mary finds herself thoroughly engaged in building investor relations, specifically with those who have deep tech in their portfolio. She is committed to LuftCar’s goal to build a hydrogen-powered modular autonomous air and road mobility (AARM) vehicle predestined to outpace the industry. As the co-founder of Brand Intelligence, an award-winning design, web development, and marketing consulting group, Mary and her team care deeply about environmental sustainability and providing marketing leadership to select organizations ranging from LuftCar and Sumitomo Chemical Company of America to help better the world. |
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Tyler Lewis
Intern |
Siddhart Sathya
Intern |