Class Notes

Megha Bhatia (’08, ’10) is the chief marketing officer and chief strategy officer for Jet Support Services, Inc. Bhatia serves on the board of the National Aircraft Finance Association.

Curtis Szajkovics (’11) works at Firefly Aerospace as a systems engineer. He is responsible for ensuring compliance for the Blue Ghost Lunar Lander program.

Armand Sinclair (’12) was promoted to director of systems engineering at 3Harris Technologies, his employer since 2022.

Austin Lee (’18) was promoted to vice president, investments, at Trilogy Investment Company

Ada Chika (’19, ’22) is a business support operations manager at Airbus. At Embry-Riddle, she was a graduate teaching assistant in chemistry, calculus and analytical geometry,

Andy Kurili (’20, ’24) has moved from quality engineer to system engineer at Lockheed Martin, his employer of three years. He previously interned at Gulfstream Aerospace.

Ryan Richmond (’21) is a first officer at Frontier Airlines. He previously flew for Silver Airways.

Kyle Sumpter (’21, ’23) is a supervisor on the F-16 production line at Lockheed Martin. He is a production completion supervisor for final assembly and flight operations.

Zachary Eckley (’22) is a mechanical engineer, cryogenic fluids, with Blue Origin.

Samuel Desloover (’23) is an avionics maintenance engineer with Firefly Aerospace.

Alexander Taluc (’23) is a support engineer and drone operator at Amazon Air. He holds a Part 127 Remote Pilot Certification.

Justin Jaggon (’23) is a flight simulator engineer at United Airlines. He interned with FedEx Express and Textron Aviation.

Oren Molloy (’23) is now an associate quality engineer at Textron Systems.

Joseph Nicolich (’23) is a maintenance engineer with Blue Origin. His focus is on New Shepherd crew capsule maintenance and refurbishment.

Jon Downey (’87) Is the new CEO of EBCO Aviation Insurance, a wholly owned subsidiary of TITAN Aviation Fuels. 

Kyle Gill (’99, ’01) was promoted to vice president, market business and intelligence, Gogo Business Aviation, his employer for seven years. He was previously at NetJets.

Greg Mast (’15) is an air traffic control system manager at JetBlue, moving from his earlier role as dispatcher. He has been with JetBlue for five years.

Freud Jeantilus (’23) has joined the team of flight instructors at Teens in Flight and is in the cadet program with Frontier Airlines.

Paula Andrea Morales (’04, ’18) is an applications training leader at Brown & Brown Insurance. She previously worked at Symantec and CRG Global.

Anirudh Vyas (’10, ’13) was promoted to senior mechanical engineer at SpaceX. He previously worked in manufacturing and design for Boeing, Gulfstream Aerospace and B/E Aerospace Lighting & Integrated Systems.

Nagy Elsayed (’18, ’20) is a first officer at United Airlines, his employer since 2021. His experience includes FAA part 121 and 141 instruction and work with transport category aircraft systems and emergency procedures.

Nicole Laman (’21, ’24) is a purchasing agent for Piper Aircraft. She previously worked for Textron Aviation, where she started as an intern.

Marcus Burke (’87) at 62 decided to become a Part91/135 pilot and will enter the Virginia Theological Seminary to pursue a master's of Divinity and become a priest in the Episcopal Church. He has worked in airport and airline operations most of his career.

Manuel Chumiso (’06) is a structure and payload design engineer at Boeing. He previously worked at Collins Aerospace, The Spaceship Company and Chemring Energetic Devices.

Matthew Grysko (’08) was promoted to senior manager, Master Data & Configuration, at Mitsubishi Power Americas, his employer of 15 years.

Alice Quannik Glenn (’14) hosted the official podcast for the hit HBO series True Detective Night Country. She was born in raised in Utqiagvik, Alaska, and she celebrates and explores Native life in urban Alaska in her own podcast, Coffee & Quaq.

Linsey Kornblau (’15) was promoted to vice president for fleet sales in North America at VistaJet. She joined the global aviation company in 2020.

Stephanie Class Ruscalleda (’17) is an aircraft dispatcher at Spirit Airlines. She was previously a dispatcher at Republic Airways. She also worked for the Transportation Security Administration security office.

Sachin Srivastava (’17) is now a senior systems certification engineer at Collins Aerospace. He was previously a systems engineer at Bombardier and Rockwell Collins.

Jackson Smith (’18) is an embedded application engineer at Loft Orbital. He was previously a software architect at Sierra Space.

Karen Maurer (’19) completed her first year as a launch engineer, Control & Flight Operations at SpaceX. She was previously a quality and system safety engineer at United Launch Alliance. Maurer interned with Boeing, Northrop Grumman and GE Aviation.

Mike Meholic (’20) celebrated his first anniversary as a flight operations engineer – booster controller – at Blue Origin. He previously worked for Amazon and interned with Northrop Grumman as a manufacturing engineer.

Ricardo Pazos (’22) celebrates his first anniversary as a manufacturing engineer at Piper Aircraft. He interned with Mystic Powerboats and as a student he was part of the ERAU Motorsports – Formula SAE team.

Maricarin Minnock (’23) has joined Influential Drones as a project specialist and is currently pursuing her MBA at Embry-Riddle.

Jeffrey Miller (’86) is the airport security program manager in the Office of Airport Security at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, celebrating his 38th year at the airport. 

Zane Rowe (’91) joined the board of directors of eBay. The company welcomed his business experience in finance and technology development.

William Miller (’91) was recently promoted to senior manager, Sales Engineering. He is celebrating 20 years with Dassault Falcon Jet Corp.

Dave Panzera (’92) was named next Florida Wing Commander of the Civil Air Patrol, Southeast Region. Change of command is set for April. He has served in the Civil Air Patrol since 2006. He continues to fly for JetBlue.

Katie Whitson-Alves (’99) celebrates her first anniversary as a senior operations data analyst at ForeFlight, a flight planning software leader. She is a pilot and airport operations professional.

Kimberly Bracewell (’16, ’19, ’24) moved to a new position as Starship regulatory affairs analyst at SpaceX, her employer since 2022. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in aviation.

Cristhian Padilla (’21, ’23) is a health, safety and environmental engineer with Cummins, Inc. He interned with Cummins and with Azul Linhas Aereas Brasileiras.

Allen McReynolds (’98, ’99) chief operating officer of the MRO company, West Star Aviation, was elected to the National Air Transportation (NATA) board of directors.

Kurt Ford (’04) was promoted by Delta Air Lines to managing director of flight operations technology and strategy. He has been with Delta for 15 years. Ford previously worked for Northwest Airlines.

Adrian Drummond (’05) has published his first book and he thanks everyone at Embry-Riddle for their support. You can buy Braincloud’s Ultimate AWS Reference on Amazon and visit the tech swag store.

Jan Kasprzak (’12, ’13) is a senior principal engineer – propulsion with Northrup Grumman. He was previously an engineer and team lead in the aircraft structures division at the Naval Air Warfare Center.

Rachael Isphording (’14) is a PhD candidate pursuing her degree at the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Institute in Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on regional water security in a changing climate.

Ary Ribeiro Arao (’16) was promoted to group line manager at GOL Linhas Aeras, his employer of five years. The airline is based in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Noah Gronwald (’17) was promoted to business intelligence manager at Alaska Airlines, his employer of six years. He interned with Airbus, Port of Trier and United Airlines.

Viktor Smari Hafsteinsson (’17) joined Icelandair as a people consultant. He previously worked with Landspitali Hospital and the City of Reykjavik

Andrew Rogers (’18) is an assistant manager for flight operations training and scheduling with United Airlines, his employer since 2022.

Diana Sears (’22) joined Boeing as a rapid prototyping mechanical design engineer with Phantom Works Space Advanced Systems. She interned with Boeing and Northrop Grumman and was an engineering aide at Sierra Space.

Oneil Ramdeen (’18) is marking his first anniversary as a senior project management and operations officer at Lockheed Martin, his employer of almost six years.

Nidhi Trambadia (’18, ’20) was promoted by Air Wisconsin Airlines to senior financial analyst. She has worked for Air Wisconsin since 2020.

Collin Topolski (’19, ’21) was featured in a Florida Trend article on his vertical farming efforts, which recently earned a $150,000 U.S. Small Business Administration award.

Brendan Rahill (’20) joined the avionics production team at Firefly Aerospace. He was previously a lead integration technician at SpaceX.

Mike Luo (’21) joined Delta Air Lines as a resource analytics project leader based at the Atlanta hub. He was previously with American Airlines and interned with Florida Blue and China Eastern.

Kurt Bertram (’21, ’22) is a human factors engineer at Sonalysts, Inc., a defense and space manufacturing company. Bertram was in the United States Army for six years, serving as a logistics operations specialist and manager.

Brendan White (’21, ’23) has moved from systems engineer intern to fulltime systems engineer with General Dynamics Missions Systems.

Mason Anderson (’23) joined Raytheon as a mechanical design engineer. He was a material review board quality engineering intern at Pratt & Whitney

Derek Stahl (’23) is a system engineer at Bell Flight. He interned with Honeywell Aerospace

Neel Patel (’23) is the integrated supply chain LPD at Bell Flight. He is part of the drive systems center procurement team.

Matthew Robinson (’23) is an airframe design engineer at Bell Flight. He was a design assurance intern with Northrop Grumman and as a member of the ERAU Women’s Baja SAE team, he developed the braking system for the competition vehicle.

Avik Chatterjee (’23) is at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida working as a store separations aerodynamics engineer. As a member of the SEEK EAGLE office, he supports store separations analysis for various military projects.

Brianna Hitchcock (’23) is a flight test engineer at Boeing supporting the 777-9. She interned as an aerodynamics engineer with Boeing and GE Aviation

Zackary Hagerty (’23, ’24) is a software engineer at Flexjet using .NET and Angular to create efficient full-stack aviation software. Hagerty interned with Flexjet and Unity Technologies.

Elian Polanco (’23, ’24) is a territory sales manager with Parke Hannifin, an industrial machinery manufacturing company.

John Maris (’82, ’83, ’17) was named an independent director of Horizon Aircraft, an advanced aerospace engineering company developing a hybrid eVTOL.

Audrey Kiefer (’09) arranged for an Eagle feather from the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Eagle Aviary to fly on the AX-3 mission. Kiefer is senior director, customer experience operations, at Axiom Space.

Brandon Newman (’09, ’11) is a manager of airport mapping databases at Boeing. He oversees site, production and business operations for the aerospace optimization team.

Stephen Armstrong (’11) joins Continuum Space Systems as director of software and mission operations.

Richard Heiden (’14) is now a requirement manager at Pratt & Whitney. He was previously a systems engineer at Collins Aerospace for eight years.

Joseph Pavicic (’15) joined NASA as an operations project engineer working on launch integration for exploration ground systems and the Artemis program.

Daniel Peltzman (’17) is a first officer with Southwest Airlines after four years of flying with CommuteAir (United Express). He was previously an aerial survey pilot.

Maxwell Kline (’20) is a starship avionics lead mechanical engineer at SpaceX. At Embry-Riddle, he was the technical director of ERAU Motorsports.

Jeralyn Harrigan (’22) is a product engineer at Tesla. She interned at Cummins, Inc., Volusia County Public Works and Anguilla Electricity Company Limited.

Cody Eggleston (’23) joined Blue Origin as an inventory specialist on the supply chain management team.

Edward Hubel (’83) is now hospital president of Baptist Medical Center Clay in Jacksonville, Florida. Hubel joined Baptist Health in 1996 and has been hospital president of Baptist Medical Center Nassau since 2016.

Michael Fey (’97) is co-founder and CEO of Island Technologies. He is the coauthor of Security Battleground: An Executive Field Manual, a guidebook for executives with no formal background in security and technology.