US Government Funded Innovations

As President of SIA, Tom Stroup is the trade association’s lead advocate for regulatory and policy issues of critical importance to SIA’s membership, including spectrum and licensing issues, defense and public safety matters, and export control and international trade issues. He also manages the day-to-day operations of SIA, including member communications, staff leadership and organization of SIA sponsored events.

Prior to joining SIA, Mr. Stroup was with Shared Spectrum Company (SSC), a leading developer of spectrum intelligence technologies, where he served as CEO. For more than a decade, he served as the President of the Personal Communications Industry Association (PCIA). Previous to his position at SSC, he founded and ran several companies in the technology industry, including Columbia Spectrum Management, P-Com Network Services, CSM Wireless, and SquareLoop.

Mr. Stroup holds a BS, summa cum laude, in Public Administration from the University of North Dakota. He is also a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center where he served as Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.

NASA Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) & NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) Lead of Federal Programs

Christine is the Director, Civil Programs for Stellar Solutions which is a small, woman-owned engineering consulting company that strives to satisfy customers’ critical needs while realizing employees dream jobs. She is an integral part of the NASA CoECI and NTL team working to instill challenge, crowdsourcing, and freelance talent innovation approaches at NASA and across the US Government. She leads projects with agencies external to NASA including the National Institutes of Health, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Reclamation, and several others. She has supported innovation work totaling approximately $100M. You hear about some of her experiences on the Cool Collaborations podcasts #21-22.

Her experience in human spaceflight includes performing engineering integration on the Orion Crew Module (Artemis) supporting Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Christine previously held roles in the Intelligence Community including System Acquisition Manager, and Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative (COTR) for the Department of Defense, System Engineering Technical Advisor (SETA) supporting the Federal Government, and project manager and technology solutions consultant for Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI). She has considerable knowledge of signal recognition and geolocation systems. Christine was a project manager for Schlumberger working in state government and utility projects. She has worked in all aspects of system acquisition, development and delivery. Christine is certified in Agile Leadership Essentials, Agile Leadership for Teams, is a NASA 1X Innovator, Project Management Professional (PMP), and an Agile Product owner. She is certified in the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) System Planning, Analysis, Research, Development, and Engineering, and is a Level I Professional Continuity Practitioner with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and is a Baldrige Performance Excellence examiner. She has received awards including the NASA Silver Achievement Medal, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Innovation Award, Orion Sustained Technical Achievement Recognitions (STAR), NASA Johnson Space Center Certificate of Appreciation, and the NASA Silver Group Achievement Award.

Christine received her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and her M.S. degree in Engineering Administration from George Washington University.

Brian Manning is co-founder and CEO of Xona Space Systems, a company focused on enabling safer operation of modern devices by providing high-performance satellite navigation and timing services from small satellites in Low-Earth Orbit. He holds an MBA from the London Business School and an MSc in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. Brian is a former SpaceX engineer coming from an entrepreneurial background of small family businesses, and co-founded Xona in 2019 with an extraordinary team of GNSS and satellite experts who met at Stanford University.

Prior to co-founding ThinKom (www.thinkom.com), William (Bill) Milroy held the position of Senior Engineering Fellow within Raytheon’s Electronic Systems (ES) Segment.  During his tenure, he managed and lead the RF antenna design, development, and production of a wide range of Phased-Array/ESA implementations for both radar and communication applications. He co-founded ThinKom Solutions in 2000, where he currently holds the titles of Chairman and CTO.  Located in Hawthorne, California, ThinKom Solutions is focused on the design and development of innovative antenna access solutions and products for the Broadband Wireless Communication market.

Mr. Milroy is a graduate of UCLA, earning BSEE, MSEE, and Engineer (Ph.D. course, field, and examination requirements) degrees and is the inventor or co-inventor of 40+ awarded and pending US patents in the fields of Scattering, Materials, Microwave Devices, and Antennas.  Mr. Milroy is a past Chairman of the Los Angeles Chapter of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (APS.)