Courtney Stadd

Courtney Stadd manages Washington Operations/Business Development for a 26-year old leading edge quality control/supply chain software company, Milwaukee-based TIP Technologies, Inc., which supports many of the leading defense/aerospace firms, including new space ventures. www.tiptech.com.  For the past 38 years, Mr. Stadd's career path has been a mix of senior government leadership and corporate executive jobs – primarily focused on encouraging the emergence of a competitive commercial space marketplace.  In the government, he held senior policy and program management positions at the US Department of Commerce, the US Department of Transportation, the White House and worked directly for three NASA Administrators.  As an early Director of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation, he issued the first regulations implementing the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act, licensed the first commercial rocket and was an early advocate for non-government spaceports. (He is a former member of the Boards of Space Florida and the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation.)  In the commercial sector, he was associated with a range of pathfinder industry sectors including space transportation, GPS, high resolution satellite remote sensing, commercial inflatable space modules (Bigelow Aerospace).  He is also former Chair of Space Week, the UN supported event that includes more than 1,800 events in 73 countries and is officially described as "an international celebration of science and technology, and their contribution to the betterment of the human condition.”  In both official and private capacities, he has been invited by various U.S. Congressional committees to testify on a range of high technology related public policy matters.  The primary theme in Mr. Stadd's career in both the public and private sectors has been a focus on removing barriers to market-driven opportunities in aerospace-related technology areas.