Profile
Michael is the founder & co-president of Wharton Aerospace, a very senior executive industry association that since 2004 conducts by-invitation-only annual conferences on Wharton campus in Philadelphia to foster closer ties between The Wharton School, its Wharton Aerospace participants and the commercial aerospace, defense & space industrial base.
Michael is currently the VP of Strategic Partnerships at disruptively innovative Israeli counter-UAS start-up D-Fend Solutions. He joins D-Fend from $20B French company Thales where he was responsible for the ideating & initiating partnership activities across the Thales enterprise globally with Lockheed Martin, Boeing Defense Space & Security, L3Harris and other large US companies.
Michael’s business experience includes over twenty years in strategy consulting (McKinsey and PwC), investment banking (PCE and The McLean Group) and Fortune 500 corporate development (Rockwell Collins and Thales) roles. In these positions Michael closed over 18 very successful M&A transactions with enterprise values ranging from $5M to $14B.
Michael’s formative experiences include combat service with the 82nd Airborne Division (Operation Desert Storm & counter-terror operations in Egypt), Task Force 118 (a unit of armed OH-58Ds and Navy SEALs performing then-classified missions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) for Operation Prime Chance, and intelligence operations with the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion (Airborne) for still-classified missions for the XVIII Airborne Corps (e.g., operations against Nicaraguan Sandinista forces in advance of Operation Golden Pheasant), the JFK Special Warfare Center & School, and national level agencies.
Michael resides in Tysons, VA and is a board director at the National Defense University (NDU) Foundation where he has revitalized NDU ties to industry and as a member of the executive committee is currently leading the transformation of the NDUF board.
Sessions