Robert Conrad

President of Kepler Communications US

Kepler Communications

Robert J. Conrad is the President of Kepler Communications US and is focused on building a high-performance team to expand Kepler’s satellite relay network within the US Government market. Robert is a strategic leader and team builder who has been responsible for more than $1 billion in sales supporting ground and space systems for the U.S. Government and commercial space industry. Over the course of his career, he has demonstrated commitment to responsible leadership, governance, and strategy, and the ability to engage a broad range of stakeholders and drive strategic initiatives.

Prior to Kepler, Mr. Conrad was Vice President of Business Development at SpaceLink, an innovative company that opened the market for commercial space data relay networks. There he leveraged his US Government and broad professional network to position SpaceLink as a finalist for the NASA CSP Project; a commercial replacement program for the NASA Tracking Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) and secured Spacelinks first US Government contract with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

At LJT & Associates, a small business aerospace government contractor that provided a range of services including system engineering, satellite and ground station operations, technology development, space launch operations, logistics and general engineering support. He began as Vice President of Business Development and General Manager and went on to become Chief Operating Officer and finally President and Chief Executive Officer. He drove strategy, managed P&L, business development and under his leadership the company grew to over $70M is annual revenue.

In recent years, he led a high-performance engineering team that developed a high data rate Ku-Band and Ka-Band satellite transceiver (LCT2) to relay launch telemetry to the ground through the geosynchronous NASA TDRSS satellite system.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Conrad worked at Allied Signal Technical Services where he served as Deputy Director of Space Services. He provided management and technical oversight on space services contracts which included the Consolidated Space Operations Contract at NASA Johnson Space Center, JPL Deep Space Network Contract, and the Commercial DataLynx Space Ground Station Network.

Mr. Conrad earned his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University with a concentration in RF & Satellite Communications, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Capitol College. He holds a U.S. Patent on a wide band continuously tunable satellite QPSK transceiver.

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