Robert Conrad

Vice President of Business Development and Strategy

Kepler Communications

Robert J. Conrad is the Vice President of Business Development and Strategy for Kepler Communications and is focused on building a high performance team to expand Kepler’s satellite relay network within the US and global markets. 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. Throughout 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.
Previously, 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 SpaceLink's first US Government contract with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Before SpaceLink, he led as Chief Executive Officer 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. Mr. Conrad 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 and managed P&L and business development. Under his leadership, the company grew to over $70M in 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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