Philip Father

Philip Father is a seasoned hybrid entrepreneur / corporate executive experienced in high-tech and infrastructure development. He brings a nimble approach to “heavy metal” deployment to accelerate market uptake while lowering risk.

Mr. Father is currently founder and CEO of Scepter, Incorporated (www.scepterair.com), an integrated data analytics company founded to provide global-to-local, real-time air pollution monitoring and analysis by capturing data throughout the entire vertical air column. Scepter's approach integrates existing, spotty ground-based sensor networks with its own space-based sensors to provide a unique 3D view of the atmosphere, a perspective not being provided by anyone today. The Company in turn, is able to distill complex atmospheric ecosystems into robust BigData sets that, when fused with other relevant data such as health research, wind, weather and consumer records, provide comprehensive situational awareness for commercial and government customers to lower their costs, increase revenues and / or empower strategic decision making. Taken as a whole, these capabilities enable a platform that Scepter is providing in partnership with L3Harris (https://www.l3harris.com).

From a broad perspective, Mr. Father has focused on the satellite communications, renewable energy and sustainability sectors over the past 20+ years. As a serial entrepreneur, Mr. Father at times looks to government policy to identify emerging markets / opportunities and this belief has been a catalyst for many of his activities within these arenas. He is also adept at understanding and converting market trends into business opportunities, and is skilled at cross cultural business development.

Specific to satellite communications, Mr. Father was formerly the CEO and President of ProtoStar Ltd., an international communications corporation that provided satellite bandwidth to primarily small-dish television broadcasters / operators across Asia (www.protostarsat.com/team.html). As founder, he foresaw the future for direct-to-home television services within the developing markets of Asia and set forth in 2002 to develop a new satellite constellation providing high power geostationary capacity. As such, Mr. Father spearheaded many critical efforts including developing the company’s business plan, financing Protostar’s two high-power geostationary broadcast satellites, growing the company to more than forty five people across three offices, and securing anchor customers in India, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and the U.S. Government. He also led ProtoStar’s debt refinancing efforts in 2009 with UBS which culminated in selling the company’s satellites to the world’s two largest satellite operators, Intelsat and SES.

Beyond Mr. Father’s ProtoStar tenure, he has more than 20 years experience in the satellite industry with both domestic and international initiatives. He helped develop large satellite ventures for GM Hughes such as DirecTV (DTH), Galaxy Latin America (DTH), Asia Pacific Mobile Telephone (telephony/data) and Spaceway (next generation VSAT and broadband services). In addition, he led business plan development in such areas as internet backbone services, air traffic navigation and broadband services via stratospheric platforms.

Specific to sustainability and renewable energy, Mr. Father is the founder and Chairman of Trio Renewable Gas, Incorporated, a company focused on mass market deployment of modular and scaleable thermo-chemical conversion equipment (www.triorenewablegas.com). Trends in mandated and voluntary waste diversion from landfill, distributed power generation, grid management with microgrid solutions, and renewable natural gas generation from waste feedstocks all foster increased deployment of this class of equipment and integrated systems. To this end, Trio has recently partnered with Alpha Struxure, a joint Venture between The Carlyle Group and Schneider Electric (https://alphastruxure.com), to deploy its systems across North America.

Prior to his operating experience, Mr. Father was employed in the consulting services industry where he worked with three prominent consulting firms (in reverse chronological order): (i) Strategos, an international strategy boutique, where as a co-founder he implemented growth strategies centered around the strategic intent / core competency principles of Dr. Gary Hamel, (ii) Gemini Consulting (formerly the MAC Group), where he led the west coast high-tech strategy practice, and (iii) GEO-Centers Inc., where he provided analytical consulting services focused on non-linear deformation analysis of submarine structures to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).

Mr. Father is coauthor of two issued patents by USPTO in the field of integrated data analytics stemming from his work with Scepter, Inc. (“Atmospheric Sensor Network and Analytical Information System Related Thereto”). The patents have also been accepted in China and are patent pending in Europe.

Mr. Father holds an MBA from Stanford University, a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MS degree in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Composite Materials from Rensselaer Polytechnic University.