People in Composites: July 2022

AGY Holding Corp. names new president and CEO

Al Ridilla, AGY Holding Corp. president and CEO.

AGY Holding Corp. (Aiken, S.C., U.S.), a high-performance glass fiber materials company, announces that Al Ridilla has been appointed president and chief executive officer (CEO). He will assume day-to-day leadership of the company and will join the AGY Board of Directors.

Ridilla joins AGY with more than 30 years of successful commercial, operational and executive leadership experience at advanced materials technology companies. Most recently, he served as president and CEO at Parkway Products (Florence, Ky., U.S.) where he spent 20 years leading the company through a period of transformative growth, margin expansion and multiple successful private equity exits.

“Al brings deep strategic and operational know-how to strengthen and expand AGY’s business in the United States and in our European and Asian markets,” says Ryan Carroll, managing director in the Private Credit Group at the TCW Group (Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) which acquired a majority stake in AGY in Sept. 2020. “His well-rounded executive experience in strategic planning, revenue growth, innovation, acquisitions, and financial and operational management will help propel our future growth.”

Ridilla began his career at GE Aviation (Cincinnati, Ohio, U..S) in product development and operations management roles focused in advanced polymer composites and high-temperature superalloys. He held executive sales and marketing positions at both SABIC Innovative Materials and Victrex in North America and Europe. In addition, he was involved in three successful startup companies manufacturing magnesium-molded components, composite snowboards and radio frequency (FR) integrated circuits. Al holds BS and MS degrees in materials engineering from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) and the University of Dayton (Ohio), is a graduate of various GE executive and financial training programs, a Six Sigma Black Belt and has three U.S. patents.

“We have a bright future at AGY with a product portfolio and world-class technology that delivers lightweight, high strength, impact resistant and specialized electrical performance solutions to facilitate the success of our customers across many end markets globally,” Ridilla says.

Ridilla succeeds Thomas Pearson who has been serving as acting president and CEO since the retirement of Patrick Burns in Feb. 2022. Pearson will remain engaged at AGY as an operational consultant for the foreseeable future.

AGY offers high-performance materials used in a range of markets with a focus of making its customers’ products lighter, faster and stronger. The company manufactures and supplies glass fiber yarns, reinforcements and high-performance materials used in a variety of industries, including aerospace, electronics, defense, thermoplastics, industrial and recreational/consumer markets. AGY employs more than 700 staff in manufacturing, research, product support and sales.

Arris Composites appoints new CEO

Riley Reese, Arris Composites CEO.

Arris Composites (Berkeley, Calif., U.S.), an advanced manufacturer enabling the use of high-performance composites at scale, announces that its Board of Directors appoints Riley Reese as CEO. He assumes day-to-day leadership of the company and will continue to serve on the board. 

“Arris is a unique company, bringing together traditional manufacturing, generative design and composites in ways that achieve new performance for customers across industries,” Greg Papadopoulis, venture partner at NEA and former chief technology officer (CTO) of Sun Microsystems, says. “Riley is the right person at the right time to grow Arris as demand increases for its manufacturing and materials technology.”

Reese will build on his proven track record of leadership at Arris as CTO since 2017, when he co-founded the company with Erick Davidson, chief engineer, and Ethan Escowitz, board member and former CEO. Before Arris, Reese co-founded additive manufacturing company, Arevo (Milpitas, Calif., U.S.), where he led R&D and product architecture.  

“Our materials, design and molding innovations have achieved a new level of scale with consumer electronics products now shipping out of Taiwan. This is just the start, and I’m looking forward to leading Arris in this next stage of growth,” Reese says. “I’m grateful to be a part of a team of domain experts working together to create the future of Arris.”  

Reese has worked in several areas of advanced manufacturing, beginning with 3D printing biodegradable heart tissue scaffolds as a grad student at UC Berkeley (Calif., U.S.). After working on failure analysis and product design of medical devices at Stryker (Kalamazoo, Mich., U.S.), he co-founded Arevo, which introduced 3D-printed high-performance, continuous fiber composites. Reese then moved to Amsterdam and led innovation program management for additive manufacturing at TNO (Amsterdam, Netherlands), a Dutch research commercialization company. In the CTO role at Arris, he led R&D, materials and software teams that worked together to produce high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight complex parts. 

“I watched Arris become what it is today, from taking up a corner of my machine shop in Berkeley to an international manufacturing company,” Carl Bass, board member at Arris and former CEO of Autodesk (San Rafael, Calif., U.S.). “The Arris team is just getting started with the impact its technology will have across industries, and I look forward to this next stage with Riley as CEO.”

STRUCTeam welcomes new project engineer

STRUCTeam (Cowes, U.K.) welcomes Tom Grinsted to the team in the role of project engineer. After earning a Master’s in mechanical engineering from Bath University (U.K.), Grinsted joined Gurit (Wattwil, Switzerland) working on a range of marine projects. The company investing in talented and highly motivated people remains its top priority.

KraussMaffei appoints new head of corporate communications, marketing

Lizette Ruiz Guevara, KraussMaffei's head of corporate communications and marketing.

Lizette Ruiz Guevara has been made responsible for global corporate communications and marketing at KraussMaffei (Munich, Germany) as of July 1, 2022. She reports to KraussMaffei Group CEO, Dr. Michael Ruf.

“We are pleased that we were able to win Ms. Ruiz Guevara for this position. With her many years of experience and profound knowledge of the industry, she will decisively advance KraussMaffei's positioning both internally and externally,” Ruf says.

Ruiz Guevara has many years of communications and marketing experience, as well as extensive sales and service expertise. She comes to KraussMaffei from Continental AG (Hanover, Germany), ContiTech AG Division, where she most recently headed the EMEA Service Region, Conveying Solutions Business Area. Prior to that, she held various management positions at Roche Pharma AG (Basel, Switzerland) and Daimler AG (Stuttgart, Germany) in the areas of events, brands, sales and central business units communications. She succeeds Marion Sommerwerck, who left KraussMaffei of her own volition in Feb. 2022.

“I feel honored to be responsible for global communications and marketing activities at one of the best-known traditional German companies in the mechanical engineering sector,” Ruiz Guevara adds. “I am looking forward to actively shaping the new KraussMaffei.”

Airbus announces HAPS business launch, CEO appointment

Following recent successful test flight campaigns of the composites-intensive solar-powered Zephyr High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), Airbus (Toulouse, France) has launched a connectivity services business that will be a subsidiary of Airbus Defence and Space. To help lead the company’s ambitious growth plan for the technology platform, Samer Halawi has been appointed as CEO of the new business. Airbus says HAPS will play a crucial role in helping to bridge the digital divide through connecting the unconnected on land, air and sea.

Most recently executive vice president and chief commercial officer (CCO) at Intelsat (Luxembourg), Halawi is a seasoned Telecom executive with more than 30 years’ experience in telecommunications and global satellite communications, as well as automotive and investment banking. He brings experience and expertise in building and transforming successful companies, according to Airbus.

“With thousands of flight hours in the stratosphere and an admirable entrepreneurial spirit, the Zephyr team are well placed to develop future connectivity services. This is an exciting time for the team, building on our success with the leading HAPS, and it is now time for the next step,” Halawi says.

Halawi’s leadership team will be boosted by the appointment of Taz Esmail as chief financial officer (CFO). Esmail joins from her most recent role as CFO at Meta Aerospace (Washington, D.C., U.S.), with extensive experience in the aviation, aerospace and defense sectors having worked in both listed and blue-chip private equity environments.

“Our connectivity services will provide a viable alternative and complement to terrestrial and satellite-based connectivity solutions, allowing for the first time low-latency and direct-to-device connectivity across vast geographies, and economically,” Halawi adds.