Church Cannot Stay Retired
If Dale Church succeeds, your face will one day be recognized by security cameras and your cell phone and media player will be powered by fuel cells. Already floors are being cleaned by robots, and the United States military is fighting wars using electronic command posts he was instrumental in developing.
All this from a 66-year-old OSU COB graduate who is chairman of three corporations and director of two more.
"I tried to retire several times," he says, "but I'm not a good sitter."
Five Boards
That restlessness has taken Church from business classes at OSU - Class of '61 - to the top of five companies and the pages of "Who's Who in America."
From his home in historic Williamsburg, Virginia, and office in the Old Town district of Alexandria, Virginia, -- close to Pentagon and Washington connections - Church remains the un-retired chairman of:
· Ventures & Solutions, which he founded in 1997 to help small, high-tech companies sell to the U.S. government.
· MTI Micro, in Albany, N.Y., developing portable fuel cells
· Alive Tech, Inc. in Cumming, Georgia, developing biometric facial scan systems that will pick out criminals, terrorists and refuse access to even unwelcome wedding guests.
As if that weren't enough, Church also sits on the board of Mechanical Tech, Inc., the parent company of MTI Micro, and is a founder of the ISX Corp., which supplies the military with state-of-the-art software, including fighter jet technology, automated logistics and command and control systems.
ISX does much of its work for DARPA, the military's R&D branch. ISX has twice won recognition as DARPA's "Contractor of the Year." The government is already employing the firm's "Command Post of the Future," which allows generals back in the war room to see what the field commanders see, and vice versa.
Law and Orders
Church's lifelong passion for innovative technology remained dormant in the early years of his career. He earned a law degree at night from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. while working during the day for the CIA. Experience with U2 spy planes and satellite reconnaissance sparked his interest in disruptive technology, but it was his law degree that earned him an insider's ticket to Washington's political elite. From 1969 to 1977, Church served as the General Counsel to ESL Inc. of Sunnyvale, CA a company specializing in electronic reconnaissance systems. From 1977 thru 1980, he served as Deputy Under Secretary for Acquisition to Dr. William J. Perry, Under Secretary of Defense. In that capacity Church was given oversight responsibility for the Pentagon's $150 billion purchasing budget.
"We bought everything from shoelaces to aircraft carriers," he quips, recalling his years at the Pentagon. "Four years was enough of that for anyone."
At the Pentagon, Church overhauled the military's acquisitions process, putting emphasis on innovative technologies like stealth fighters, cruise missiles and precision guided munitions that could counter the Soviet Union's superior military numbers.
Diplomat v. Litigant
In addition to his acquisition duties, Church supported international diplomacy, playing a behind-the-scenes role in the Camp David peace accords. He also negotiated defense agreements with Japan and Korea at the height of the Cold War.
In 1980, Church's mix of legal training and government connections caught the attention of Surrey & Morse, LLC, an international law firm, which hired him to handle disputes and lawsuits arising from major international and domestic government contracts. He subsequently joined the law firm of McDermott, Will, and Emery as a partner heading its Government Contract Litigations Group. It was demanding work with 60 to-80 hour weeks.
"After working 2,800 hours in a year, I decided there has got to be something better than this," he said. "So I returned to my first love - innovative and disruptive technologies."
Venturing Out
In 1997 Church tendered his resignation at McDermott, Will and founded Ventures & Solutions LLC to advise small, high-tech companies on winning and keeping contracts with the governments. When a colleague from an investment banking firm purchased Mechanical Technology, Inc., Church helped him figure out what exactly what he had bought.
"The real discovery," Church recalls, "was that in a back room they were doing Department of Energy research on methanol fuel cells."
Church helped line up a partnership with General Electric's Power Systems to launch "Plug Power" in Albany, NY providing 5 kilowatt methanol fuel cell generators. In 1999 MTI spun off Plug Power and used the proceeds to launch MTI Micro Fuel Cells Inc. that is developing direct methanol fuel cells designed to replace rechargeable lithium ion batteries in portable electronic devices including cell phones and media players.
Eyes Don't Have It
Church's newest venture is in biometrics - measuring facial features to identify individuals. Fingerprints are troublesome. Eye scans must be precisely aligned, and are slow - taking up to several minutes. However, facial scans - a 3-D face print - can be very hard to fool and take less than a second, making them perfect for surveillance cameras and access control at places such as busy airport lines.
Church formed a new company, Alive Tech, Inc. of Cumming, Georgia, and is buying up the best available technologies to make a play for this emerging multi-billion dollar industry.
"This will be the answer to a lot of security problems," Church explained. "We've already installed a system in the Atlanta airport and in county jails in the Southeast. We scanned in photos of wanted criminals, and we've been successful catching them. Some of them were caught right in the visiting room of the jail."
OSU's Contribution
Church credits OSU with great professors using case studies to teach him to gather the facts, analyze them and resolve problems - key ingredients to his success.
"Reasoning and solving problems is what it's all about," he said. "Assembling, analyzing, digesting facts and then putting together something that works - that's what America is all about. And by golly our educational system had better teach our kids to think. Rote learning is not going to help kids learn to problem solve."
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