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Vertical Flight Society selects Angelo Collins as new executive director

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has select­ed Ange­lo Collins as its exec­u­tive direc­tor, the sev­enth leader in its 80-year his­to­ry, with out­go­ing exec­u­tive direc­tor Mike Hirschberg, who has led the organ­i­sa­tion for 12 years, stay­ing on in a sup­port­ing role as direc­tor of strat­e­gy.

“Mike has done a fan­tas­tic job over the past 12 years,” said Tomasz Krysin­s­ki, VFS chair of the board and chair of the selec­tion com­mit­tee, and VP of research and inno­va­tion at Air­bus Heli­copters.

VFS was found­ed in 1943 as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety and has 6,500 mem­bers in indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment agen­cies world­wide, as well as 185 cor­po­rate mem­bers and 30 edu­ca­tion­al mem­bers. It was rebrand­ed as the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety five years ago.

“It has been the hon­our of my pro­fes­sion­al career to lead VFS since 2011,” said Hirschberg. “I have poured every­thing I could into expand­ing it into the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety. Now it’s time to pass the baton to lead the Soci­ety into its next decade.”

Collins, a mem­ber of VFS since 2008 has 15 years of expe­ri­ence in aero­space engi­neer­ing, project man­age­ment and tech­ni­cal con­sult­ing, pri­mar­i­ly relat­ed to ver­ti­cal flight. He has a BS in Aero­space Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land and an MS in Engi­neer­ing Admin­is­tra­tion from Vir­ginia Tech.

Most recent­ly, he has been serv­ing as an aero­space engi­neer with Booz Allen Hamil­ton, man­ag­ing the sci­ence and engi­neer­ing tech­ni­cal assis­tance (SETA) sup­port con­tract to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Tac­ti­cal Tech­nol­o­gy Office (TTO), where he super­vised a team of 18 engi­neers and ana­lysts.

Collins also served as the Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (S&T) Port­fo­lio Man­ag­er and S&T Afford­abil­i­ty Lead in the F‑35 Joint Pro­gram Office, pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for over­sight of S&T projects asso­ci­at­ed with devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion and sus­tain­ment for var­i­ous sys­tems, includ­ing the F135-PW-600 engine and Rolls-Royce Lift­Sys­tem for the short take­off and ver­ti­cal land­ing (STOVL) jet fight­er.

As a SETA at DARPA, he sup­port­ed numer­ous ver­ti­cal flight-relat­ed pro­grams, includ­ing Tern, Air­crew Labor In-Cock­pit Automa­tion Sys­tem (ALIAS), Grem­lins, Dis­cRo­tor, Mis­sion Adap­tive Rotor, Otter, Black­jack, Gob­lin, Angler, Silent Maraud­er and High-Speed VTOL.

Collins said: “I appre­ci­ate the con­fi­dence that the Board of Direc­tors has placed in me, and I look for­ward to serv­ing the mem­ber­ship and expand­ing the glob­al impact of VFS.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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