FeaturedNews

Crisalion Mobility, formerly UMILES NEXT, appoints Manuel Heredia Ortiz as Managing Director from Airbus

Crisalion Mobil­i­ty has appoint­ed Manuel Here­dia Ortiz as man­ag­ing direc­tor, who has joined the com­pa­ny from Air­bus to over­see strat­e­gy and ensure the com­pa­ny deliv­ers on its cor­po­rate goals.

Ortiz will also iden­ti­fy the resources need­ed to imple­ment Crisalion Mobil­i­ty’s ambi­tious roadmap and assum­ing over­all respon­si­bil­i­ty for the var­i­ous busi­ness and mar­ket seg­ments.

Ortiz said: “It is an excit­ing chal­lenge to be lead­ing the way to the future of mobil­i­ty with Crisalion Mobil­i­ty, com­pet­ing at the very high­est lev­el. I am delight­ed to be join­ing a team of dri­ven, moti­vat­ed pro­fes­sion­als with a rich diver­si­ty of knowl­edge and curios­i­ty that tru­ly reflect the Crisalion project.”

Since 2004, Andalu­sia-born Here­dia has held var­i­ous roles at Air­bus Defence & Space, the defence divi­sion of Air­bus Group, includ­ing CEO of Air­bus Poland and VP of oper­a­tions for the A400M mil­i­tary trans­port air­craft, and has been active­ly involved in var­i­ous projects in the aero­nau­ti­cal sec­tor relat­ed to train­ing and new tech­nolo­gies.

He holds a degree in indus­tri­al engi­neer­ing from Seville Uni­ver­si­ty, a PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield and an MBA from HEC Paris Busi­ness School. He brings two decades of inter­na­tion­al expe­ri­ence to the table, hav­ing held exec­u­tive posi­tions at lead­ing com­pa­nies in the indus­try and played a key role in imple­ment­ing inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. 

Car­los Pove­da Rey, founder and CEO of the com­pa­ny, added: “Crisalion Mobil­i­ty is com­mit­ted to attract­ing the best tal­ent in the mar­ket, and Manuel’s appoint­ment as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor is a clear reflec­tion of that pol­i­cy. 

“Manuel brings the right expe­ri­ence and tal­ent to strength­en the foun­da­tions on which we are build­ing advanced air and ground mobil­i­ty solu­tions for inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tors.”

In recent months, Crisalion Mobil­i­ty has sig­nif­i­cant­ly grown its tech­ni­cal and exec­u­tive teams with the appoint­ment of out­stand­ing pro­fes­sion­als includ­ing Óscar Lara, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, and Gus­ta­vo Rodríguez, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer.

Cre­at­ed in 2019 and for­mer­ly known as Umiles Next, Crisalion Mobil­i­ty has a pio­neer­ing dual com­mit­ment to elec­tric ground and air mobil­i­ty, devel­op­ing its own inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies to pro­vide solu­tions for Span­ish and inter­na­tion­al mobil­i­ty oper­a­tors. 

The Integri­ty 3 con­struct­ed by Umiles Next first took to the air at the ONERA test field in Toulouse, France in Sep­tem­ber 2022, as part of an ini­tia­tive led by the TindAIR project (SESAR JU). 

Avatar photo

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.

eVTOL Insights is part of the Industry Insights Group. Registered in the UK. Company No: 14395769