Angelo Collins Takes the Reins as Vertical Flight Society’s new Executive Director

Ange­lo Collins last week assumed the role of exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS), after an exten­sive exec­u­tive search that began last Decem­ber. He is only the sev­enth leader in the orga­ni­za­tion’s 80-year his­to­ry.

Collins said: “Ever since Mike first took on the role of Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of Ver­ti­flite in 1999, this Soci­ety saw a ben­e­fi­cial momen­tum shift that only con­tin­ued to improve dur­ing his 12 years as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor.

“Mike made VFS a health­i­er and more vibrant orga­ni­za­tion, primed for even greater suc­cess in the future. I felt embold­ened to answer the call and am hum­bled to have been select­ed as the sev­enth Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Soci­ety in its 80-year his­to­ry.”

He added that the bur­dens that accom­pa­ny this role present unique chal­lenges that require the exec­u­tive director’s full atten­tion to ensure that VFS, found­ed in 1943 as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety, con­tin­ues to thrive while he is at its helm.

A mem­ber of VFS since 2008, one of his fond­est mem­o­ries was as the admin­is­tra­tive chair of the Trans­for­ma­tive Ver­ti­cal Flight (TVF) Work­shop in 2014. This was the world’s first meet­ing of the emerg­ing elec­tric VTOL pio­neers and is now held annu­al­ly as the VFS eVTOL Sym­po­sium.

Among var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions, he received the then-AHS best paper award with Dr Gor­don Leish­man in the Forum 67 his­to­ry ses­sion for his paper, ‘The Aero­nau­ti­cal Exploits of Jacob Elle­ham­mer’.

While in Arling­ton, he engaged with sev­er­al local non­prof­its and com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, and served as pres­i­dent of his home­own­ers asso­ci­a­tion (HOA), as an exec­u­tive board mem­ber of our neigh­bor­hood civic asso­ci­a­tions, and on the Arling­ton Coun­ty Parks and Recre­ation Com­mis­sion.

He con­tin­ued: “I also vol­un­teer my time as a Red Coat for the Arling­ton Coun­ty Chap­ter of the Knights of Colum­bus (KoC), and as a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Hel­lenic Edu­ca­tion­al Pro­gres­sive Soci­ety (AHEPA), in affil­i­a­tion with the Greek Ortho­dox Church.”

In April, the VFS announced the select­ed par­tic­i­pants for this year’s Diver­si­Flite Schol­ars pro­gram, part of an ini­tia­tive to pro­mote sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics (STEM) careers for the future VTOL avi­a­tion work­force.

Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety Announces 2023 Diver­si­Flite Win­ners