Mike Kaplan shared on LinkedIn Thursday that he has been appointed vice president of business development at D-Orbit USA.
The new D-Orbit executive brings extensive leadership experience in the space industry with a history of delivering results in building and leading cross-functional teams. He is well-versed in business development, strategic planning, program management and product development.
Who Is Mike Kaplan?
Before joining D-Orbit, Kaplan taught at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He handled graduate courses focused on space industry customer engagement and innovation, and developed a new curriculum for the new space economy.
The executive was a principal consultant at Kaplan Astronautics, a private aerospace consulting firm, for over eight years. He also served as VP of business development at LeoStella, where he helped expand the company’s business with a significant increase in SmallSat bus customers.
Kaplan held the VP of new business development for defense and space at Belcan and was the senior capture staff for RTX’s Raytheon Intelligence & Space, where he was instrumental in the company’s first major space mission win for the U.S. Space Force. He also served as director of NASA strategic business development & sales at SSL.
The executive spent 11 years at Boeing as a program development manager, overseeing the development and capture of new businesses. He was also with Ball Aerospace as the senior program manager for space science, spearheading the James Webb Space Telescope contract, the largest NASA contract ever won by Ball.
Kaplan spent seven years at NASA as the chief of advanced programs. He led new astrophysical space observatory programs and technology development. He started his career with the Naval Research Laboratory, where he worked from 1980 to 1990.
