Newtec CEO Thomas Van den Driessche Named President of SSPI Board of Directors

Washington DC, April 29, 2019 — The Space & Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) has announced the appointment of Thomas Van den Driessche, CEO of Newtec, as president of its board of directors through March 2020.

Van den Driessche has been active in the broadcast and satellite markets for the past 20 years. He has spent 12 of those with Newtec, where he started as director of sales and business development. At the end of 2016, he was made CEO.

Van den Driessche will work closely with board chairman David Myers, president of the Communications Sector for Peraton, to continue the growth of SSPI’s membership beyond traditional GEO communications into LEO, MEO, earth observation, optical communications and into a new era of the space economy, with a more global footprint. Other current board members represent Blue Origin, Boeing, CBS, Ericsson, Eutelsat, Globalstar, Hughes Network Systems, Kymeta, OneWeb, Planet, SES, SpaceX, Speedcast, SSL, the Spaceconnection, Viacom and Viasat.

SSPI was founded in the USA in 1983, with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, creator of the satellite concept, as its honorary chairman. SSPI's founding purpose was to serve as a professional network in a young industry that was on the verge of substantial growth. SSPI offered a way for satellite professionals to keep in touch with each other and with technology change in an industry that rapidly spread across the globe.

Today, with over 3,000 members in more than 40 nations, its core mission has expanded to promote space and satellite as the invisible but indispensable infrastructure of the modern world and to make the industry one of the world’s best at attracting and nurturing the talent that powers innovation.

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