Leslie
M. Gray
Leslie Gray is Managing
Director of Morgan Group LLC. Les
consults in the areas of technical and business management, particularly in
the areas of Leadership, Sales, and New Business Formation.
Les developed and taught
courses at MIT on Entrepreneurship, Intrepreneurship, and Sales and
Communication for Engineers, sponsored by both the MIT Ocean Engineering
Department, and the MIT Sea Grant College program. The courses Les developed are now offered
by the Morgan Training Co.
Les leads our
development of hedge fund investment models and corresponding investment
products. We have operated a Pilot Fund since 2002 developing these
investment models.
In 1981, Les
started the firm Airflow Research and Manufacturing Corp, making radiator
cooling fans for the Automotive Industry, employing technology developed
under government sponsorship, for quieting propellers on submarines and
torpedoes. As founder and president,
Les led the company through rapid growth and expansion into world
markets. By 1990, the firm had
captured most of the available business of Ford and Chrysler, had a 10%
market share in Europe, a significant presence in Korea, and
annual sales of over $50 Million.
In late 1990, Les
led the sale of Airflow Research to the Robert Bosch Corporation. After the sale, Les continued to lead
Airflow for Bosch, and was responsible for new business and company growth.
By 1995, when Les stepped down from active management, Airflow had annual
sales of over $100 Million, manufacturing plants in 4 North American
locations, and direct supply capability or licensees in most automobile
producing countries. Today, the fan
technology that Les pioneered is on over half of the world's new
automobiles.
Prior to starting
Airflow Research, Les worked for 9 years at Bolt Beranek and Newman, as a
senior scientist, consulting to the US Navy. His areas of technical research included
signal processing (finding anomolies in large
quantities of data), as well as airborne and undersea noise from various
vehicles. Les is the author of over
60 papers, reports, and articles in these areas.
Les has a BS degree
in Naval Architecture from Webb Institute, and an MS in Ocean Engineering
from Catholic
University. After university, Les was an officer in
the US Coast Guard, Naval Engineering Division, in Washington, DC,
and responsible for implementing the Coast Guard Hearing Conservation
Program.
Les is married, and
has two sons. His passions include
sailing, skiing, and biking.
Affiliation
with MIT and Brown
University:
Les had an
appointment as a Lecturer at MIT in the Department of Ocean Engineering
from 1997-2001. (MIT's equivalent of
Adjunct Professor). He taught one 6
credit course in the fall semester, 13.s35 "Entrepreneurship and
Intrepreneurship: Developing a Technology-Based Business".
This course evolved
into a series of 2 and 3-day seminars for the public. These were sponsored by the MIT Sea Grant
program, under the brand "Entrepreneurship and Intrepreneurship",
and are still also offered in-house for corporate training. Les has taught 10-20 of these sessions
per year, over the past 10 years.
More information on these programs can be found at www.morgantraining.com.
At Brown University, he was a member of the
Board for the Brown University Entrepreneurship Program, (
http://www.brownep.org ) and helped get the program started. In 2001, Les taught a 2-day
"Entrepreneurship Boot-Camp" for Brown students, sponsored by the
brownep program.
Technical
papers, publications and presentations:
Les has published
over 15 papers in reviewed technical journals, in the fields of acoustics,
signal processing, and propeller and fan design.
Les has published
over 40 sponsored technical reports for various clients, primarily the US
Navy.
A list of reports
and papers is available on request.
