Florida Tech Homecoming

Jill Eanes, '91 BS, '93 MBA

Jill is a Captain at United Airlines, where she also serves on the pilot recruitment team. She is a champion for diversity throughout the United and the aviation industry. She volunteers through Florida Tech, United Airlines, and the Air Line Pilots Association to mentor aspiring pilots, with a particular emphasis on women and LGBTQ+ aviators.

Jill has 30 years of experience as a commercial pilot. She has over 20 years of service with United. In addition to flying for United, she has been a flight manager in the Chief Pilot's Office, facilitated a Human Factor Change Review course, and conducted Operational Efficiency training. She has also flown for regional airlines and low-cost carriers. She holds type ratings on nine different aircraft and is a former Florida Tech flight instructor.

Jill is a three-time graduate of Florida Tech, earning both an associate's and bachelor's degree in Aviation Management with Flight, and an MBA in Human Resource Management. She is currently a member of the Florida Tech College of Aeronautics Advisory Board and has established an endowed scholarship for LGBTQ+ Florida Tech students, focusing on those studying aviation and aeronautics.

Click here to watch her acceptance speech!

Robert H. Seemer '85 MBA

Robert "Bob" Seemer is a management consultant and trainer for organizations and individuals seeking performance excellence. Inspired to achieve excellence in athletics, he was a Cocoa High School All-American athlete in basketball, was the captain of the Georgia Tech Division 1 varsity basketball team, and was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks. He brings the concept of excellence to his clients, including some of the best-known organizations in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors, domestic and international.

Upon graduation from Georgia Tech, he held industrial engineering, management, and leadership positions at United Parcel Service, Boeing Commercial Airplane Company, and Florida Power and Light, where he played a key role in FPL's successful challenge for Japan's highest award for quality, The Deming Prize. After leaving FPL in 1991, he and Maria, his wife-partner, created Competitive Technologies, a consulting and training firm focused on improving operational efficiency in banking, telecommunications, and manufacturing by applying Lean and Six Sigma methodologies and the Malcolm Baldridge Award for Performance Excellence.

After selling Competitive Technologies in 1999 and a brief retirement, Bob and Maria created Electronic Training Solutions (ETS) to capitalize on the world's early transition to digital learning. By 2004, ETS became the largest provider of online Six Sigma training in the southeast and continues to excel today by delivering virtual and hybrid accredited workshops in Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, and Innovation.

Bob has retired three times, only to return to his chief hobby, his profession. His greatest reward is seeing clients learn new concepts and apply them to relevant issues to achieve performance levels they did not think they could attain. Other hobbies include bicycling and travel, especially if long-distance hiking is involved. In 2012, he trekked 500 miles across northern France and Spain on the Camino de Santiago, a journey he plans to repeat in 2024.

Besides his bachelor's degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, he earned his MBA at Florida Tech in 1985, noting that it was a pivotal landmark in his career.

Bob recently relocated to Weston, Florida from Brevard County, where he lived in Rockledge for the past 30 years.

Click here to watch his acceptance speech!

Sujit K. Jain '83 MS

Sujit Jain is a seasoned, globally-networked executive experienced in developing and executing business strategies for profitable growth.

From 2018 until his retirement in 2022, Sujit served as the President of the Powertrain Solutions Division - Passenger Cars, Commercial & Off-Road, and Electric Vehicles, at Robert Bosch LLC. He was responsible for the $3B business, with sales & marketing, product development, manufacturing, quality, finance, and business strategy development reporting to him.

In 2022, he transformed the business portfolio at Bosch by acquiring $3.5B in new battery and H2 fuel cell electrification business at both traditional OEMs and new pure EV OEMs. This recent business acquisition will double the divisional revenue to $6B+ by 2027.

In 2006 as President of the Gasoline Systems Division, he successfully restructured a loss-making $800M business to a consistently profitable (EBIT: 8%) $2.5B business by 2017.

This past year, Sujit was inducted into the Bosch Hall of Fame for his outstanding entrepreneurial skills, new business acquisition success, and disciplined cost management.

Sujit began his career at TI Automotive in 1984 and spent ten years at DENSO as Director of Engine Management Systems before joining Bosch in 2000.

Sujit received a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1979 from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, where he was named a distinguished alumnus in both 2021 and 2022.

Jain earned an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Florida Tech in 1983, and he credits the late Dr. Thomas Bowman and his Advanced Combustion Engines course with setting the foundation for his career in Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) technology.

Sujit currently serves as an advisor to the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, Dearborn campus. He also serves on the advisory board of several start-ups in the e-Mobility, Industry 4.0, and Digital Services domains.

Sujit lives in Rochester Hills, Michigan with his wife of 35 years, Nidhi Jain.

Click here to watch his acceptance speech!

David Wisinger '82 BS, MD

David Wisinger, MD, FACP is currently the Chairman of the Department of Medicine for Valleywise Health and District Medical Group. Dr. Wisinger is also Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs, Professor of Medicine, and the Dr. James P. Laumond Endowed Chair in Medicine at Creighton University School of Medicine and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix.

David received his BS in biology from Florida Tech in 1982 and his MD from the University of South Florida in 1986. He has worked treating disadvantaged patients in Phoenix since 1986 at the public health system formerly known as Maricopa Integrated Health System (MIHS), recently rebranded as Valleywise Health. Over the decades, he has taught hundreds of medical students and internal medicine residents as residency program director, chair, and professor of medicine.

David has received numerous teaching and service awards throughout his successful academic and medical career. However, he feels his greatest professional accomplishment has been caring and advocating for underserved patients in Phoenix for the past 37 years. He feels strongly that his experience at Florida Tech gave him a strong STEM foundation and, more importantly, served to steer him into his current roles impacting those often forgotten and most in need.

Dr. Wisinger feels that none of his professional accomplishments would have been possible without the support from the loves of his life, including Darla, his wife of 34 years, and two wonderful children, Alex and Amanda.

Click here to watch his acceptance speech!

Carolyn Baney '92 BS

Carolyn Baney was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania on December 13, 1935. She attended grammar and high school in McKeesport - coincidentally the same high school the Florida Tech's second president, Dr. John Miler, had graduated from a few years earlier. After high school, she trained as a phlebotomist/lab technician and then went to work at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, where she was involved with tuberculosis research. Carolyn also enrolled at the university, where she met her husband of 60 years, Richard, a medical student working in an adjacent lab. A year later, they were married. After their first of four children was born, she took a ten-year break from work to care for their children. During this time, she traveled with her family, as her husband served in the Navy. In a span of two years, they lived in Connecticut, South Carolina, California, and Hawaii. The family moved to Brevard County in 1971 and has been here ever since.

As Carolyn's family responsibilities eased, she returned to work as a phlebotomist and volunteered to drive the Bloodmobile for the local hospital. She enrolled at Florida Tech and graduated with a degree in business communications. Her further employment positions included jobs with a public relations company and an auto dealership. Carolyn was very active in community affairs, supporting and participating in fundraisers for Florida Tech, Holmes Hospital, and other organizations.

After retirement, she traveled on a small soft adventure cruise ship for four to six months a year, visiting numerous parts of the world. She especially enjoyed Antarctica.

Click here to watch Carolyn's husband accept the award on her behalf!

2023 Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD)

Ad Astra Alumni Awards

Angie Lassman '12 BS, '14 MS

Angie Lassman is an American Meteorological Society Certified broadcast meteorologist for the NBC News Climate Unit, where she covers weather and climate across NBC News platforms, including Weekend Today, MSNBC, and NBC News Now.

Prior to her work at NBC News, Angie spent six years in Miami, Florida as part of the NBC 6 First Alert Weather Team, contributing to the weekday broadcasts, During her time at WTVJ, she created the NBC 6 Climate Check Series, covering environmental issues, natural disasters, and tropical systems, locally and globally. Her coverage of Australia's historic bushfire disaster earned her an International Telly award, an Emmy nomination, and most recently, the American Meteorological Societies Excellence in Science Reporting Award.

Before joining the First Alert Weather team, she was the weekday morning meteorologist at Fox 26 KNPN in Saint Joseph, Missouri. She spent two years forecasting everything from tornado outbreaks to snowstorms in the central plains.

A native of Fraser, Michigan, Angie was recruited to play volleyball for the Florida Institute of Technology and graduated from the Department of Ocean Engineering and Sciences in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology. She continued her studies at Florida Tech to earn her Master of Science in Meteorology and co-author a chapter in the book Climate Change and Regional/Local Responses.

At Florida Tech, Angie was part of a scientific research team, a collegiate volleyball athlete, a two-year team captain, and a college instructor. She was also a facilitator for the Department of Space Sciences, educating Florida Division for Emergency Management officials and law enforcement on proper procedures and crisis management in a case of a coronal mass ejection/space weather emergency.

Click here to watch her acceptance speech!

Svafa Grönfeldt, Ph.D., is a Professor of the Practice at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a founding member and Faculty Director of MITdesignX, an academic program in the MIT Morningside Academy for Design dedicated to design innovation and entrepreneurship. The program is MIT’s newest innovation accelerator and is designed to support new pioneering ventures created at MIT. She is also a co-founder of The MET fund, a Cambridge-based seed investment fund providing early seed funding to qualified MITdesignX startups. 

Before joining MIT, Dr. Grönfeldt was a member of a team that created and scaled two global life science companies, Actavis and Alvogen, Inc., where she served as Chief Organizational Development Officer and later as Deputy CEO. She is a former president of Reykjavik University, where she also previously taught as an associate professor of business. 

Dr. Grönfeldt serves as a member of the board of directors of three publicly listed companies on the Nasdaq OMX and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange: Össur, Marel, and Icelandair. She has also served on the Florida Tech Board of Trustees since 2017.

Dr. Grönfeldt holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, an M.S. in Technical and Professional Communications from Florida Tech, and a B.A. in Political Science and Mass Media from the University of Iceland. She received the Order of the Falcon Medal of Honor awarded by the President of the Republic of Iceland in 2008, and she was the 2010 Outstanding Alumni Award Winner from Florida Tech’s College of Psychology and Liberal Arts.

Dr. Grönfeldt is co-author of Service Leadership: The Quest for Competitive Advantage with Dr. Judy Strother. Dr. Strother was Svafa’s mentor and thesis advisor during her time at Florida Tech and, according to Svafa, was very influential in shaping her career.

Applying the lens of design to complex problems is a focal point of her work. Driven to understand the dynamic relationship between people and their environment, Dr. Grönfeldt combines her academic, entrepreneurial, and executive careers with a lifelong passion for design to develop ideas and new enterprises through design innovation and the development of design-based entrepreneurship theory and methods.  

Click here to watch her acceptance speech!

Glad has served as a financial advisor and professional money manager for families and individuals in our community for over 28 years.

Glad came to Florida Tech after his education and training in mechanical engineering while in India. When he came to Florida Tech, he changed course and pursued his MBA, while also teaching as an adjunct lecturer for several years. 

He started at Morgan Stanley in the mid-1990s and he then continued his academic experience at the Wharton College of Business.

Glad has served the Florida Tech mission for close to four decades, being a vital connector for the university throughout the community. His ability to introduce Florida Tech leadership to individuals, civic leaders, and organizations has made a profound difference. In particular, Glad is well connected to the medical community where he has become a center of influence, but is also involved in the arts, human services, emergency needs, and every other area that impacts the quality of life in Brevard. Through his connections, he has also played a role in the growth and evolution of the Scott Center for Autism Treatment at Florida Tech.

For his selfless service in all these ways and more, he is the recipient of the 2023 President’s Award for Service and Leadership.

Click here to watch his acceptance speech!