Bio

Matt Steele cofounded North Coast Rocketry, a hobby model rocket company that designed, developed, manufactured and marketed high performance rocket motors and models for consumers in 1984. In 1995, the North Coast Rocketry products were licensed to Estes Industries (Penrose, CO), where Matt went to serve as Marketing Manager. Matt has designed over 100 different model rocket kits sold by Estes, Quest, Hobby Lab and North Coast Rocketry.

Recently, Matt won an individual gold medal in the S5C (C Scale Altitude) event at the 2016 World Spacemodeling Championships in Lviv, Ukraine.

Matt is an accomplished competitor, and has been a member of:

  • Seven US International Teams, winning one individual gold medal, two individual bronze medals and two gold, two silver, and one bronze team medals;
  • Eight NAR National Championship teams
  • Ten NAR Section Champions

Matt has also served as a NAR Trustee for nine years, National Contest Board Chairman, and Contest Director for two NAR Annual Meets (NARAM-30 and NARAM-48).

A native of Ohio, Matt received a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the Kent State University and a Master of Business Administration in Technology Management from the University of Phoenix. Professionally, Matt is currently the Director of Business Development for Aerojet Rocketdyne in Huntsville, AL. 

He was the Vice President for Business Development for Alaska Aerospace (Kodiak, AK) and Director of Strategy and Business Development for Vehicle Integration Services at ATK Space Systems (Magna, UT).

Matt also acted as the Lead Propulsion Engineer for Orbital’s Pegasus, Taurus, Minotaur, Hyper-X X43A, and Ground-Based Missile Defense Orbital Boost Vehicle (GMD OBV) launch vehicles while at Orbital Sciences Corporation. He sat on the launch console for six Pegasus missions.

 

At Thiokol Corporation (now ATK), he was the Mk-70 program manager, and the associate program manager SLAT, MK-36, MK-72 and Castor IV/Atlas AIIS solid rocket motors. As a program engineer for Hercules Aerospace (now ATK), he developed and tested complex composite space structures used on TDRS and Galileo satellites.

Prior to that, Matt was a Captain in the US Army, overseeing the Pershing Ia and Pershing II maintenance in Heilbronn, Germany, and Fort Sill.