Gary Wilhelmi – Vice President, Dallas Branch
For over 30 years, Gary Wilhelmi has been directly involved with the development of successful new innovations as both an engineer and as a manager. During this time he has consistently created environments within his teams that leveraged individual differences and fostered high levels of individual interaction, trust and support. Through these experiences, he has developed a number of successful approaches and unique tools to allow organizations and individuals to understand those invisible attributes within an organization that ultimately become either key drivers or inhibitors of successful innovation.
Early in his career as an electrical engineer at the McDonnell Air Craft Company, Gary recognized the importance of pattern recognition in the discovery process. Whether associated with developing laser target identification systems or understanding the dynamics behind personal behavior, Gary has always believed that being able to identify the underlying patterns is the crucial first step towards discovering and, eventually, to leveraging new knowledge. Through this identification and understanding the visible and invisible patterns within organizations, the interactions between business, technology and people can be characterized and leveraged to allow new ideas to become successful innovations.
When presented with the opportunity to be part of a small start-up organization during the early years of fiber optic communications, Gary immediately joined the team at ITT Electro-Optics Products Division. His technical and organizational understanding helped him successfully direct the development and installation of the first operational fiber optic system installed at the National Security Agency’s Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland and subsequent systems around the world. His understanding of fiber optics and systems integration led to the development of several other unique systems for the different branches of the Armed Services. One such design resulted in ITT receiving a sole-source systems integration contract for a fiber guided missile system designed by Gary. During this period, Gary had numerous publications and developed and taught a specialized fiber optics system design course. The experiences at ITT further refined Gary’s understanding of the dynamics within and between organizations.
Gary later joined Frito-Lay where he provided the technical leadership for several hundred millions of dollars of new product innovation including such products as Baked Lay’s, Lay’s Ruffles, Lay’s Deli Style, Ruffles Flavor Rush, Lay’s Bistro, Cheetos Curly Cues, Ruffles Lights, and Apple Chips. In addition, he led the packaging, sensory and biotechnology areas resulting in significant quality improvements in all of Frito-Lay’s brands as well as tens of millions of dollars of productivity savings in packaging and operations. During this period Gary continuously pursued and developed novel approaches for both technical advancement as well as organizational effectiveness. Whether through using an optical interferometer in packaging design, creating an in-plant sensory program for quality, introducing statistical supervisory control systems or championing expanded use of external resources, Gary has continuously challenged the organization to move outside of its comfort zone. This has provided Gary with a unique insight into the dynamics associated with transforming new ideas into successful innovations. These insights have resulted in Gary’s developing several proprietary tools for assessing an organization’s culture, level of trust, invisible decision process, and how well prior knowledge is leveraged. Taken as a whole, these tools provide valuable insight in being able to characterize key organizational attributes and make much of the invisible visible.
Gary and his wife Leeann have four children and reside in the Dallas/Fort Worth area
PUBLICATIONS
“An Investigation of the Depolarization of Backscattered Electromagnetic Waves Using a Lidar Polarimeter” by Wilhelmi, G.J., RSC-45 Texas A&M Remote Sensing Center, August 1973 (NASA Grant NGL 44-001-001).
“A Dual Polarization Laser Backscatter System for Water Quality Studies” by Wilhelmi, G.J., W.T. Mayo, Jr. and J.W. Rouse, Jr., EOSD Conference, New York, New York, September 1972.
“Remote Water Quality Measurements With a Lidar Polarimeter“ by Wilhelmi, G.J., W.T. Mayo, Jr. and J.W. Rouse, Jr., Laser and Unconventional Optics Journal, 43 (1), 1973.
“An Investigation into Depolarization Mechanism Involved in Volume Scattering” by Wilhelmi, G.J., J.W. Rouse, Jr., and W.T. Mayo, Jr., 1973 International IEEE/G-AP Symposium and USNC/USRI Meeting, Boulder Colorado, August 1973.
“Depolarization of Light Back Scattered from Rough Dielectrics” by Wilhelmi, G.J., J.W. Rouse, Jr., and A.J. Blanchard, J. Opt. Soc. Am., 65 (1975) 1036.
“Active Multispectral Cross-Polarized Target Signature Measurements” by Wilhelmi, G.J., J.C. Leader, and W.A.J. Dalton,, Applied Optics, 15 (1976) 1837.
“Installation of an Operational Two-Kilometer Fiber Optic Cable” by Wilhelmi, G.J., G.W. Bickel, and J.C. Smith, International Wire and Cable Symposium, Hyatt House, Cherry Hill, NJ, November 1977.
“Evaluation of Single Fiber Connectors” by Wilhelmi, G.J., G.W. Bickel, and C.K. Kao, National Telecommunications Conference, Los Angeles, California, December 1977.
“Target Classification Using Depolarized Multispectral Laser Scattering” by Wilhelmi, G.J., et. al., CLEOS ’78, San Diego, California, February 1978.
“An Operational 30-Channel, 2-KM, Fiber Optic System” by Wilhelmi, G.J. and T.A. Eppes, SPIE Conference, Washington, D.C., March 1978.
“An Operational Thirty-Channel Fiber Optic Data Transmission System in the DSCS Network” by Wilhelmi, G.J. and T.A. Eppes, ICC ’78 Conference, Toronto, Canada, June 1978.
“Field Proven Family of Digital Communications Links” by Wilhelmi, G.J. and J.E. Goell, FOC ’78, Chicago, Illinois, September 1978.
“Measurement Technique Improves Metalized PP” by Stout, T., j. Specht and G. Wilhelmi, Paper, Film & Foil converting, December, 1995.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO TECHNICAL BOOKS
“Fiber Optic System Design and Component Selection” chapter of Fiber Optic Advances in Research and Development, Plenum Press, New York, 1979.
