Gary began his involvement with Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) processes in 1994 as a researcher at Restek Corporation. It was at this point that the direction of his career started to crystalize on his path through Marketing, Management, Business Development and eventually Business Unit Manager with SilcoTek Corporation.
Gary started his career after graduating from The Pennsylvania State University with a B.S. Degree in Chemical Engineering with a Polymer Science Focus. Restek Corporation hired Gary as a Research Chemist focused on investigating, synthesizing and developing new siloxane based stationary phases used in gas chromatographs. Early in ’94 Gary got involved in a project involving the scale-up and optimization of Restek’s SilcoSteel, silicon CVD process into a standard air sampling canister. From this point forward much of his research focus shifted to the SilcoSteel process and helping customers solve material problems with these coatings.
Gary’s involvement with customers eventually led to an increase in customer support and development of technical publications to grow the customer base of the coatings. Early in 1997 Gary was made Product Marketing Manager for the CVD group, a job which involved not only continuing research but also supporting marketing, managing personnel and managing profit and loss of the coating business.
Eventually the CVD coating group developed a large customer base and potential customer base outside of the scope of the parent life sciences company, Restek. In 2002 a team, including Gary, proposed a business plan to the Leadership Team of Restek to create a business unit completely focused on growing the business for the CVD coating services. As a result, Restek’s Performance Coatings (RPC) business unit was founded with Gary as the Business Unit Manager.
The RPC group achieved annual double digit growth demonstrating the success of the business team along with the viability of the process to stand-alone. Throughout 2008, Restek pursued the path of 100% employee ownership. To accomplish this the majority owner, Paul Silvis, had to sell the controlling shares of Restek and hand over ownership to the ESOP trust. As part of the sale, Paul still hungered to develop this innovative RPC group and develop them onto a path that laid outside of the destiny for Restek. As a result, SilcoTek was spun off and all rights purchased by Paul Silvis and a group of minority shareholders with Paul transitioning to SilcoTek as the Head Coach and Founder.
Gary transitioned his role from Restek to SilcoTek as Director of Engineering and Business Development, serves on the Board of Directors, and is an officer of SilcoTek Corporation.
During this time Gary continued to grow professionally and has earned an MBA from The Pennsylvania State University and a Leadership Certificate in Strategy and Organizational Performance from the Smeal College Executive program.
