Board of Directors
Ronald K. Sable
Mr. Sable is President of Concord Solutions Ltd., a consulting practice that supports commercial, government, and nonprofit entities. Ron is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Paragon Space Development Corporation and Founding Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the University of Arizona Eller School Center for Leadership Ethics. He also serves on the Boards of Directors of Merchants Information Solutions Inc., the Long Realty Cares Foundation, and the 390th Memorial Museum Foundation. As a past Chairman of United Way for Southern Arizona, he led the transformation of that organization, to include a substantial increase in revenue and efficiency during the economic downturn.
He served as a senior executive of The Aerospace Corporation, and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation (MDC), where he was the chief corporate liaison with Congress. He followed that with leadership of worldwide military aircraft business development for Douglas. Before joining MDC, Mr. Sable was Special Assistant to President Reagan for National Security Affairs. In that role he was the President’s liaison with the U.S. Senate on defense, foreign policy, intelligence, space and arms control issues, and led the US Senate confirmation of two FBI Directors, and the Secretary of Defense. He served as an Air Force pilot (Colonel), Senior Air Force One Advance Agent, Chief of Air Operations for the Secretary of the Air Force, and is an Outstanding Graduate of the Air War College.
A graduate of Iowa Wesleyan University (BS), with an MS in International Relations from Southern Illinois University and a Doctorate of Humane Letters (honorary) from Iowa Wesleyan, he is a graduate of the Harvard University Program in National & International Security, the Wharton School Executive Program in Finance, the UCLA Anderson School Program in Mergers and Acquisitions, the FBI Citizens Academy, and the Capitol University School of Banking. A recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Iowa Wesleyan, Mr. Sable received the George Washington Honor Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross, Meritorious Service Medal and the Air Medal (3 OLC.) as well as the United Way “Live United Award” and the Long Realty 2020 Samuel H. Woods Award for outstanding community service.
Ron is a licensed commercial pilot, and is an elected member of the Tucson Airport Authority, the DM 50 and The Arizona Town Hall. He has successfully led senior government and commercial business delegations to more than 30 countries, and his views on subjects ranging from leadership and ethics, to Board of Director responsibilities and national security, have been reflected at the United Nations, in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Fast Company Magazine, Corporate Board Member Magazine, The Arizona Star, and on NPR. He and his wife Patsy live in Tucson AZ and are proud supporters of the University of Arizona.
Grant Anderson, P.E.
Mr. Anderson co-founded Paragon in 1993. From the time of inception of the company until fall 2014, he was the VP of Engineering and Chief Engineer of the company and was responsible for the design and implementation of not only many of Paragon’s technical achievements, but also its processes of engineering rigor in a stepped approach of requirements, design, build, test and delivery. This process has been cited by many customers as unique, disciplined and highly productive. Coming from a background of not only technical but financial and managerial training, he has held diverse positions at Paragon including Treasurer/Secretary, CFO, Sr. VP of Operations, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Manufacturing.
Recognized as a leader in the life support in extreme environments field, Mr. Anderson has led the systems and conceptual design of multiple spacecraft under contract to Lockheed Martin, NASA, Inspiration Mars Foundation and others. He holds multiple patents in a diverse range of disciplines including testing systems, isolation systems, radiator systems and overall systems design. He has led development and qualification of experimental flight hardware for five shuttle flights, two Mir missions, a Russian Progress, and the first commercial payload on ISS. Prior to starting Paragon, Mr. Anderson was the Chief Design Engineer for the International Space Station Solar Array Program–the largest solar arrays ever built–while employed at Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale, CA.
Mr. Anderson holds two degrees from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering (B.S.) and Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering (M.S.) and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of California. His diverse education/training included non-technical roles such as Controller for a Palo Alto, CA real estate firm during college where he implemented some of the first computers into the company’s financial systems to track and monitor property financial performance. Working at an aviation consultancy, he participated in the start-up of two airlines through route analysis, equipment analysis and strategy advice. One went on to be America West, now part of American Airlines. Mr. Anderson is also a graduate of the International Space University 1991 summer session with emphasis on space business and management.
Mr. Anderson’s passion for excellence drives him to support the next generation of engineers and leaders through participation in educational work outside of Paragon. A former Treasurer and member of the board of Trustees of the Tucson Waldorf School, he lead the financial growth of that entity from a small struggling school to a robust, diverse and thriving school today. Mr. Anderson also oversees a non-profit tuition scholarship organization which provides approximately $250,000 of scholarships to deserving children throughout southern Arizona. He is also on the Industry Advisory Board for the College of Engineering at the University of Arizona
In his spare time, Mr. Anderson is an avid bicyclist and is known to ride solo for hundreds of miles to clear his mind.
Mr. Anderson lives in Tucson with his wife of almost 30 years, Ines, and their three children.
Kenneth Dorushka
Mr. Dorushka is currently a self-employed Executive Consultant providing corporate assistance with Intellectual Property, Marketing, Business Development as well as business divestiture consultation.
Mr. Dorushka’s experience includes leadership of diverse organizations of up to 3000 people, including Sales, Engineering, R&D, M&A, Legal and Operations. He was responsible for several business spin offs from AT&T and Lucent Technologies, both domestic and international.
In addition, Mr. Dorushka was instrumental in establishing several joint ventures with NV Philips in the Netherlands and Germany, Gold Star in South Korea (board member) and with Governmental partners in Spain and Taiwan (board member). His most current corporate responsibility was Sales Vice President for Agere Systems.
Mr. Dorushka has engineering degrees from The University of Illinois and IIT, as well as a business degree from Stanford and is an active member on several community boards.
Ines Anderson
Ms. Anderson’s marketing program, brand management, and public relation skills are most recently recognized in her work with the K-12 education market in Tucson, AZ. Previously she served as a public relations manager for FileMaker, Inc., an Apple subsidiary, that delivers innovative software to support creation of custom business solutions for iPad, iPhone, Windows, Mac and the web.
Ms. Anderson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from Stanford University and has more than 10 years of high technology marketing experience in corporate and agency settings.
Joe Rothenberg
Mr. Rothenberg has over 57 years of space systems experience including the last 20 years in the commercial “new” space industry, 18 years at NASA and 19 years in the government aerospace business. While at NASA Mr. Rothenberg held Human and Scientific Space Flight institutional and program leadership positions and has wide recognition in the National and International Space community and post NASA as one of the pioneers in the commercial “new” space industry.
Mr. Rothenberg is currently an Independent Consultant and a member of the Board of Directors for 2 non-profits, the Conrad Foundation and 007 Benefit LTD. From February of 2018 until June 2021, he led the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for MethaneSAT LLC. Mr. Rothenberg also is a lifetime “Associate Member” of the National Academy of Science – National Research Council and serves on Academy Study Committees. Mr. Rothenberg retired from Google in October of 2016 where, as Director of Skybox Imaging/Terra Bella Engineering and Operations, he was responsible for the development and initial deployment of Google’s Skybox/Terra Bella satellite Constellation. From June of 2009 – August 2014 when he joined Google, he was an Independent Consultant, his clients included the Swedish Space Corporation, Skybox Imaging and Paragon Space Development Corporation. From June 2002 until June of 2009, Mr. Rothenberg served as the President and a member of the Board of Directors of Universal Space Network (USN). During his tenure at USN he played a key role in both the Acquisition of the DataLynx’s Alaska Ground Station and the sale of USN to the Swedish Space Corporation(SSC).
Mr. Rothenberg retired from NASA in 2001 as the Associate Administrator for Space Flight, a position he held from January 1998. In this position he was responsible for establishing the policies and direction of NASA’s space flight and operations programs including the Space Shuttle and International Space Station, space communications, expendable launch services and human exploration of space. Prior to his assignment as Associate Administrator for Space Flight from April 1995 until January 1998, Mr. Rothenberg was Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He was responsible for the space systems development, operations and the scientific research program execution for NASA’s Earth orbiting science missions. Mr. Rothenberg joined NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 1983 as Operations Manager for the Hubble Space Telescope, Prior to being appointed as the Center Director, he held senior Program and Institutional Management positions, including directing the development and execution of the highly successful first HST on-orbit servicing mission which corrected the telescope’s flawed optics.
Mr. Rothenberg was with Grumman Aerospace from 1964 until 1981 where he held a variety of project engineering and management positions for hardware development, systems engineering, test and operations for spacecraft, aircraft, and submersible research vehicles.
Mr. Rothenberg holds an MS degree in Engineering Management and a BS degree in Engineering Science, from C. W. Post College of the Long Island University and an AAS degree from the State University of New York A&T Institute at Farmingdale New York. In 1997 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and in 2000 an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the C.W Post College. Mr. Rothenberg was recipient of numerous NASA awards including the Exceptional Service Medal in 1990, Distinguished Service Medals in 1994 and 2000, Outstanding Leadership Medals in 1996 and 2001, Senior Executive Service Presidential Rank Meritorious Executive Awards 1994 and 2000 and the Presidential Rank Distinguished Executive Award in 1997. He has also received the National Aviation Association Collier Trophy, the AIAA Goddard Astronautics Award, the National Space Club’s Nelson P. Jackson Award, and was inducted into the Smithsonian’s Aviation Week and Space Technology Hall of Fame.