Distinguished Engineer
Hometown: Lemmon
Mechanical Engineering ,
Troy Meink serves as director of Geospatial Intelligence Systems Acquisition at the National Reconnaissance Office near Washington D.C.’s Dulles Airport.
He is responsible for a $15 billion budget that includes the design, acquisition, launch, deployment and operational support of all national geospatial intelligence satellite systems. Meink manages a government workforce of 200 and a support contractor and industrial workforce of several thousand.
Of equal importance, he is also charged with sustaining mission partner relationships between federal agencies and representing National Reconnaissance Office programs to Congress, the director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget.
His career began with five years as U.S. Air Force navigator on the KC-135 Tanker stationed in Grissom Air Force Base, Indiana and included combat missions in Iraq during the first Gulf War.
Meink was selected for the prestigious Palace Knight program that allowed him to earn his master’s and doctorate in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at The Ohio State University (1995 and 1999, respectively) as well as conduct research at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.
His assignments have included a Pentagon assignment—deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for Space. As a member of the senior executive service, he twice received presidential rank awards and received the Charyk Award at the National Space Club’s Goddard Memorial Dinner for his work to deliver overhead signals intelligence capabilities.