Westinghouse’s Chief Technology Officer & Chief Operating Officer Of Defense Electronics / Aerospace Manufacturing

Aris is a three-decade veteran of Westinghouse Electric Corporation, where key technologies of our time, including the shift from analog to digital, went from idea to reality. As Chief Operating Officer of Westinghouse’s defense electronics and aerospace divisions, Aris oversaw tech development, design, engineering and manufacturing operations throughout the US as well as in Mexico and Barbados, managing some 16 000 employees and a $3.2 billion annual revenue portfolio. As Chief Tech Officer and Vice President of Science and Technology, he led Westinghouse’s research and development, also managing the Science and Technology Center at the group’s headquarters in Pittsburgh.

Multi-Company Leader At Thermo Electron / Coleman Research

In 1998, after Westinghouse took over CBS Television and adopted a new identity under the CBS brand, Aris decided to move on. He joined Thermo Electron Corporation as Vice President of Research and Development, simultaneously serving as President and CEO of Thermo Electron’s subsidiary, Coleman Research (which Business Week identified as the US’s top technology research and development firm), and CEO of both Thermo Coleman Corporation and Thermo Information Solutions.

Business & Economic Development Secretary Of Maryland

In 2001 Aris relinquished these roles to focus on private technology investing via his companies Armel Development Corporation, Armel Scientifics LLC, and Armel Capital Management LP. He invested in over 40 technology ventures. His entrepreneurial success, plus his wide recognition as a skilled and trusted dealmaker with deep insight into identifying and incubating cutting-edge technologies, led to his being asked to lead the economic development of Maryland. Despite being a lifelong Democrat, he was appointed Business and Economic Development Secretary in the Cabinet of Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich, who described Aris’s portfolio as the cornerstone of his administration.

Aris saw his mission as transcending party politics: his strategy was to unlock the intellectual property assets of Maryland's universities, which he saw as potential economic powerhouses because of their innovation capabilities. His performance was acclaimed by the business community. At the end of Ehrlich’s term, the Baltimore Sun reported that “business leader after business leader" urged incoming Governor Martin O'Malley to reappoint Aris, who was described as "the best marketing manager the state has had in recent memory" and as a "visionary". But O'Malley did not invite him to stay on, so Aris left his government post in January 2007.

Leading The Biggest US Research University’s Campaign To Engineer Private Sector Deals

The following month, Johns Hopkins University’s president, physician and engineer William R Brody, hired Aris to lead JHU enterprise development and innovation technology transfer activities and accelerate the commercialization of the university’s world-leading research activities. (Aris was a JHU alumnus and a longtime member of the university’s Whiting School of Engineering National Advisory Council.) Brody said Aris’s “background, skills and accomplishments make him the perfect choice to serve as the university's point person for creating new linkages between Johns Hopkins and business." Brody’s words proved true. In 2011, respected financial columnist Jay Hancock listed Aris as one of "the three smartest innovation authorities I know". (The other two were economic historian Louis Galambos and Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist of the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC.)

A Manifesto For Economic Success

While serving in his JHU role, Aris co-authored with scholar N J Slabbert a well-received book, Innovation, The Key to Prosperity: Technology and America's Role in the 21st-Century Global Economy.The book was a manifesto for national economic success and established Aris as a thought leader. It criticized America for a loss of technological will and argued for a massive, coordinated effort to re-energize the nation's technology innovation, create jobs and trigger a new era of economic growth. The book was endorsed and introduced by US National Medal of Science laureate and former National Science Foundation Director Dr Rita Colwell, who called it “powerful" and "a very strong contribution to our understanding of the global economy and the role of technology." It was praised by Thomas Donohue, CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, and recommended by both the US Institute of Industrial Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which featured the book’s ideas as the cover story of its national magazine, along with a related editorial. The book is cited in numerous US National Academy of Sciences reports. Its success led Aris to become chairman of a media company, Montagu House Publishing, which has been exclusively contracted to publish decades of Washington Post content in book form.

Business Leadership Mentor And Educator

In January 2014, Brody's successor as president, Ron Daniels, paid tribute to Aris’s “wide-ranging impact” and announced that he’d asked Aris to advise the Dean of JHU’s Carey Business School and mentor executive leaders in training. After devoting six months to this assignment, Aris accepted a call from Stevenson University to act as Dean of its Brown School of Business and Leadership. He spent some six fulfilling years there, mentoring and overseeing the development of leadership courses. In April 2020, he extended this educational phase of his career into a creatively different setting, joining St John Properties, Inc, a multi-state property development and investment firm, as vice president of corporate education and leadership development.

During these years in education, Aris continued his parallel career as an investor. He explains the link between his business ventures and his educational work thus: “My whole career has taught me that successful management and successful education go hand in hand. To make deals, you must persuade people. To be a strong leader, you have to market. And persuasion and marketing are just other names for effective explanation and convincing communication: that is, education. Management and education are two sides of the same coin.”

In September 2023, Aris wound up his almost-four-year stint at St John and returned full-time to his investment activities.