Aviation Team and Resources

Mark Gardiner - Founder

Mr. Gardiner provides a unique combination of financial consulting skills and high tech competence.  He has 30+ years of experience as an entrepreneur, executive and financial/business advisor in a broad range of industries.  In addition to the work experience, Mr. Gardiner is an instrument rated multi-engine pilot and a patented inventor.

Mr. Gardiner continues to provide financial and operational guidance to a number of start-ups developing leading edge technologies in a variety of unrelated industries.

Most recently, he completed three years as President and CEO of Octavian Scientific, Inc.  In that timeframe, Mr. Gardiner moved the company from reliance on early angel investors to achieving an initial round of $10 million in venture capital and debt financing.  Mr. Gardiner acted to insure future rapid growth by bringing in an industry-experienced and respected CEO, while remaining Chairman of the Board of Directors.  Octavian is commercializing new technology in semiconductor manufacturing.

Prior to Octavian, Gardiner served numerous clients in a 20+ year consulting career - spearheading more than $10 billion of debt and equity financing.  Recent projects include serving as business advisor to the Oregon Health and Science University for the River Campus/South Waterfront project – a $2+ billion bio-technology, academic, clinical, housing and commercial mixed use development.

In 1991, Gardiner, with friends, founded AvroTec to bring state of the art modern technology to small General Aviation aircraft.  During AvroTec’s involvement with the NASA-funded AGATE project, Gardiner was project lead, or systems engineer on a number of cockpit information systems.  He co-ordinated development of industry standards for a cockpit information architecture encompassing safety, reliability, and appropriate reversion mode issues.  Gardiner was co-principal investigator on NASA funded research on synthetic vision, highway-in-the-sky, and head mounted displays.  Gardiner developed and patented an innovative pilot-to-computer interface device.

Gardiner has been a leader on numerous public and civic boards, currently including the six-member Oregon Investment Council, which oversees the $60+ billion portfolio for Oregon’s public pension and trust funds.  From 1979 to 1985, Mr. Gardiner was City Economist, Budget Officer and ultimately CFO/CAO of the City of Portland, at that time a $700 million-budget public corporation – with a tenure spanning the terms of four mayors.  Prior to joining the City, he served as a consulting utility economist.  Gardiner earned a B.S. in Economics from Portland State University.

Ken Foote - Founder

Mr. Foote is actively involved in providing project technical services to define, schedule, and implement a major hardware and software project in an FAA certified aviation environment.  He  provides consulting services in the human factors area to simplify the graphic presentation and accessibility of complex situational awareness and weather information.  He is also involved in assisting the office of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and the FAA by creating and conducting a survey to identify troublesome aspects of the current certification process and provide a basis for possible legislative changes.

During AvroTec’s involvement with NASA’s AGATE project, Mr. Foote served as systems engineer on a number of task areas in cockpit information to the pilot.  He  also represented the AGATE consortium on the RTCA committee working on simplified certification of an application-independent computer that could be used for a variety of tasks.  He was principal or co-principal investigator on NASA-funded research on integrated cockpit information systems, on head mounted graphic displays, and on an inexpensive General Aviation synthetic vision solution.

Mr. Foote designed and built the prototype cockpit information display system for the FMP-300 system that was certified into the original Lancair Columbia.  He supervised all of the certification environmental activities and other hurdles to obtaining final FAA approval.

Mr. Foote holds an Airline Transport Pilot license, and is a Certified Flight Instructor for instrument single and multi-engine airplanes.  He has over 10,000 hours flying and instructing time.  He serves as an FAA Safety Team Representative, having previous been an Aviation Safety Counselor, and an Accident Prevention Counselor. 

Mr. Foote has been involved in various community activities, and currently serves on Washington County’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee.  Previously he served on his local elementary school district board of directors.

Mr. Foote has a B.S. in mathematics from Portland State University.