Robert Gee is the strategy manager responsible for standards, government, and intellectual property globally, within Continental’s Architecture and Networking Business Area. He collaborates with customers, consortia, governments, and other companies to enable safe transportation, sustainable business practices, and consumer information needs.
Spanning more than 30 years, Robert’s experience at IBM, Loral, Motorola, and other leading companies includes military and commercial communications systems, space and terrestrial technologies, and secure government communications for dozens of countries in Europe, North America, and Asia. He has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science, a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, and over 20 issued patents.
Robert’s experience extends to the news and entertainment industry, in which he is a national television Emmy Award recipient for his work as a producer for CNN. He has been credited for successfully pioneering the modern contracting approach for citizen photojournalists, and at one point had a CNN-estimated syndication audience of over 1 billion viewers.
The Pop in Your Job – What drives you? Why do you love your job?
Some lessons aren’t taught in a classroom. While my wife and I were fortunate to walk away from two terrorist attacks, dozens of people near us did not. The lesson we learned was that the daily grind and the disagreement of the moment are frivolous in comparison to making positive differences in others’ lives, sometimes as simple as starting with a smile. As engineers and scientists, we collaborate to do even more, such as working on cooperative and connected technologies that can address millions of unnecessary Roadway Injuries and Deaths (RIDs) each year. It is a daunting challenge, but one that can bear a wonderful result: not only at the macro level in which the statistics are large, but at the individual level, conveying friends and families to gather together each evening after their daily activities, helping to keep them safe throughout all modes of transportation, and enabling the more important activity of human connection to occur. Doing this broadly across all demographics, regardless of transportation means or individual financial situation, greatly motivates me because it aligns with the tough lessons learned in those fraught situations that my wife and I experienced. It’s always about the people. After all, Point A to Point B isn’t the point, unless we are successful in getting to B.