Paul D. Thompson
Director Digital Operations, Turbine Airfoils – GE Aviation

Paul has had a passion for digital solutions since his first line of code on a Timex Sinclair 1000. He has held leadership positions in varying fields from healthcare to aerospace weaving a looping stitch through software, hardware, and data to create intelligent information and customer outcomes. An early advocate for the Internet, he launched his career under grants from the National Institutes of Health modeling distributed neuroimaging. In the mid-1990’s, he expanded into online commerce as the Global IT Leader for Lexmark International’s direct (B2C) channel from foundation to daily revenues of over $1MM. Paul served on the Internet Purchasing Roundtable and was an original author of the Open Buying on the Internet (OBI)™ standard. Most recently, Paul has held a variety of leadership positions at GE Aviation, a world-leading provider of jet engines, components and integrated systems for commercial and military aircraft. His experience includes domains such as Information Technology, Manufacturing Quality, International Regulations, Business Development, and Operations. Currently, Paul is the Director of Digital Operations for Turbine Airfoils product family, with offices, manufacturing facilities, and joint ventures across 10 locations in the United States and Europe. And he still has that TS1000.