Shafi Keisler graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 2017 from College of Charleston. He also received Outstanding Student of the Year Award from the School of Business for the self-initiative he developed called the MBA Task Force which engaged 17 cohort members in paid consulting projects for firms including Mercedes-Benz Vans, Robert Bosch, and NowShip. He earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech where he was a member of Eta Kappa Nu National EE Honor Society. Shafi has 25 years of engineering, manufacturing, sales, distribution, and marketing experience. He entered the manufacturing industry with Alcoa and applied his prior experience at NASA to develop an improved cold rolling mill control system – publishing a paper on his innovation for Alcoa Tech Center in the process. His work led him to the field of automotive production engineering where he worked for Japanese auto giant, DENSO, gaining experience in Toyota Production System, Kaizen, Lean Manufacturing and ISO quality systems. In 1998, Shafi won a top award for innovation and cost savings for developing an ID data tag integration for DENSO. In 2000, he founded a company designing and manufacturing custom-engineered transmission systems for domestic classic cars and grew his venture from a garage operation to a multifaceted industrial operation with 46 employees and sales in excess of $65 million. An intuitive marketer, he earned coverage from more than 50 magazines and TV shows including Speed Channel’s “Chop Cut Rebuild.” His firm won the Small Business Administration’s first Rising Star Award. Shafi exited the business in 2014 and pursued his interests in the rapidly growing field of glass and carbon fiber lamina composites. He served as Vice President of Engineering, Sales, and Marketing for ABLE Manufacturing and Assembly, LLC in Joplin, MS, landing multi-million-dollar revenue contracts in mass transit rail, wind energy, and industrial sectors.