If there’s a philosophy that guides AE alumnus R. Steven Justice in his job as the director for the Georgia Center for Innovation in Aerospace, it comes directly from the 1983 film The Right Stuff.

“’No bucks, no Buck Rogers,’” says Justice, with a light-hearted chuckle that quickly turns to steely analysis.

“It takes money to develop the technology that drives our industry. If you can’t get the funding, you can’t make things happen – in aerospace or anywhere else.”

Justice does not really wonder if there are bucks in this enterprise – there are more than 700 aerospace-related industries in Georgia, generating in excess of $50 billion in annual economic impact - but neither is he comfortable with the status quo.

“Aerospace exports in Georgia have gone up 600 percent over the last 10 years, but the public doesn’t see that. They think of Washington State or Wichita, Kansas, because they can see the big businesses centered in those places,” he said.

“In Georgia, the industry is spread out across most of the state – only eight counties [out of 159] don’t have some sort of aerospace-related business. So our job, really, is to create a more visible, marketable community.”

Justice made these observations as he strolled through the sprawling 2014 AIAA Aviation Conference – an event that he lobbied to bring to Atlanta. All around him in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency were businessmen, professors, grad students, and government leaders talking about their joint interests and future plans. He couldn’t help but smile at this convergence, but he wasn’t about to get giddy.

Networking is everything. Steve Justice, left, striking up a conversation with Dr. Pradeep Raj, a former Georgia Tech AE faculty who attended the AIAA Aviation Conference in Atlanta this week.

“We tend to be silo-ed in Georgia – where very exciting things are happening all over the place, but the businesses don’t necessarily talk to each other because they think that they are competitors,” he said.

“The great thing the Center has been able to do is to break that myth, to get companies to work together and with academia to raise their profile and improve their competitiveness.”

One such partnership – between the Kennesaw-based Area 1 Engineering and a local college – has allowed that company to test its fledgling UAV technology in preparation for eventual commercial use.

In Paulding County, the Center has brought together 15 companies to form the Paulding Aerospace Alliance, a group that now pools its resources to market its members and collaborate on contracts. Justice is also forging a foundational relationship between Georgia Tech’s Center for Space Technology and Research (C-STAR) and the burgeoning aerospace industry.

“It’s a push-pull situation. Academia – particularly Georgia Tech – are technology pushers. They push out well-researched technologies that industry needs,” says Justice.

“Our job is to pull those technologies to industry, where they can bring the aerospace industry forward.”

A former business owner and a longtime engineer with such giants as Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, Justice relishes his current role, which casts him as a dealmaker, problem-solver, and management consultant for hundreds of aerospace-related businesses.

“Sometimes, what a business is looking for is venture capital, and we can put them in touch with the right resources. Other times, they need to market themselves better, or find a collaborator, and we can help them there,” he says.

Since joining the Center four years ago, Justice has increasingly relied on data-driven metrics. His management team has created an accurate catalogue of the state’s aerospace companies so that regional partnerships can be identified and pursued. He also commissioned Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute to do an economic impact study on the aerospace industry. The results of that study have given Justice some powerful ammunition in his battle to change public perception.

He needs little provocation to use it.

“Aerospace industries produce the number one international export for the state -- $7.8 billion. The industry employs almost 90,000 people,” he says. “That, alone, tells you Georgia’s aerospace industry is thriving.”

Read the study.

But it’s what he calls the “small victories” that give him the most satisfaction at the end of the day.

“A lot of small to mid-sized companies don’t know where to go to get quality research or how to market their product to a large corporation. We can help them navigate the system, get results. It may not mean thousands of new jobs, but when they come back and tell us it worked, we know we’ve done the right thing.”

In addition to serving on the Advisory Board for the Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering, Steve Justice has served on the national Board of Directors of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and AIAA Technical Committees on Society and Aerospace Technology, Structural Dynamics, and General Aviation. He has received the Red Dot Design Award, was inducted into the Georgia Tech Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni, and received the AIAA Distinguished Service Award.