BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Stefan Birdseye, MBA
Director, Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology
Treasurer, Board of Directors
Overview
Stefan Birdseye, MBA serves as Treasurer of the Board of Directors at the Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology, where he oversees the Institute’s financial governance and contributes operational perspective drawn from a career in industrial quality, logistics, and aerospace supply planning.
Biography
Stefan Birdseye is Treasurer of the Board of Directors at the Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology, a policy and research organization dedicated to strengthening the industrial foundations of the United States.
Birdseye brings a working operator’s perspective to the Institute’s governance. He currently serves as a Demand Management Analyst at Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, supporting materials planning and supply chain execution across an aerospace prime program. He previously served as Quality Control Lead at Zastava Arms USA, where he developed supplier inspection protocols and built compliance documentation processes for a regulated manufacturing environment, and as Operations Manager at CMN Express, overseeing logistics, safety, and equipment procurement for a commercial trucking fleet.
This combination of frontline manufacturing quality experience, logistics operations, and aerospace materials planning gives Birdseye a vantage point on industrial policy that few research institutes have at the board level: direct familiarity with the supplier-floor, paperwork-and-pallets reality of how American manufacturing actually runs.
A historian by academic training, Birdseye is also an accomplished amateur historian and has served as an editor on numerous academic and published works, contributing structural and substantive editorial review across history, policy, and applied research manuscripts. His research interests include American industrial history, the Great Lakes region, and the Twin Ports maritime economy, drawing on earlier work as a Museum Technician with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Duluth, Minnesota.
Birdseye holds a Master of Business Administration from Louisiana State University Shreveport and a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Areas of Focus
Institutional Governance — Financial oversight, board reporting, and operational accountability for the Institute’s research and policy programs.
Industrial Operations — Supply chain execution, manufacturing quality systems, and the practical conditions of supplier compliance in regulated industries.
Education
- MBA — Louisiana State University Shreveport
- BA, History — University of Minnesota Duluth
Background
Birdseye’s professional path moves through quality control, logistics, security, and museum administration before settling into aerospace materials planning — a trajectory that grounds his board service in the operational details that policy documents tend to abstract away. Outside the Institute, he is an active editor of academic and trade manuscripts and a serious student of American history.