CEO and chairman
Astronautics Corp. of America | Oak Creek
Ronald Zelazo leads Astronautics Corp. of America, an Oak Creek-based company that designs, develops and manufactures avionics equipment and systems for the commercial and military aerospace industry. The company was founded in 1959 by the brother-and-sister leadership team of Nathaniel Zelazo (Ronald’s father) and Norma Paige in an effort to meet emerging aerospace challenges. Since then, its products and services have been used by more than 150,000 civil and military aircraft. It is also the parent company of New Jersey-based Kearfott Corp., a designer and manufacturer of inertial and GPS-aided navigation components and systems and motion-and-control components for platforms used in air, space, land and sea.
In early 2020, Astronautics moved its corporate headquarters from Milwaukee’s north side to Oak Creek, and in 2022, the company also relocated its manufacturing operations to Oak Creek from a plant on Milwaukee’s near south side. That same year, the company sold its legacy electromechanical product line to Melbourne, Florida-based Extant Aerospace in a $27 million cash deal.
In 2024, the company was awarded a phase-one cybersecurity research contract from the Federal Aviation Administration through which it will identify and categorize several sets of data that will eventually be used to train an artificial intelligence model being developed by the FAA.
