Profile of Philip Teel, Northrop Grumman Corp. chieftain

Long Island Business News, Dec 13, 2002 by Ken Schachter

Philip Teel Jr. may have Georgia roots and a courtly manner, but the Northrop Grumman Corp. chieftain has his eyes squarely pegged on Long Island.

In particular, Teel, sector vice president of Airborne Early Warning and Electronic Warfare Systems, has become a champion of the region's business-collaboration movement.

That effort, promoted by groups such as Long Island Forum for Technology and Long Island Software and Technology Network, seeks to set up channels for sharing data on products, services and research.

The goal is not only to create sales opportunities, but to develop new businesses and partnerships based on the Island's unique combination of research laboratories (including Brookhaven and Cold Spring Harbor), educational institutions (such as SUNY Stony Brook and Hofstra) and industry.

As its own profit center, Teel noted, any new businesses spawned on Long Island through business collaboration that doesn't compete with an existing Northrop Grumman business would be welcomed by the home office.

In pursuit of those ends, Teel said Northrop Grumman in January would begin hosting regular luncheon forums bringing together cross- sections of leaders in business, finance, politics and technology to discuss issues related to Long Island. Those would be followed by working group sessions to hammer out policies and courses of action.

"Companies, educational institutions and laboratories have got to learn more about what the other institutions are doing," Teel said.

The company already has held meetings with officials from SUNY Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory to gain insight into programs at those institutions and detail the work taking place at Northrop Grumman.

Next up in Northrop's exchange program is fellow defense contractor EDO Corp. In the on-deck circle are BAE Systems and Telephonics Corp.

Teel, whose father was a semipro baseball player and who grew up (and remains) a New York Yankee fan (he used to pull in their distant broadcasts on his radio), said the idea of collaborating with other Long Island businesses gestated over the last nine months.

Peter Goldsmith, president of LISTnet and the Long Island Technology Network, said that though Teel is not a "Grummanite" from the days before the company merged with Northrop in 1994, his style of community involvement is reminiscent of the old regime. "He's in the old mold of Grumman," Goldsmith, a onetime "Grummanite" himself, said approvingly.

Northrop Grumman has about 2,000 employees on Long Island, with a sprinkling from electronic systems in Melville, and information technology in Bohemia and the vast majority in Teel's sector in Bethpage. Overall, the defense giant employs about 100,000 people.

Teel acknowledged that considerable spadework already has been done in bringing Long Island businesses together.

LIFT and LISTnet have been promoting cooperation by sponsoring corporate get-togethers, and LIFT has been compiling databases detailing the products and capabilities of Long Island's diverse economy.

Teel cites Rep. Steve Israel, D-Bay Shore, and Yacov Shamash, dean of the SUNY Stony Brook College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as tireless crusaders for business collaboration.

Teel said in his three decades in the defense industry, including stops in Virginia, California and Texas, he has never been in a place with the diverse resources and willingness to work together that Long Island possesses.

"In most places, it's everybody for themselves," he said.

But Teel said it would take more than jawboning to get the job done.

"We have a lot of seminars, but we don't have enough interactive working groups," he said. "We have the beginning of traction. But we've got to have commitment to make it happen, not just to have meetings. We need to take actions."