Intelsat Hires Nokia’s Marais as Regional Vice President of African Sales

Intelsat has appointed Grant Marais as its regional vice president of African sales. Marais succeeds Jon Osler, who will join Intelsat’s Global Accounts team in Washington, D.C.

Marais will be responsible for supporting the growth of Intelsat’s customers in the region, which includes leading telecommunications and wireless operators, network services providers, and DTH platform operators and broadcasters. Intelsat provides customers in Africa with communications infrastructure and service from 23 satellites serving the region, which will be joined by the Intelsat EpicNG high throughput satellite platform when it is launched in 2015.

Marais joins Intelsat from Nokia in Dubai, where he served as general manager of Sales for the Pan-Middle East, Africa and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

ISRO Completes Significant Operational Management Shift

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has appointed three new directors for its various operational centers. The state-run space agency hired noted scientist S. Ramakrishnan as director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Thiruvananthapuram, taking over for P.S. Veeraraghavan who retired Dec. 31.

VSSC is ISRO’s chief facility for the design and development of rocket technologies for the Indian space program. Ramarishnan previously helped develop the country’s first Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-3) and ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

ISRO senior scientist and former SDSC director M. Chandradathan was appointed director of the space agency’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) at Mahendragiri to replace Ramakrishnan. Indian scientist M.Y.S. Prasad replaced Chandradathan as director of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota.