Zazi Forum

Gary Luick has had a diversified career over 30 years — in energy, industrial products, and advanced technology, in the US, Europe and Asia. Raised in Omaha, he was educated at Creighton University, graduating with a bachelor’s in marketing and an MBA. He began his career as an economist initially at Internorth and later at American Natural Resources. Next, he advanced through operations planning and financial management positions leading to the trouble-shooting Director of Corporate Development for multi-billion-dollar, diversified Allied-Signal. During his tenure at Allied he bought, sold and ran a number of disparate companies on two continents in three of the company’s sectors: automotive, industrial and electronics products. He was also a director on the Boards of several of Allied’s European subsidiaries with operating overview responsibility. While with Allied, he identified, negotiated and closed a total of 13 acquisitions/divestitures in North America and Europe.

Moving west to San Diego, Gary took on GTI Corporation, a 33-year-old faltering public company with majority foreign ownership in the UK and South Africa, and transformed the sleepy enterprise into a pace-setter in the new networking industry with operations in six countries — GTI became the leading magnetics supplier to the industry with over 50% market share — and with 12 consecutive quarters of 100% or more increase in earnings per share. He was President, CEO and a Director of GTI for seven years as he grew the telecommunications technology company from $30 million to more than $175 million in revenues, market capitalization from $26 million to a high of $400 million, and return on equity from 8% to 24%.

Since GTI, he has contributed his expertise to varied enterprises as CEO, interim CEO and a Director in areas such as wireless data communication and software development. His skill is strategic, positioning the enterprise for the future, then assembling, managing and motivating the management team to excel in pursuing a goal of steady growth and profitable performance.