Michael R Ange
MANAGING DIRECTOR | CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER | GENERAL MANAGER
Strategic Planning | Sales and Marketing Leadership | Startup Management | Product Launch
Global Liaison | Import/Export Oversight | P&L Responsibility | Government Compliance
Risk Management Consultant | International Speaker | Published Author | Expert Witness
QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY
▪ Strategic management and marketing executive with experience creating and implementing domestic and international initiatives that involve customs; product distribution and life-cycle planning; inventory, warehouse and shipping operations; and budget and personnel supervision.
▪ Visionary entrepreneur with nearly 25 years of experience launching and building successful businesses (including foreign startups in United States), while boosting sales and slashing costs.
▪ Dynamic international liaison and trainer with expertise in Asian, European and Latin American cultures who has overseen resolutions to government compliance, shipping and manufacturing issues.
▪ Sought-after international speaker, liability case expert witness, photojournalist, magazine columnist and author of nonfiction books (including McGraw-Hill’s Diver Down: Real World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them), textbooks, public interest articles and training manuals.
▪ Ambitious yet collaborative innovator who used persistence, persuasion and multifaceted expertise to redesign advanced technical diving certification protocol despite industry resistance to change.
Entrepreneurial Success
Mike has been a fixture in the upper management levels of the diving industry for over two decades, making a name for himself with dynamic, outside the box marketing campaigns, accomplishing sales goals that others called fanciful or unrealistic and reinventing the way advanced technical divers were trained globally. One of the very few significant success stories in the recreational diving industry that started as a small town dive storeowner. His foundation SEAduction Dive Center in Dunn, NC operated from 1991 through Dec of 2012.
Strategic Management
In less than ten years Mike would transcend the recreational side of his industry, run a two continent division of one of his suppliers, Dräger Dive Americas (North & South American Diving Equipment Division of Dräger Sicherheitstechnik, GmbH, 99-02) contribute to the global standards for public safety and technical divers and write his first textbook. He would go on to run the startup of the American Division of the Sweden based Waterproof Diving International and manage the division from 03 to 09. As the #1 rated columnist at SCUBA Diving Magazine the largest diving publication in the world, Mike would also hold the position of training editor as a “hobby” job from 01 to 09.
International Trainer and Speaker
As you would expected with this résumé and his work as a photojournalist CAPT Michael Ange has also become one of the most recognized names among active divers and undersea explorers. Mike has safely trained well over 3,000 divers, certified hundreds of instructors and dozens of instructor trainers, logged well in excess of 6,000 safe dives, including several hundred to depths in excess of 200 fsw. With a dive training background that encompasses military, law enforcement, recreational and technical training in the US, Europe and Asia. Here are some highlights:
· 60 master instructor and/or instructor trainer certifications for technical and public safety divers with eight global certifying bodies
· International Training Director, ERDI, the world’s largest public safety diver certification agency, 1999 – 2004
· Global Training Director, Technical Diving Division, SSI, the world’s second largest diver certification agency, 2010 – 2012
· Member, The training safety boards of four other international diver training agencies 1996-2012
· U.S. Coast Guard licensed Merchant Marine Master with power, sail and commercial towing endorsements
Mike is also a sought after speaker delivering leadership and safety seminars and presentations all across the US and from Portugal to Singapore.
Cutting Edge Expedition Leader
A participating diver and diving safety officer in several expeditions, Mike’s experience includes two NOAA supervised expeditions to the historic Civil War Ironclad, the USS Monitor and he supervised an environmental and archeological survey of Warm Mineral Springs in Florida. Mike was also a diver and the leader for the dive team charged with removing any unexploded ordnance when the USNS Vandenberg was sunk off Key West, Florida in May of 2009.
Author
Mike has published training standards, nine textbooks and more than 250 journal and magazine articles on recreational diver safety and training. His mainstream book, “Diver Down: Real World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them,” by McGraw Hill Publishing, has received outstanding reviews and continues sell well seven years after its release.
Faculty Level Teaching Experience
Among his other accomplishments, Mike served as adjunct faculty at six colleges and universities; was named visiting faculty to the Scientists in the Sea Program VI sponsored by Florida State University and the US Navy; and has lectured physicians as faculty to the Medical Assessment of Fitness for Diving Conferences sponsored by the Undersea & Hyperbaric Medical Society. He served on training or safety advisory boards for SSI, TDI, PSAI, NASE, SDI and ERDI. In 2006 SSI recognized Mike’s contributions to diving by awarding him both the prestigious Platinum Pro 5000 Diver and Platinum Pro 5000 Instructor awards.
Life before the Diving Industry
Excelling in his selected industry followed service in the US military and in civilian departments as a law enforcement officer and criminal investigator.
- Military Police Officer and Criminal Investigator, U.S. Army, (active and reserve)
- Police Officer, Havelock, NC, Police Department;
- Deputy Sheriff, Beaufort County, NC Sheriff’s Department
- Narcotics agent, Boone, NC, Police Department, High South Interstate Drug Task Force.
- During my military and law enforcement service, I obtained extensive training in investigations, security, crime prevention and supervision, including the following US Army and FBI sponsored schools:
▪ Military Police School ▪ Physical Security Inspectors School
▪ Criminal Investigators School ▪ Officer Candidate School
- Police Supervision, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Law Enforcement Officer Training School
Outside of Diving,
Mike graduated with honors from Appalachian State University and he is an active supporter and advocate for veterans of the United States Armed Forces. His hobbies include reading at least a book a week, long-distance motorcycle tours, off road excursions on both remote mountainous and beach terrains and, of course, he dives – preferably on deep wrecks of historical significance.