Randy Heyler

Randy Heyler is President and CEO of Ondax, Inc., the market leader in the design, manufacture, and marketing of high-performance holographic optical filters, wavelength-stabilized laser sources and Raman spectroscopy systems for a wide range of industrial, scientific, defense, medical and consumer applications.

Randy brings over 30 years of leadership experience in the photonics industry, most recently with Newport Corporation, a world leader in lasers and photonics technologies, where his responsibilities included general management, technology planning, strategic and product marketing, OEM business development, branding and product positioning, and industry trade and technical association leadership.

During his 19 year tenure at Newport he served as general manager for the Instruments Division and was founder and Vice President of Newport’s Photonics Packaging and Advanced Automation division, pioneering the first commercial optical assembly automation solutions for the fiber-optic component industry, and growing the business from scratch to nearly $50M in sales from 1995 to 2001.

Prior to Newport, Randy spent 10 years with Spectra-Physics in the design, manufacturing, and marketing of laser systems for scientific, medical, semiconductor and construction industries. He has served as President of the Lasers and Electro-Optics Manufacturers’ Association (LEOMA), Chair of the Coalition for Photonics and Optics (CPO), and was founding Chairman of the Photonics Manufacturers Association. An active member of both SPIE (the Society for Photonics and Instrumentation Engineering) and IEEE, he has chaired numerous technical conferences, authored many articles, and holds multiple patents in the fields of photonics packaging and integration.

Outside of the technology arena, Randy was the founding Advisory Board chair for the National Pediatric MS Center at Stony Brook, New York, and is currently a Trustee of Sage Hill School, the first independent high school in Orange County, founded in 2000. He is an active skier, runner, and golfer with two college-age daughters, and lives with his wife Kelly in Newport Beach, California.

Randy holds both a BSME (Design) and an MS in Engineering Management (Technology Management) from Stanford University.