Grit and determination are often key factors to a person’s professional success. And Lily Aragon, the founder, president and CEO of San Marcos, California-based Kros-Wise clearly has these attributes in spades, as Runway Girl Network learned during an in-depth interview with her.

Celebrating its 20th Anniversary, Kros-Wise is a professional services firm offering IT service management, engineering services, and program management for the Department of Defense (DOD), as well as a commercial aerospace engineering and manufacturing firm.

Notably, its aerospace business was recently contracted to engineer and produce the Outside Aircraft Equipment (OAE) Crown — including radome, adapter ring, ARINC 791 aircraft mounting lugs, etc. — onboard Airbus A220, A320, A330 and A350 aircraft for Safran Passenger Innovations (SPI) in support of Airbus’ disruptive supplier-furnished Airspace HBCplus inflight connectivity program (referred to by Kros-Wise as HBC+ Wave 1.5).

For Aragon, the contract with SPI “is a blessing and meets my goal of diversification into the commercial aviation arena. It allows our ability to provide to industry a low-cost solution with multiple antenna installations atop a single crown kit adjustable for multiple airframes coupled with Kros-Wise manufacturing for unbeatable lead times. It gives us the opportunity to show our aviation capabilities and strong foundation of contract management from our DOD contracts background.”

Kros-Wise CTO Ken Larson handles the engineering and technical areas and Aragon oversees the contract management of the Kros-Wise Aerospace Division.

“We have such a great team of engineers that I’ve worked with in the past and that Ken has handpicked from industry with an immense amount of experience working with other integrators in this realm,” Aragon tells RGN of Kros Wise’s aero proficiencies.

“It’s not our first time doing this specific type of work. In addition to years of experience with IFC Crown installations we have also done STCs for modifications inside airplanes with regards to seating and refurbishing and all our engineers have decades of aviation and space experience. Safran Passenger Innovations has decided to work with Kros-Wise Aerospace team because we offer a team that can bring our own patented products and is able to develop forward thinking solutions. Our agility and flexibility helped us to win that business.”

Flexibility has perhaps always been a major strength of Aragon’s, as her unlikely entry into the world of defense and aerospace attests.

“I was a single mom, and I was offered a position as a janitor at a startup defense contractor’s company, and it gave full benefits. So, I told myself ‘I’m going to do it. I need benefits for my family.’ I worked full time there for a few months, whilst going to school for computer science,” she confides to RGN.

“At that time, the facilities division received a maintenance software package, and nobody knew how to use it. So, I was able to bring that to life, and suddenly, I was a junior analyst! From there, the startup was bought by McDonnell Douglas. I started working for them, and thereafter worked at Lockheed Martin, mostly in top secret and secret programs for the DOD.”

In 1996, she started working for Booz Allen Hamilton as an IT consultant for the Navy. “[T]hat’s when I really decided that we could work cheaper for our clients if we started a small business,” she says.

“I was able to get a subcontract with SAIC from colleagues that I worked with, and that’s when we started our own business. When I launched Kros-Wise in 2004, I had two partners. By 2007, I was the sole owner of the company.”

Initially, Aragon’s work at Kros-Wise focused mainly on large IT Navy programs delivering shipboard networks for the Naval fleet.

“I worked for a Navy Captain developing acquisition management strategies, and requirements for next generation of modernization of shipboard networks. There is immense amount of contract management, cyber security, logistics, installations, engineering, and sustainment activities in the Navy’s acquisition lifecycle,” she explains.

“Day to day, I was learning the different parts of the acquisition lifecycle process of the Navy. Kros-Wise grew rapidly within this environment and once word got out on the street, Kros-Wise topped 150 employees within a few years. Working government contracts was a good start, but I wanted to take Kros-Wise into the commercial arena.”

She continues, “We brought Ken Larson onboard at Kros-Wise, with whom I’d known back in the early 1990s working for Lockheed Martin and down selected three commercial products to a particle separator dirt filtration system. This system never clogs like a conventional filter that needs replacement often. Originally slated for military applications on HUMV, Striker and Tank platforms we decided the best market entry would be the off-road UTV world.

“The first year the filter was on the winning UTV in one of the most prestigious races in all off-road events, the Baja 1000. During this race the typical vehicle requires an air filter replacement 6 to 12 times. Our winning UTV never had to change its air filter and saved considerable time over all other teams. After this the KWT filtration system took off. The first commercial division of Kros-Wise was launched, KWT Filters.”

Larson came over in 2017 alongside the birth of the KWT Filters division and started the aviation business, Kros-Wise Aerospace Division. A few years later, Covid hit, but the nascent new unit did not lose its stride during the pandemic.

“We were open the whole time. On the DOD side, we’re essential personnel, many brave employees work through this difficult time to make sure the warfighters were supported,” says Aragon.

“On the commercial side, we were doing satellite work for Viasat; we were creating large positioning systems for their satellites. Our team was very busy throughout the Covid era, not only engineering the positioning systems but also manufacturing them. That’s what’s unique about us; we wanted to provide value add for customers. We wanted to have the whole lifecycle of the engineering and manufacturing process in-house to lessen the risk for our customers so that we could manage the whole process. We engineer, manufacturer, test, and ship extremely accurate positioning systems for Viasat in Carlsbad, California and in Tempe, Arizona.”

Providing the OAE crown for SPI’s HBCplus work is a natural extension of Kros-Wise’s own work. “Things that make our kit better than competitors are lower height with drag reduction of over 16%, ability to mount Ku or Ka antennas on a single platform; Ku and/or Ka radomes with same Outer Mold Line (OML) and many other patented items. For instance, we have a patented lug kit that lowers the height of the installation atop the airframe by as much as 2 inches over competitor designs and allows adjustability to multiple airframes for a single installation kit.”

(Under HBCplus, SPI serves as the terminal provider to Airbus; it has selected ThinKom Solutions’ Ka2517 VICTS antenna hardware for Ka-band connectivity, and Thales/Get SAT’s electronically steered antenna for the Ku-band side of the program. In both instances, Airbus will cap the install with radomes.)

Twenty years after launching Kros-Wise, has Aragon arrived at where she wanted to be with the business?

“I am,” she tells RGN. “This company for me was a gift from God and I take that very seriously. I have a passion for helping people grow and getting them where they want to be; that is one of my missions. My main mission is to take God’s blessings and bless others.”

As a woman executive in a male dominated field, she admits she has faced challenges along the way.

“Most of my work has been in the military sector with the department of the Navy. It’s a man’s world and it still is, but it has gotten much better. I’ve been working for the military since the 1980s and 90s and women weren’t recognized as much. You’d go in as a consultant and they would think that you were taking notes or the admin taking minutes and actions. So, you had to work harder. But when it comes down to it, if your work is good, if you’re performing excellently, people notice the difference,” she says.

“There were some challenges, but I just concentrated on the work and my abilities and capabilities to make my clients shine. That was my number one objective, and it still is. What is it that I can do to make them shine and get them to their program and career goals/objectives.”

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Featured image credited to istock.com/Dushlik