FEATURE
18
TOWER
|
Summer 2014
BY: GARY MAYK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
SUSAN ANGSTADT
KevinRock is president of theMiddletown,Pa.-
basedAerospace,Defense andMarineDivision ofTE
Connectivity, formerlyTycoElectronics. It’s a jobwith
heady responsibilities, not just to stockholders and
companies that use its products, but also to a nation at
war with international terrorists and in search of ever
more energy formanufacturing, transportation and
power generation.
“We strive for high reliability in our products,”Rock
said. “And for one very simple reason: If our products
were to fail, people would die.”
The basics of what his division does sound uncom-
plicated: take a wire and stick a connector on each end,
and you have a cable.The reality of what his division
does is otherworldly: design andmanufacture cable
that canwithstand the rigors of flying and space travel;
of underground and underwater drilling; and of battles
theDepartment ofDefensemay be waging.
And yet themanwho runs this high-techmanufac-
turer is neither an engineer nor a scientist.He’s aman
with a business degree fromKutztownUniversity,where
he played baseball and, he says, had his share of fun.
LAUNCHINGACAREER
After graduationRockwent towork for a small build-
ing products company in accounting.
“I wasn’t excited,”he recalled. “But I got to know
sales people and it seemed like an interesting possibility.
When it came time to find a new job, I answered a
newspaper ad and applied toAMP Inc. for sales.”
He went throughwhat he remembers as an “extreme-
ly professional” training program.The 14weeks involved
ROCK
SOLID
KEVINROCK ’79 LEADSACOMPANYON
HIGH TECHNOLOGY’S
CUTTING EDGE.
DON’T CALL KEVIN ROCK ’79 THE CABLE GUY.
Rock doesn’t install
cable.He doesn’t design it.He doesn’t work on a production line thatmarries
rubber, plastic, copper and connectors into a cable that will help gas and oil
companies pump energy from the depths of the earth and sea. Instead, he runs
a companywhose employees do all those things.
