Yale School of Management - Rob Quartel '78

"I’ve always challenged orthodoxy, and attending the Charter Class at Yale SOM was an early and deliberate footprint on that path. I wanted to order what I was learning in the real world – and SOM has always been a great place to help build context both then and now."

As CEO and chairman of NTEL•X, a company he founded in 1999, Rob heads a small company with a big impact – not only in the U.S. government but in the Middle East. The company’s breakthrough predictive analysis solutions are used to automate and improve operational decisions in situations ranging from healthcare eligibility, traffic congestion management, counter-proliferation, and for insuring food, and drug import security.

Quartel, a member of the Yale SOM Charter Class, and a former U.S. Federal Maritime Commissioner and internationally recognized expert in homeland and national maritime security policy, began his career in Washington, fresh out of Rice University. He has been a change agent throughout, quickly moving from the EPA to two White House agencies and then from bureaucracies to politics – as issue director in the Ford re-election campaign right before SOM, and later in the same position in George Bush’s 1979 race, and then in his own unsuccessful race for the U.S. Senate from Florida in the 1990’s. He challenged both the domestic and international shipping establishments over regulatory reform issues; and was early to identify the national security risk inherent in the container industry right after 9/11.

Rob has served on numerous industry and government advisory boards including the Army Science Board. He’s currently a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a recent appointee to the Southern Growth Policy Board’s New Economy Workforce Council; and today serves on the PAC and board of the Northern Virginia Technology Association, the largest technology council in the country.

He has a degree in biology from Rice University and was a member of the Charter Class of Yale's School of Organization and Management (MPPM ’78). He is married to Michela English '79, president of Fight for Children, a D.C.-based nonprofit focusing on education and health risks in the District.