Todd co-founded Aerolane in 2021 with a simple mission: Radically expand the availability of air freight at the same cost as traditional trucking (and do so while reducing emissions, improving payload velocity, and reimagining existing aerial technology).

Before co-founding Aerolane, Todd founded BNSF Railway’s safety-focused use drones and advanced data analytics. Todd and his team at BNSF paved the way for much of today’s scaled commercial operations in the drone industry. His team partnered with The Federal Aviation Administration in 2015 to create pathways for long-range, beyond visual line of sight operations in the national airspace – a partnership that continues to this day. During the partnership, The BNSF UAS/FAA team made aviation history multiple times including, in 2015, the first Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) commercial operations in the lower 48 United States – flown by an aircraft now on display at The National Air and Space Museum. 

During Todd’s tenure as leader of BNSF’s program, the team grew from 12 pilots to over 250 employee drone pilots using both line of sight and beyond line-of-sight drones in 28 states. Milestones include the first production/scaled BVLOS operations in 2015, first Part 107 night operations authority, multi-state expansion of BVLOS in 2017 and then The FAA’s first approved nationwide commercial BVLOS flight approval in 2020 – which covered 23,000 miles of flight routes.

Todd serves on AUVSI’s Board of Directors and most recently served on The FAA’s BVLOS Advisory and Rulemaking Committee (ARC) where he co-chaired the ARC’s Flight Rules working group. Todd is founding member of The FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee and served on The FAA’s Drone ID and Tracking Rulemaking Committee.

Along with several UAS certifications, Todd is an active general aviation pilot. He is based in Fort Worth, TX.