GAMA Hires Mazdak Hobbi and Archie Miller, Promotes Andy Phillips and Kyle Martin

The General Aviation Manufacturers Association has announced two new hires and two internal promotions affecting its engineering, certification, and government affairs functions. Mazdak Hobbi joins as Senior Director of Engineering and Certification, arriving from the FAA's Office of International Affairs, where he served as Senior Representative to the European Union and represented the FAA on aviation safety, certification, and regulatory matters with European and international partners. He brings more than 25 years of FAA technical, management, and international leadership experience, spanning aircraft certification, production oversight, flight test, continued operational safety, international validation, and bilateral agreements.

Archie Miller joins GAMA as Director of Government Affairs. He previously served as Legislative Assistant for the Aviation Subcommittee of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Mississippi, and will support GAMA's advocacy efforts across all branches of the U.S. government.

Andy Phillips has been promoted to Director of Regulatory Affairs and Innovation; he joined GAMA in 2024 as Manager of Airworthiness and Regulatory Affairs and will now oversee GAMA's strategic activities around entry-into-service of new technologies, products, and services, including work under the Electric Propulsion and Innovation Committee (EPIC) portfolio. Kyle Martin's title has expanded from Vice President of European Affairs to Vice President of Engineering and European Affairs, reflecting increased supervisory responsibilities; he has been with GAMA since 2016 and Vice President of European Affairs since 2020, and now leads GAMA's engineering team. James Viola, GAMA president and CEO, said, "We welcome the additions of Mazdak Hobbi and Archie Miller to bolster the expertise of our engineering and government affairs teams so that we can take on ongoing and new opportunities to foster and advance the growth of the industry." GAMA is an international trade association representing more than 150 manufacturers of general aviation airplanes, rotorcraft, engines, avionics, components, and related services.

Trade association staffing moves like this one signal where an industry expects its regulatory workload to grow. Pulling a senior FAA international-affairs representative directly into a certification leadership role, alongside a former House Aviation Subcommittee staffer, points to bilateral certification harmonization and U.S. legislative engagement as the two fronts GAMA sees needing more capacity right now.

Associations like GAMA function as the coordination layer between individual manufacturers and regulators, and the expansion of Kyle Martin's remit to include engineering alongside European affairs suggests the group wants technical policy positions developed with a globally coordinated view rather than region by region. Andy Phillips's expanded innovation mandate, tied explicitly to the Electric Propulsion and Innovation Committee, indicates the association is building dedicated internal capacity for the entry-into-service questions that new propulsion and avionics technologies raise.

What happens next depends on how these individuals are deployed on active dockets: whether Hobbi's bilateral-agreement experience gets applied to specific validation processes, and whether Miller's Capitol Hill background translates into visible advocacy outcomes in Congress. Those applications, not the appointments themselves, will show whether this staffing shift changes outcomes for manufacturers navigating certification and legislative processes.