Richard Browning – Keynote Speaker

Richard Browning is Founder and Chief Test Pilot of Gravity Industries.

Gravity Industries designs, builds and flies Jet Suits, pioneering a new era of human flight. The company was founded in March 2017 to challenge the perceived boundaries in human aviation and to inspire others to dare to ask “What if?”. It now scales towards an International Race Series.

Prior to founding Gravity, Richard was a Royal Marines reservist for six years and an Oil Trader with BP for 16 years. He developed business in many countries including Azerbaijan, Mozambique, Russia and conducted trade relations with many more.

He discovered and implemented major new technologies in BP including turning a $30k groundbreaking trade flow analytics (ship tracking) platform still at the heart of the global commodity industry to this day. It won the BP Group innovation Award and generated in excess of $50m within 3 months. He has also been a key participant and investor in a number of successful start-up ventures externally and is a passionate STEM advocate.

Today Richard Browning is the Founder and Chief Test Pilot of pioneering aeronautical innovation company, Gravity Industries. Launched in March 2017, the dream was to reimagine human flight with an elegant partnership between mind, body and machine, exploiting cutting-edge technology.

Born from rich aviation heritage and inspired by a maverick-innovator father who left much unfilled ambition; Gravity Industries has opened the doorway on a new era of true human mobility in three dimensions. Thought impossible, it has delivered a dream mankind has had for millennia.

Gravity Industries’ extended team – made up of over 30 diverse and talented individuals, from engineers to pilots, across five different countries – has enabled the brand to be experienced by over two billion people globally to date, with video views alone running at more than 60million within seven days of launch. In the last five years Gravity executed over 150 flight events across 35 countries including five TED talks.

Richard and the team are delivering on the vision to build Gravity Industries into a world class aeronautical engineering business and challenge perceived boundaries in human aviation by generating revenue across several activities, spanning Search & Rescue, paramedic, entertainment and defence applications, as well as a flight training school, which is now welcoming clients to experience the unforgettable learning to fly a Jet Suit (on a safety tether) at the world-renowned Goodwood Estate in the UK and at our locations in the US.

Gravity has to date been experienced by over one billion people globally with Richard and his cohort of growing pilots completing nearly 100 flights around the world and speaking at dozens of events from TED Talks to XPrize. When he is not flying around the world, Richard is in Salisbury with his wife Debbie and their two children, Oliver and Thomas, kayaking and camping amongst other things.