Dr. Mel Adams

Mel Adams is an army veteran who gained broad national and international experience over the last 30 years in Huntsville. In the 1990s, he assisted 60+ SBDC clients and led initial long-range planning efforts for boards of United Way, Huntsville, Land Trust of North Alabama, and Habitat for Humanity. He is a graduate of Leadership Huntsville.

As a charter member of the Alabama Technology Network, Dr. Adams helped dozens of clients across Alabama and the Southeast; many won Nunn-Perry or state quality awards, and he was recognized as National Practitioner of the Year 2000 by ModForm/Dept of Commerce MEP. He supported Mercedes Benz, Teledyne Brown, and Northrup Grumman, and initiated the Alabama Automotive Manufacturing Association.

For several years, his own firm provided market research and business 

development services to small federal contractors to grow contract backlogs. Adams’ recent experience includes 15 years assisting Redstone Arsenal agencies with strategic planning, lean implementation, and change management in acquisition, engineering, software engineering, aviation maintenance, cyber, missile manufacturing, and FMS. Mel led hundreds of lean kaizen and value stream mapping events in manufacturing firms and

federal defense agencies, both nationally and internationally.

He is published in entrepreneurship, small business, high-tech management, continuous improvement, and modeling/simulation. Mel served on boards of directors for several high-tech startups, Huntsville’s homeless agency First Stop, Inc., and the board of trustees for his alma mater.

He retired from UAH in 2007 and from Booz Allen Hamilton in 2018. He earned his Ph.D. and MBA at the University of Tennessee in strategic management, finance, and marketing, and certificates in quality/six sigma, lean, and logistics.