March 2014
| Business World Magazine | 115
gineers not only work for the Department
of Defense and aerospace, but we support
entrepreneurs, people that have good ideas.
Most of the local patent attorneys refer their
clients to us to help them take their products
to market. So there’s a lot of discovery of new
technology.
“It’s just a neat place to work.”
Another factor that breeds dedication is
the willingness of the leadership to share the
wealth.
UEC has been profitable each year since
its inception in1995 and the aforementioned
executives – Rebecca Ufkes is the company’s
president, Philip Ufkes is chief operating of-
ficer and chief engineer – instituted a profit-
sharing program in the early days that has
continued annually ever since.
“When you get a happy productive em-
ployee, profits are going to go up,” Straight
says, “so the fact that the employees get to
reap the rewards of their efforts is a big in-
centive.”
As the country transitions from war to
peace, the mandate to continue the progress
in hybrid energy and renewables will not
change – particularly in the work UEC does
with the Department of Defense.
The department’s needs for energy are
10 times today what they were 10 years ago,
Straight says, which makes the search for ef-
ficiency even more important, particularly
