• Roland Ramberg, Chairman & CEO
• Sterling Ramberg, President
• Karen A. Roberts, CPA, Chief Financial Officer
• Manfred Chi, Vice President, Operations
• Jerry Magnuson, Vice President, Sales and Marketing

Roland Ramberg, Chairman & CEO

Born and raised in Seattle, Washington Roland worked during his school years at The Gear Works under the direction of his father, Ingwald Ramberg. By the time he graduated from the University of Washington in Business Administration, he could set up and operate every gear hobbing and shaping machine in the shop. After college, his career in the business took him through several administrative positions including estimating, planning, and sales. Upon the death of his father in 1982, Roland was appointed president and CEO of The Gear Works. He became Chairman in 2005.

As chairman and CEO, Roland is responsible for the direction and long term strategic planning of the company. He is also actively involved in a leadership role with the American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA), and has served on its Board of Directors since 2006. From 1997 to 2002, Roland served as chairman of the Small Business Council and chairman of that organization's awards sub-committee. Roland and his wife, Jean, have two grown children.

In his own words...

Favorite machine:

"I love them all. But I'm most proud of the Hoffler 2600. It's the largest gear grinding machine we have and it took a gargantuan effort to negotiate the deal and get it in place. We had to reconfigure the shop for it, get special permits to build the foundation, and work with environmental engineers to overcome a flood plain issue. It took overcoming a lot of hurdles to get it in place and I spent months on it. Now it allows us to manufacture the finest accurate gears, both internal and external, up to 2.6 meters in diameter and weighing 20 tons."

Ingenuity in motion:

"The project that comes to mind is the custom gearboxes we designed, built and tested for the recently retrofitted Ballard and Fremont bridges in Seattle. The design specifications were technically challenging requiring many hours of engineering collaboration with the city.

Built around 1918, both of these bascule bridges serve as vital arteries for marine and auto traffic. They each accommodate around 50,000 cars a day and open for boat traffic around 5,000 times a year. Reliability and integrity of the new replacement gearboxes was paramount.

Our scope of work for each bridge included design, complete manufacture of four custom gearboxes with state-of-the-art gearing components, custom fitting of four large output pinions to the existing bridge rack, and factory testing to 200% load. Each gearbox weighs more than 11 tons. The project took about a year to complete and required the expert capability of a proficient, full service gear manufacturer. I am proud to report that our equipment has operated flawlessly since installation."