This week in our “5 Questions with…” series, we put the spotlight on Greg Koch, Global Product Manager. Discover what Greg has to say about working at Gill, the future of technology and how he embraces the great outdoors when he’s not at work.
Q.1 – What excites you most about Gill and your role here?
What excites me most about Gill is the culture of innovation. Being family-owned keeps things agile; there isn’t bureaucracy standing between a good idea and actually doing something with it.
As a product manager, the part of my job I enjoy most is talking directly with customers and understanding the specific challenges they’re working through. Getting to take those conversations and shape them into something real and useful is genuinely rewarding. It’s a role that keeps me curious, and Gill is a place where that curiosity is put to good use.
Q.2 – You are relatively new to this industry. What interests you most?
What keeps me engaged after 5 years in the industry is the sheer diversity of the people and organisations I get to work with. A university researcher and an engineer at an industrial facility can be using similar technology but have completely different needs, priorities, and ways of thinking about measurements. Understanding those differences and finding the right solution for each is what makes the work interesting.
Q.3 –How do you see technology impacting your role over the next 5 years?
AI and machine learning are reshaping every industry, and environmental monitoring is no exception. What’s clear is that these models are only as good as the data going into them, and that puts a real premium on accurate, reliable, high-resolution measurements.
I think we’ll see growing demand for sensor networks that can deliver that quality of data consistently and at scale. Beyond that, the specifics are hard to predict; the technology is moving fast and the applications are still emerging. What I do feel confident about is that the role of precise, trustworthy instrumentation becomes more important, not less, as the industry leans further into data-driven approaches.
Q.4 -Who has inspired you the most in your career, and what did you learn from them?
It’s hard to single out one person when the honest answer is that I’ve learned something valuable from nearly every colleague and manager I’ve worked alongside. That’s been true across different chapters of my career, from my time with the federal government at the Department of the Navy to where I am now in the environmental monitoring industry. The people around me have consistently been my best resource.
Q.5 -Tell us something about yourself that might surprise us.
For someone who spends most of his working life staring at computer screens and thinking about complex electronics, I have a pretty low-tech approach to free time. I enjoy getting out into the Colorado backcountry and fly fishing or camping with my family. Both are a good excuse to put the phone away and get outside. It’s a nice counterbalance to the day job.
