Meet the Team


Meet the CEO
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and one of the original founders of D&W Marine Systems Management, Inc., is Mr. Jere R. Widhalm. Continuing a long and successful career of leading continuous quality improvement (CQI) initiatives with a deliverables history vital to the nation’s security in military, economic and international relationship terms, Mr. Widhalm provides strategic planning and tactical execution direction for D&W: in addition to managing the overall operations and resources of the corporation.
A decorated American veteran with over 35 years of experience in the military and marine engineering domains, he has proven extraordinarily effective at overcoming adverse roadblocks to achieve quality and productivity goals while simultaneously integrating new production disciplines and improving employee morale.
Jere Widhalm - CEO, Continued
An engineer with multiple ABET accredited degrees and over 190 semester hours of higher education centering around mechanical engineering, design, and manufacturing; he delivers intellectual capital by applying multiple disciplines and best practices in the integration and conceptual deployment of the theory of constraints (TOC); lean manufacturing (LEAN); failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA); failure mode, effect, & criticality analysis (FMECA); both classic and streamlined reliability centered maintenance (RCM) principles; and just plain, good ole common sense.
Jere is a retired naval officer who spent seventeen consecutive years on sea duty while serving on seven ships in a variety of repair and engineering roles: including service on two submarine tenders, two destroyer tenders, an aircraft carrier, a large deck amphibious ship, and a twin hull deep diving, salvage, and submarine rescue ship. Upon conclusion of his career military service, Jere traveled the United States teaching RCM principles to engineers from a wide assortment of naval engineering codes including, but not limited to electronic, structural, mechanical, damage control, and habitability disciplines.
Mr. Widhalm served as the RCM subject matter expert to the team that drafted the first US Government recognized national RCM certification program and when, upon short notice the scheduled presenter was unable to attend, delivered an RCM tutorial on the application of streamlined Reliability Centered Maintenance at the national Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAM) held in Seattle, WA in 2002.
Jere spent nine years after 9/11 in the middle east as a Sr. Port Engineer for the USN. His assignment resulted in substantial service life extension and dramatically increased operation availability for multiple Patrol Coastal Class warships, equating to tremendous cost avoidance for both the US Government and the US Taxpayer.
Chuck Widhalm - Chief Technology Officer
Chuck Widhalm brings 30+ years of experience in commercial and DoD RF and wireless systems development to D&W Marine Systems Management. Mr. Widhalm is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Mr. Widhalm brings experience in antenna and RF systems design, working on state of the art military aircraft defense systems. He has lead multiple R&D teams establishing emerging RF technologies resulting in lower cost solutions for premier DoD RF defense systems. During his tenure at Texas Instrument’s Defense Systems and Equipment Group leading various engineering development teams, resulting in his presenting a paper at the 1993 ARPA Symposium as part of the Raytheon-Texas Instruments Joint Venture titled “Application of a Statistical Design Process to Increase Predicted GEN-X Module First Pass Yield”. This paper was also selected as one of 4 papers to be presented, out of 140 submitted, at the TI Technical Ladder Recognition Day in 1994.
Mr. Widhalm then turned his attention to creating an organization to convert defense & security technology to a commercially viable entity, establishing a field sales, installation and maintenance organization generating $80M of revenue within two years.
Mr. Widhalm has focused on analyzing major cost drivers, new products, product enhancements, and new markets to increase revenue and profitability within companies, utilizing predictive and preventative maintenance concepts for energy management programs within multiple Fortune 100 companies. He has established multiple relationships with software and hardware manufacturers in various industries to bring technology showing predictive maintenance, remote control and monitoring to the forefront of the decision making process.
Gil Fajota - Port Engineer
Gil is a retired US naval officer with 32 years of active duty engineering experience in equipment maintenance and repair, new ship construction, and ship modernization. He has served or work-involved in all classes of naval ships from nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, steam, diesel and gas turbine powered combatant ships, and special operations crafts and small boats.
Before coming to D&W, Gil was a Vessel Manager and Port Engineer for commercial container and cargo ships and managed the repairs and maintenance that were done by local contractors while the ships were in European, Middle East and Southeast Asian ports, ensuring ship’s certificates are current and all repairs were in accordance with the regulatory bodies. He has also managed a team of over 75 professionals including logisticians, administrative personnel, USCG-licensed boat captains, Chief Engineers, and maintenance technicians involved in supporting government’s test and evaluation of manned and unmanned watercrafts.
Gil’s performance as a Port Engineer has brought praise to D&W MSM both from US and FMS customers as a result of his expertise in the ship’s HM&E equipment maintenance, successful shipyard and dry dock availabilities, and training support provided to the ship’s crew.
Joshua Nudelman - Facility Security Officer/Business Development
Josh has over 25 years of operations experience in the marine industry that includes US Navy Special Warfare, Commercial Diving, Saturation Diving, Atmospheric Diving Suits (ADS) and Submarine Rescue Systems. As part of his responsibilities at D&W, Josh is heavily involved with ongoing strategic planning to promote consistent growth and marketresponse in new maritime ventures, leading research as well as directing sales initiatives as part of our Business Development Team.
Josh has a Bachelor of Science from Thomas Edison State University and is pursuant of a Masters in Homeland Security. He is a CMMC registered practitioner.
Gordon "Gordo" Westbrook - Master Diver
Retired U.S Navy Master Chief/ Master Diver. He served 31 years on active duty, retiring in 2012. After retiring he continued to work in the military diving field as project task manager providing operational and technical support to multiple special operation commands.
He currently provides operational and technical support for a foreign military hyperbaric re-compression chamber facility in support of special operations. He has a vast amount of experience in the field of diving including marine salvage, underwater ships husbandry, hyperbaric and diving life support systems. He possesses a broad range of technical expertise with diving equipment, open and closed-circuit apparatuses utilized in air and mixed gas diving operations, high pressure gas transfer systems and oxygen support equipment required in high altitude parachute evolutions.
He is a professional former Navy diving instructor and master training specialist possessing the ability to develop high risk curriculum and effectively deliver training plans.
Dave Dwyer - VP of Operations & Business Development
Dave serves as D&W’s Vice President of Operations & Business Development. He retired from the U.S. Navy as a Captain (O6) after more than 38 years of distinguished service as an Engineering Limited Duty Officer (LDO).
Dave possesses broad experience and expertise across all facets to include: training, operations, quality assurance, safety, and preventive and corrective maintenance in the marine industry.
He holds a Master’ Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Excelsior School of Business, Albany, NY.

