04 May Congratulations To Our Distinguished Alumnus, Gregg Coningsby ’81
Congratulations to Gregg Coningsby ’81, our 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient. Gregg is the Engineering Manager of Apex Machine Company, responsible for all design aspects of custom printing machines that print on anything other than paper. He is also part owner of Apex and two other companies along with his three brothers.
Gregg joined the Apex engineering team shortly after graduating from the University of Mississippi with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He started working at the company when he was a young teenager. Working each summer and school breaks at a manufacturing company with many different departments allowed him to learn many things that books and schools could not teach, which prepared him for his responsibilities before and after he graduated. Apex has grown from 50 employees at one location in Fort Lauderdale to over 120 employees with an additional factory in Ohio. Each machine is custom designed using 3D software and shipped to factories all over the world. Some machines print caps at speeds of 2,000 caps per minute and over 700 syringes per minute. Gregg’s team of engineers has designed machines that produce billions of dollars of profit for a few of the top pharmaceutical companies each year.
Gregg has served with the Parent Teacher Fellowship, assisted with many WA events, and been a chaperone on trips while his two boys have attended WA. He got involved with the Westminster Academy Robotics Team “Shark Attack” in 1999 and became a significant part of the team in 2000. He has been the robotics team senior designer for the past 20 years. The WA Shark Attack Team 744 is known all around the country for building a competitive robot each year that other teams respect and admire. Gregg and Kent Stolley have spent many years growing a robotics program that is nationally recognized winning several regional competitions, many awards, and reaching the top 16 teams in the country one year. The robotics team is a great way to prepare students for the real world and it gives Gregg great pride and pleasure to see students become successful, especially in a technical job after Commencement.
We will honor Gregg at our upcoming Commencement on Friday, May 21.