The Team
Built to serve the Blade Service Industry
Alfred Crabtree - CEO, Founder
Alfred entered the blade services industry in 2015 as a second career, via rope access. As an avid caver in the southeast, Alfred developed rope access skills for the sake of cave exploration and expedition. After involvement in two life saving rescues, he pursued certification in Cave Rescue. Learning that SPRAT was a similar money and time commitment, he went that path, and soon after found employment at Rope Partner, where his experiences learning the skills and wanting to pass them on made him yearn to train. The last two seasons were spent at WindCom as the Training Development Manager, where he developed the training program from scratch and ran 200 trainees through it in that time.
Realizing the program should be scaled even more, should be a profit center, and should help improve the overall performance of the industry, he opened Blade Repair Academy in Jan 2023.
Alfred lives in Tennessee, and has family obligations that demand coming off the road and being local. It made sense to open the academy and share this knowledge with technicians in the proper training environment.
He is an avid outdoorsman, enjoying paragliding, mountain biking, paddling, caving, snowboarding, and generally mucking about in the woods.
Michael Hale - CTO, Founder
Michael’s crossover from communications technology to renewable energy brings decades of global-scale entrepreneurial, engineering and executive experience to BRA. Michael was an Internet pioneer, developing and leveraging platforms for advertising, lead generation, video streaming and data-driven web applications in 1997. Since then, he’s focused the past 26 years on fatherhood, personnel mentoring and problem solving at scale for the cable provider Cox Communications and Internet giant Google. Since 2013, Michael has been deeply involved with the action-oriented non-profit Abolish Slavery Coalition, whose global programs result in the investigation, relocation and rehabilitation of hundreds of victims of human trafficking.
Zachary Cunningham -
Operations Administrator, Founder
As Henry Ford once said, "The only thing worse than training someone and having them leave is not training them and having them stay."
Zachary, with 8 years of experience doing in-field blade repair, is dedicated to providing practical, impactful, and contemporary blade repair training. Driven by personal experiences learning both from mentors and independently, Zachary is passionate about empowering individuals in the field. With a strong background in training and mentorship across industries, including flexographic printing presses and Search and Rescue Organizations, Zachary brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to his role. As a former Training Officer and instructor for various rescue disciplines, Zachary understands the importance of consistent and effective training in fostering a skilled and cohesive workforce in extreme environments and situations.
To maximize comprehension and ensure that training is accessible to all, Zachary is committed to adapting and explaining concepts in a variety of ways and catering to multiple learning styles. This personalized approach, combined with a safe and supportive learning environment, helps learners grasp information more effectively and apply it to their specific roles. By creating a space for exploration and experimentation, Zachary empowers individuals to make valuable mistakes that can be learned from, ultimately leading to growth and innovation. This differs from the in-field environment where quality and client expectations cannot be compromised. Zachary believes that proper training is essential for remote field workers to ensure everyone is on the same page, speaking the same repair language, and working together towards optimal performance.
