Phoenix International Holdings, Inc. (Phoenix) Leadership

Our senior leadership team and board of directors are comprised of highly experienced and dedicated executives/owners. As an employee-owned company, our leadership works with our employees to bring together underwater knowledge and experience that adds value for all our employee stakeholders, clients, and communities around the globe.

Phoenix President

Patrick Keenan, PE

Patrick Keenan served in the United States Navy for thirty years as a diver, salvor, and engineer. At sea, he held deck and engineering officer positions aboard ATF and ARS class salvage ships and was the Seventh Fleet Salvage Officer based in Singapore. Shore assignments included hyperbaric maintenance superintendent at a diving research facility, drydocking and diving officer in a naval shipyard, Officer in Charge of Ship Repair Unit Bahrain, Commanding Officer of the Navy Experimental Diving Unit, and Director of the Naval Construction and Engineering Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His final tour of duty was as U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage and Diving and Director of Ocean Engineering. After leaving the Navy in 2012, Patrick served as Global Director of Operations for TITAN Salvage through 2014 during TITAN’s successful removal of M/V Costa Concordia from Giglio, Italy. He then joined Phoenix International Holdings to manage the commercial underwater ship repair service line until he was appointed President in November 2016.

A registered professional engineer and marine surveyor, Patrick received a BA in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in Materials Engineering, and a Naval Engineer Degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research relating to waterborne ship repair was published in the Naval Engineers Journal, and he holds a U.S. patent for his invention, Method and Apparatus for Thermal Insulation of Wet Shielded Metal Arc Welds. For leading the salvage and heavy lift operation that returned USS Cole from Aden, Yemen to the United States, Patrick received the American Society of Naval Engineers Claude A. Jones Award for excellence in the field of Naval Engineering.

Phoenix International Board of Directors

Michael Kutzleb
Mike Kutzleb is one of the founders of Phoenix and presently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors. Mike has over 40 years of full-time and 8 years of additional part-time experience in marine field operations and management. Mike has extensive experience in underwater ship repair and deep ocean search, survey, and recovery operations in water depths ranging from 20 feet to 20,000 feet, involving various search sensors, sonars, divers, manned submersibles, and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs).

John Smith
John Smith began his career in the oil and gas industry in 1975 as a diving tender with Oceaneering International, where he remained for 22 years advancing his way up through the ranks to Diving Superintendent of Navy Operations. In 1997 John, Mike Kutzleb, and five other partners established Phoenix Marine (which eventually became employee-owned Phoenix International Holdings, Inc.), where he served as Vice President until retirement in 2019. A native of Fall River, Massachusetts, John graduated from the Coastal School of Deep-Sea Diving and obtained his welding certification from Laney College. He is also a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Certified Diving Instructor.

Eric Lindberg
Upon graduation from Florida Atlantic University with a bachelor’s degree in Ocean Engineering, Eric spent the bulk of his career in the marine industry beginning as a General Engineer at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. He reported to the office of the Naval Sea Systems Command Supervisor of Salvage and Diving before moving on to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Data Buoy Office, then private industry, and then back to NAVSEA 00C. At 00C he was the first Division Head for the Underwater Ship Husbandry Division, where he led the effort to win approval for permanent and temporary underwater wet and dry chamber welding on U.S. Navy ships and submarines, and the diver Non Destructive Testing (NDT) method. Further, he established the Underwater Ship Husbandry (UWSH) Technical Manual for work practices, and developed the U.S. Navy Training plan for diver work practices. After a brief period in consulting arena, Eric helped establish Phoenix Marine, now Phoenix International Holdings, Inc., where he served as Chief Technology Officer. He retired in July of 2018 and has been a member of the Phoenix Board of Directors since 2019.