He may lead a team that builds robots for the U.S. Army, but Butler Catholic School graduate Peter Schramm considers his most important work to be connecting people and helping them reach their maximum potential.

Schramm, the son of Ern and Laurie Schramm of Butler, attended Butler Catholic School from Montessori kindergarten through eighth grade graduation.

He attended Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he earned undergraduate and master's degrees in mechanical engineering. After graduation, Schramm went to work at Lockheed Martin Corp., an aerospace, defense, security and advanced technologies company.

“At Lockheed, I managed a ship-building program for a product that had never been made before for the U.S. and Saudi Arabian naval fleets,” Schramm said. “And before that I was afforded the opportunity to work on the missile launchers and other defensive technologies that the ship hosted.”

In May 2018, Schramm went to work for MTEQ, a smaller defense contractor in northern Virginia.

“I build robots that keep the good guys safe,” he said. “Some of the robots fly, some are on the ground, and some are utilized in wearable technology, but the constant mission is to protect the war fighter.”

As if working a 60-hour week on his day job wasn't enough, Schramm also launched Lattus, an Internet-based platform to connect mentors and mentees to discuss a variety of professional and personal topics in a personal and focused manner. This also takes up nearly 40 hours a week of his time.

“Lattus combines my passion of connecting people to help them reach their maximum potential with my desire for problem solving. I love connecting people and catalyzing those aha moments,” Schramm said.

He said Lattus differs from other social networking sites because it is designed to connect people to have personalized conversations about specific topics to share insights, perspectives and experiences.

Schramm said throughout his career he has been fortunate to mentor young professionals but kept coming up against time constraints and got to a point where he did not have the answers to all of their questions.

He started Lattus to scale his efforts and change the world.

“I want to make it so that people who have the drive to change their life have the access to do it,” he said.

Since Lattus was launched, it has more than 300 user profiles, made more than 185 introductions and facilitated 153 conversations between curious, motivated minds (some of whom are BCS alumni).

Schramm said the lessons he learned at Butler Catholic School helped him throughout his life and he is grateful for the faith-based upbringing in the cohesive community

“It built strong foundations rooted in virtue, intellect, ethics and morals. Do what is right, work hard, respect others and perform with excellence,” Schramm said.

Peter Schramm