Robert J. Hesselberth is CEO of Spectracom Corporation, a company he founded twenty-six years ago. Spectracom develops, manufactures, and markets proprietary products that provide synchronization for local and wide area networks, 9-1-1 centers, broadcast stations, and wireless communications.

Upon completing his BSEE at Purdue in 1957, Hesselberth joined General Dynamics Electronics where he spent five years as an electronic engineer designing receiver IFs, automatically tuned high frequency linear amplifiers, power supplies, and transmitters. In 1963 he accepted a position with Harris Corporation. After two years as an electronic engineer and project engineer with Harris, he became engineering section head and program manager for government and commercial single sideband transmitter systems. In 1972 he left Harris to found Spectracom.

Hesselberth received his MBA from the Simon School, University of Rochester in 1968. He holds patents on tunable doubled-tuned circuits with variable coupling and a disciplined oscillator system with frequency control. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the National Emergency Number Association, and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Hesselberth is also active with the Rochester Small Business Council and CEO Roundtable. He is an elder in the Penfield Presbyterian Church, a past president of the Board of Directors of the Penfield Symphony Orchestra, and treasurer of the Rochester Genealogy Society.

Hesselberth is the son of the late Professor W. M. Hesselberth who taught at Purdue from 1947 until 1973.