{"id":19178,"date":"2016-11-07T21:57:22","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T13:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/sisterhood-is-powerful-when-it-comes-to-seattles-commercial-space-scene\/"},"modified":"2016-11-07T21:57:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T13:57:22","slug":"sisterhood-is-powerful-when-it-comes-to-seattles-commercial-space-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/sisterhood-is-powerful-when-it-comes-to-seattles-commercial-space-scene\/","title":{"rendered":"Sisterhood is powerful when it comes to Seattle\u2019s commercial space scene"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_287405\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-287405\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-287405\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161107-space3x-630x434.jpg\" alt=\"SpaceFest panel\" width=\"630\" height=\"434\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161107-space3x-630x434.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161107-space3x-768x529.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/161107-space3x-1240x854.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-287405\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">SpaceX\u2019s Aarti Matthews, Blue Origin\u2019s Erika Wagner and Vulcan Aerospace\u2019s Cassie Lee field questions during an \u201cOff-Planet Inc.\u201d panel at the Museum of Flight\u2019s SpaceFest. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The billionaires who run Blue Origin and SpaceX&nbsp;\u2013 Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk&nbsp;\u2013 may be locked in an outer-space rivalry, but the engineers who get the job done say they\u2019re&nbsp;rooting for each other.<\/p>\n<p>Erika Wagner, Blue Origin\u2019s business development manager, says engineers at the company\u2019s headquarters in Kent, Wash., cheer every time they see SpaceX launch and land a rocket. And Aarti Matthews, a mission manager at SpaceX in the Los Angeles area, says the feeling is mutual.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re really excited for each other, because we\u2019re changing the industry together,\u201d Matthews said last weekend at the Museum of Flight\u2019s annual SpaceFest gathering in Seattle.<\/p>\n<p>One of those changes is the growing prominence of women in the commercial space industry. That was reflected in the title of this year\u2019s SpaceFest: \u201cLadies Who Launch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, women engineers have a long way to go to reach parity with their male counterparts. The latest figures indicate that only about 15 percent of the U.S. engineering workforce is female, and a report released last month pointed to gender and racial bias in the profession.<\/p>\n<p>But that situation could well change, thanks in part to the women who hold executive positions in aerospace: For example, SpaceX has Gwynne Shotwell as its president and chief operating officer. Aerojet Rocketdyne, which has its headquarters in California but does a lot of propulsion work in Redmond, Wash., is headed by President and CEO Eileen Drake. And Jane Poynter leads World View Enterprises in Arizona.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Off Planet Inc. Panel Intro 1 - SpaceFest 2016: Ladies Who Launch [Nov. 5th]\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f3_u3_XDEv4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Wagner said the culture at aerospace companies is slowly but surely moving away from its roots in the \u201cRight Stuff\u201d era.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt Blue Origin, we talk about a day when there\u2019s millions of people living and working in space, and that\u2019s not all white men,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>On one level, engineering is gender-neutral: Women have to study just as hard as men, especially in math and science, and put in just as many dues during internships and further steps on the career ladder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy story is my story, and I don\u2019t know what parts of that story are different because I\u2019m a woman,\u201d said Cassie Lee, director of aerospace applications at Vulcan, the Seattle company created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.<\/p>\n<p>But on another level, sisterhood can be powerful&nbsp;\u2013 and can bridge the rivalries between companies aiming for the final frontier.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cParticularly for women, we really as a group believe that there\u2019s more than enough for the industry,\u201d said Hanna Kubiak, a business development manager at Virgin Galactic in Long Beach, Calif. \u201cSuccess breeds success.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To nurture that success, there\u2019s an informal networking group called Seattle Space Gals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I first moved to town, I was looking to meet more women in the space industry, and I was finding it hard \u2013&nbsp;not so much because they weren\u2019t there, but because when you go to an aerospace event in Seattle, it\u2019s all airplane-builders. And I was looking for space gals,\u201d Wagner explained.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I started calling a couple of friends and saying, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s go out for cocktails, and let\u2019s talk about what\u2019s going on in the industry,&#8217;\u201d she said. \u201cThose friends called friends, and those friends called friends, and now we have 80 of us in the Seattle Space Gals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wagner\u2019s story switched on a light bulb&nbsp;for SpaceX\u2019s Matthews.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t to my knowledge have something like that in L.A.,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll be inspired to start one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SpaceX\u2019s Aarti Matthews, Blue Origin\u2019s Erika Wagner and Vulcan Aerospace\u2019s Cassie Lee field questions during an \u201cOff-Planet Inc.\u201d panel at the Museum of Flight\u2019s SpaceFest. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle) The billionaires who run Blue Origin and SpaceX&nbsp;\u2013 Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk&nbsp;\u2013 may be locked in an outer-space rivalry, but the engineers who get [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[39,4450,5131,5046],"class_list":["post-19178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aerospace","tag-museum-of-flight","tag-spacefest","tag-women-in-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}