Virgin Galactic<\/b> has hired Disney<\/b> executive Michael Colglazier as the company\u2019s new CEO. Colglazier has decades of experience at Disney, and was most recently president and managing director of Disney Parks International, where he was responsible for operations, strategy, and commercial and experiential development of Disney\u2019s international parks and resorts.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike so many others, including hundreds of signed-up customers, I have been inspired by this purpose-driven, world-class brand and the incredible opportunity it offers to open space to change the world for good,\u201d Colgalazier said in a Wednesday announcement. \u201cGeorge\u2019s vision and outstanding leadership have enabled Virgin Galactic to reach this point, and I am excited to work with him in his role as Chief Space Officer where he will spearhead our future development efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
This move comes as Virgin Galactic is working through its test flight program and prepares for commercial spaceflight service. In June, the company successfully completed its second SpaceShipTwo Unity test flight on from Spaceport America in New Mexico. In May, Virgin Galactic said it has received 400 deposit payments of $1,000 for future flights as part of its \u201cOne Small Step\u201d initiative.<\/p>\n
Current CEO George Whitesides will assume the role of chief space officer, effective July 20. He will focus on future business opportunities, including point-to-point hypersonic travel and orbital space travel. Whitesides has been with Virgin Galactic since 2010 as the company\u2019s first CEO, after serving as chief of staff at NASA<\/b>. <\/p>\n
[Virgin Galactic Envisions Future High-Speed Air Travel: Q&A With Enrico Palermo]<\/i><\/p>\n
Sir Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Galactic commented: \u201cI believe Michael\u2019s long and distinguished career at one of the world\u2019s leading customer experience brands provides a natural fit with Virgin\u2019s culture as well as Galactic\u2019s requirements as it prepares for commercial service.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Virgin Galactic has hired Disney executive Michael Colglazier as the company\u2019s new CEO. Colglazier has decades of experience at Disney, and was most recently president and managing director of Disney Parks International, where he was responsible for operations, strategy, and commercial and experiential development of Disney\u2019s international parks and resorts. \u201cLike so many others, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59380,"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":[],"class_list":["post-59379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59379"}],"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=59379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}