I’m not quite a coal miner’s daughter, but that culture and spirit of Appalachia, with all of its quirks and virtues, shaped my younger self in ways that I can still identify with today. My family has deep roots in this region, a place where hard and dangerous work didn’t necessarily prevent money from being tight. My parents, married as teenagers and neither having a high school diploma, stretched their dollars by constructing our eastern Kentucky house with their own hands. Their dedication to getting a job done, on time and on budget, and their fearless foray into creative engineering to solve the myriad technical challenges they faced, have served as valuable inspiration in both my personal and NASA lives. My parents taught me Life Lessons #1 and #2, which are: Be obsessively committed to all the responsibilities that you take on in life, and be fiscally responsible. These values are particularly relevant in my job at NASA, in which I am tasked with prudent stewardship of the taxpayers’ money.
Of those I knew who were lucky enough to attend college, nearly all pursued traditional careers in teaching, law, or medicine. No roadmap for becoming a professional astronomer/physicist was available, nor was advice about how to make a living from having such a degree. Access to a planetarium, museum, or even better – working on a science project with a professional in the field – would have made all the difference. Pure serendipity, through a random conversation with a friend who happened to see an advertisement for an undergraduate program, is how I ended up receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in space sciences and physics from the Florida Institute of Technology. Until college, I had never been farther from home than a one-day road trip. Boarding that plane alone to the Florida Space Coast – which at the time might as well have been in another country – was among my most terrifying, but ultimately rewarding experiences. Lesson #3 is to be flexible and fearless enough to take advantage of unanticipated career opportunities (even if they significantly alter your originally envisioned direction and/or remove you from your comfort zone). This guideline was used repeatedly in my quasi-“random walk” career path to NASA. Keep reading →
Social media’s impact on building culture in the workplace is debatable, according to Deloitte’s new “Core Values and Beliefs” survey conducted online by Harris Interactive. Keep reading →
The New York State legislature is debating a bill that, if passed, will give recourse to victims of hurtful or derogatory forum comments made by anonymous users on New York-based newspaper, blog, and company websites.
“A web site administrator upon request,” the Internet Protection Act reads, “shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous user unless such poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post…” Keep reading →
Government contractors with higher contract win rates are expecting to see continued growth in the future, especially for those who assess opportunities in cyber and cloud early. In addition, trade shows, conferences and thought leadership marketing play major roles in winning contractors’ positioning and success strategies.