Learning how markets form at Oxford's Saïd Business School taught me to see the potential in the Space Economy. It didn't take long before I was hooked on the idea of joining this exciting new world. Though I was actively following industry developments in the news, I was still just an interested bystander. From the outside looking in, I wondered whether there was even a place in the Space Economy for someone lacking a technical background as I did.

Without an obvious career path or role model, I knew I would need creativity to get my foot in the door. Where would I even begin? At the time, nontechnical opportunities in the Space Economy were essentially nonexistent. From my vantage point in 2012, there wasn't a way into the industry for a finance, economics, and business guy whose professional experience was in entrepreneurship and banking.

One of the nice things about being a student—even an adult MBA student—is that pros are more likely to spend time answering your questions. In search of an insider's perspective and wielding my student credentials like a press pass, I reached out for informational interviews with people across the budding Space Economy. To my surprise, I received an open and enthusiastic welcome. The resounding response from the pros was that, yes, the industry was full of technical folks, but it needed more business people to efficiently, effectively, and responsibly manage its growth. As it turned out, my business experience made me a unicorn. The Space Economy was so early in the S curve of innovation that most business‐oriented professionals hadn't yet seen the potential in it. From the perspective of those working within the Space Economy, I could blaze a trail for myself there.

As I related in the Introduction, my first step to gain relevant experience was to do pro bono work for the Lunar robotics firm Astrobotic. Today, with the Space Economy on much firmer footing, there are many more paid, entry‐level opportunities available. There is also more diversity in terms of the roles that are in demand. There is no longer a real need to work for free.

Just as space increasingly touches on every part of business, nearly every type of career touches the Space Economy. However, it can be unclear what space careers look like and how candidates land these roles. The competition is fierce. More people than ever want to work at these companies. How do you get noticed? What are managers really looking for?

Whether you're on the verge of completing your education and seeking your first full‐time position, or you want to leave another industry for an exciting new direction as I did, there is a place for you in the Space Economy. On the other hand, you might be ready for a change within the industry. Perhaps you want to leave stodgy defense contractor work behind for the excitement of a scrappy startup. Or, having had your fill of entrepreneurial scrappiness, you might be ready to work for a large satellite manufacturer. It doesn't matter where you're coming from or where you're hoping to go. Through stories and advice from successful space professionals, this chapter will illuminate a path forward, touching on every aspect of career development within this dynamic and fast‐moving environment.

Educational Paths into the Space Economy

“Getting into space work depends on where you are in your career,” Space Capital partner Justus Kilian told me. “If you're still in university, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity to get plugged in, such as NASA challenges. Look for opportunities to work on hardware or software that are being built now. It helps to create a portfolio that shows you're curious and interested and can do stuff.”

As Deputy Administrator of NASA under Barack Obama, Lori Garver played an important role in the evolution of the Space Economy. “I'm not an engineer or a scientist,” Garver told me. “I have a political science and economics background. That's how I come at space.” Today, she is senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a member of the board of directors of Hydrosat. Garver is also the founder of Earthrise Alliance, a nonprofit using Earth Observation (EO) data to fight climate change, and co‐founder of the Brooke Owens Fellowship, which offers paid internships and executive mentorship to women interested in aerospace.

Despite the lack of a traditional STEM background, Garver has led an influential career in the Space Economy. At NASA, she was head of policy under Bill Clinton, and she went on to work on space policy for both the John Kerry and Hilary Clinton campaigns. After Garver debated Barack Obama's space policy expert during the 2008 Democratic primary, the Obama team asked her to lead their transition team for NASA.

“Once I agreed,” she said, “they asked me what I would be most interested in doing if I were to serve in the administration itself. My dad always counseled me to ask for something one step higher than I thought I could get. Since my dream job was Chief of Staff at NASA, I said, ‘Deputy.’” To her surprise, Garver got the job.

The Brooke Owens Fellowship that Garver co‐founded is an excellent example of the many different kinds of programs and opportunities available for talented young people interested in space.

“Our goal with the fellowship is to support a more diverse and thereby more innovative workforce for the space community,” Garver said. “The program offers undergraduate women internships at commercial space firms. We also assign these students accomplished industry mentors. I'm so proud of the space community for supporting the initiative the way it has.”

A spin‐off of the Brooke Owens Fellowship is the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, designed along similar lines and dedicated to creating a “meaningful, effective pathway into successful aerospace careers and future aerospace industry leadership to people whose race and ethnicity has made them the subject of systemic bias.” As a teenager, Patti Grace Smith was a plaintiff in the landmark legal case that led to the integration of Alabama's schools. She went on to an illustrious career in space. Among her many roles and accomplishments, Smith ran the Office of Commercial Space Transportation for more than a decade, “overseeing the licensing of the first inland spaceport, the first private human spaceflight, and the first launches of Elon Musk's privately developed rocket, the SpaceX Falcon 1.”¹

Inevitably, higher education lags behind the sudden skill demands created by tech booms. As growth has continued across the Space Economy over the last few years, however, top educational institutions are starting to catch up. Harvard Business School, for example, just launched a course, “Space: Public and Commercial Economics,” believed to be the “first course on the economics of the space sector to be taught at an elite educational institution.”² Matthew Weinzierl, the professor teaching the course, hopes it will “inspire other places to have their own offerings on space and make this something that is talked about at business schools more broadly.”

This just scratches the surface. An online search reveals a growing array of educational programs; public and private prizes, grants, and internships; and other academic and industry opportunities intended to encourage and empower talented people who are interested in space. If you don't have the skills to contribute meaningfully to the Space Economy yet, go and get them.

The Right Stuff

Talking directly to leaders in the Space Economy, you discover that a shortage of talent is the biggest obstacle to growth today. A decade ago, space startups lured tech talent away from the likes of Apple and Google. Today, space companies are in a war for talent with each other.

The competition can be off the charts in the case of specialized skills like radio‐frequency engineering, where the supply of engineers is still drastically below the demand. However, the talent gaps will close. A generation of academically gifted Millennial and younger workers are turning to space in search of more meaningful work than the moribund internet giants can offer. In parallel, older scientific and engineering talent, frustrated with the bureaucracy and stasis at large incumbents, are making late‐career shifts for more dynamic opportunities.

This combination of demand for talent and pools of hidden talent led us to create a career platform, Space Talent, as a marketplace to connect companies in the Space Economy with the world's best employees. With 30,000 open roles and 700 companies as of this writing, Space Talent matches credible employers with top talent while providing insights into the ever‐expanding range of opportunities. Even if you're not ready to start your job search in earnest, Space Talent is worth a look. You may be surprised by the breadth of roles and diversity of hiring organizations. Leveraging these opportunities, however, requires characteristics beyond any particular technical skill. Academic pedigree counts for something, but companies are far more interested in a demonstrated interest in space and a record of real‐world accomplishments.

“I like to hire for capability,” Rendered.ai founder and CEO Kundtz told me, “and a willingness to get things done. It helps to see evidence of being able to deliver.” Don't wait for your first job to build a resume of accomplishment, either. “Even in college,” Kundtz said, “there are ways to take academic projects beyond what might be required by the class. There are internships where you can contribute to a meaningful deliverable. Building a widget at an internship is a lesson in selling to an internal customer. It's an opportunity to learn more about the users of the things you're going to build.”

Going beyond the technological challenge is key: “Demonstrating that you've taken the time to think about, ‘Who's going to use this? What do they need?’ is a differentiator for someone entering the field,” Kundtz said. “You need to be sensitive not just to the merits of the product but to the needs of the customer. How will they use it? How can you help them? Customers don't buy products; they buy solutions. I try to hire ‘solutioners.’ It's usually easy to see evidence of that mentality early in a person's career.”

If you already have technical skills, consider augmenting them with leadership, management, and communication training. For Space Economy managing partner Tom Ingersoll, getting a master's degree in engineering management involved taking several core MBA classes. Looking back, Ingersoll believes that working at McDonnell Douglas with‐out a business background would have gotten him “stuck doing the analysis or writing code.” Instead, he was put to work on the bigger picture.

“I could manage projects because I understood budgets, schedules, management techniques, marketing, and how to work with customers,” Ingersoll said. Engineering and other technical skills are critical, but if technical skills are all you bring to the table, it will limit your leadership potential. To work on the why, not just the how, consider a broader curriculum.

Since the field is changing so rapidly, it's okay if your degree doesn't align perfectly with your choice of career. You can compensate for that: “Getting involved in real‐world projects as an intern or through another kind of program makes a huge difference when applying to companies like SpaceX for some of these highly coveted positions,” Justus Kilian said. “You need to show capability way beyond academic performance.”

“Regardless of your career stage,” Kilian said, “start by educating yourself about the part of the industry you're interested in: geospatial, Internet of Things (IoT), space‐based or terrestrial‐based, and so on. Go where the community is gathering. Build your professional network. Follow your curiosity. Opportunity is everywhere. We're still in the early innings.”

Choosing the Right Job

There are many different roles to play in the Space Economy. For many with a declared interest in space, however, the dream begins in the same way: “In high school,” Violet Labs co‐founder Lucy Hoag told me, “I decided I wanted to be an astronaut. I'd always been interested in uncharted territories and new frontiers. Obviously, space is the ultimate.”

The desire to be an astronaut seems almost universal among thrill‐seeking kids. Once you learn more about the different opportunities available, however, it becomes easier to see the paths that fit your unique strengths. These careers, though fascinating and rewarding, don't attract as many YouTube views as videos of astronauts drinking coffee in zero gravity, however. Before you commit yourself to your childhood ambition, do your research and explore the full spectrum of possibilities. It was at USC that Hoag realized that she was more interested in designing spacecraft than piloting them. She went on to earn her bachelor's, master's, and PhD in astronautical engineering.

Pursuing her doctorate at USC's Viterbi School of Engineering, Hoag worked on cutting‐edge research into AI‐based spacecraft design, creating an automated satellite design and optimization tool called Spider. This experience led her to DARPA, where Hoag was involved in programs like Phoenix, intended to harvest components from inactive satellites in geostationary orbit, and SeeMe, a disposable, low‐Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation for sending EO imagery to soldiers on the battlefield. After DARPA, Hoag pivoted to consumer tech, doing stints at Google, Waymo, and then Lyft, where she worked on autonomous vehicles. “A self‐driving car is basically a satellite on the ground,” Hoag said. “A lot of the same sensor modalities and design principles. I had a ton of fun getting into that world.” Through these disparate experiences, Hoag accumulated the knowledge, experience, and professional network she needed to successfully co‐found a company.

Many factors come into play when deciding where to apply for jobs and which roles to accept, but people are an excellent compass. The Space Economy is still a small world. Relationships are paramount. Scrutinize potential colleagues at any prospective firm. Look closely at their qualifications and accomplishments. Salary and benefits matter, but never lose sight of career development. Go to the forefront whenever possible. In retrospect, would you have taken a management role at Beal Aerospace over an entry‐level spot at SpaceX? Think about how much any given job will challenge you and help you learn. What will you experience there that you couldn't see anywhere else? How will the job expand your network? Even if it isn't ideal in every respect, will this opportunity lead to a better one down the road?

Tom Ingersoll's experience working on the Delta Clipper program at McDonnell Douglas was a highlight of his career because of what it taught him: “I worked with brilliant people,” he said, “and now I see that many of the management philosophies that I've developed came from that project. I learned what it meant to actually fly hardware and what the hallmarks of success are. I did this by working with great people, understanding the value great people bring to a team, and seeing individuals come together on a project to accomplish extraordinary things. That was a huge step for me.”

For Ingersoll, the job itself held little appeal at first: “I just wanted to work with the smartest people,” he said. “I wasn't that excited about aerospace, and I wasn't that excited about Southern California, but they were clearly the smartest people and I wanted to figure out where I stacked up.”

It can be difficult to gauge just how interesting or exciting a job will be when you're on the outside looking in. An opportunity at a company that's brimming with talent merits close consideration even if the job itself doesn't sound exciting on the surface. Those employees probably know something you don't.

In Defense of Defense Contractors

Looking for a way into the Space Economy, keep the entire ecosystem in mind. While the on‐tap kombucha might be fresher at a startup, there are many good reasons to consider working for a large, established company. Even defense contractor work can teach valuable lessons.

“I had several opportunities to leave McDonnell Douglas,” Tom Ingersoll told me. “But I'm glad I stuck it out for the scaling experience alone. I put together billion‐dollar budgets and managed teams of five or six hundred people. It taught me the challenges involved in scaling and honed my management approach. Scaling, especially for someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, is critical. Sticking around was a great choice for me and made a significant difference in my career.”

If you have entrepreneurial ambitions, it's worth considering a stint in government despite the bureaucracy and delay: “You can be an entrepreneur in any job, and NASA is a great place to do it,” Planet Labs co‐founder Robbie Schingler said. “I worked on a number of really fun projects during my career there.” Named special assistant to the director of the Ames Research Center and eventually Chief of Staff to the Chief Technologist, Schingler helped incubate NASA's Space Technology program.

“In retrospect, NASA trained me to be an entrepreneur of a VC‐funded company,” Schingler said. “That's mostly thanks to 7120.5D, the NASA Office of Chief Engineer Program Management guidelines. Every step of a project, you have a design review, where the project is assessed against progress on technology development, management, and cost of the program, all while making sure you're still hitting your science metrics.”

“Each time you did a review, you got a new slug of money,” Schingler said. “You keep building your technology, validating your science hypotheses, building out your team, all while ensuring you're actually on cost and on budget. When we left to start Planet Labs and decided to do it with venture capital, it turned out it was the same thing. Can you build the team? Can you validate your market hypotheses? Can you build a technology? Do you have a moat? Do you have a differentiator? It's all the same stuff. NASA teaches entrepreneurship.”

Climbing the Ladder to Leadership

In a period of rapid growth, the incentives to switch jobs can be hard to resist. When the competition for talent is fierce, compensation packages become highly aggressive. No doubt there is a financial upside in playing leapfrog from one company to the next at times like this. That said, try to prioritize your long‐term professional development. Doing the same job somewhere else for more money is appealing. Still, it can make better sense to stay in your current role long enough to stack up concrete accomplishments and earn greater levels of responsibility.

External conditions, on the other hand, can be a very good reason to move on, even if you're comfortable where you are. You can't afford to ignore the winds of change. Tom Ingersoll heard those winds blowing at McDonnell Douglas after it merged with Boeing. “My wife and I had four little kids,” Ingersoll said. “I had a house payment, not a lot of savings, and I was on the fast track at McDonnell Douglas. But I quit my job to go work for a startup.” Ingersoll had learned a lot at McDonnell Douglas, but he knew that the Space Economy was at an inflection point. It was time to go: “Do your homework, be prepared, but also be willing to take a calculated risk when an opportunity comes your way.”

At Skybox Imaging, Dirk Robinson played a key role in the development of Skybox's revolutionary imaging satellite constellation, an engineering feat that posed many challenges. Later on, at Google, Robinson led the team that expanded the Google Maps platform. He attributes his success as a leader in part to his education, less because of his classes than his extracurriculars. “In school, I was lucky enough to stumble into leadership roles in various associations and communities,” he said. “Without knowing it at the time, I was learning how to communicate and coordinate across groups. I was learning how to make plans, bring people together, and get things done.”

In graduate school, Robinson learned another important leadership skill: flexibility. Leading a diverse team demands it. “I had the opportunity to work closely with engineers and professors from all around the world,” he said. “That gave me a window into the different experiences, cultures, and values that people bring to work. These days, most of us are working with, selling to, or buying from across the globe. Those experiences early in my career taught me how to build partnerships and get things done in the diverse world we operate in.”

The Skills in Demand

“When most people think of space, they think rockets,” Justus Kilian said. “Up until now, that has been the area of great opportunity. There has probably been 100x growth in launch over the last five years. Demand for propulsion engineers, for example, has been fierce. In fact, all the high‐level propulsion engineers have been building engines across the big producers for a decade or two.” However, the areas of demand will change as the Space Economy evolves.

“The single greatest position in demand across our ecosystem is the software engineer,” Kilian said. “Software optimizes hardware, so these engineers play a crucial role. They're building more efficient supply chains. They're creating more powerful business intelligence tools. For example, many of the systems used at SpaceX internally are proprietary solutions developed by its software engineers.”

“Data science roles are also very competitive right now,” Kilian said. “Data decides success. For example, telemetry projections guide each rocket. If the projections fail, so does the launch. So these software roles demand serious competence.”

“It's the interface between software and the mechanical devices that are servicing people where I see opportunity,” Tom Ingersoll said. “We can't go to space on software, so you need an interface. You can't build a driverless car on just software. You still need the hardware.” Along these lines, Tom sees great potential in the multidisciplinary field of mechatronics, a specialty concerned with integrating computing, electromechanical systems, robotics, and automation. Everything from IoT devices to avionics to biomechatronics—powered exoskeletons—falls under the mechatronic purview. As you might imagine, there is a growing demand for people with mechatronic backgrounds across the Space Economy.

Other areas of demand include software development that touches on AI and machine learning and nearly every engineering subspecialty. However, if your skills lie elsewhere—from graphic design to publicity—forego getting a technical graduate degree until you've explored the opportunities that might already be waiting for you.

“If you're mid‐career,” Kilian said, “backgrounds in communication, traditional tech, logistics, image processing and cloud capabilities, and many other skill sets—technical‐, business‐, or legal‐oriented—have a home in the Space Economy.”

Pivot Toward Learning

In addition to being an operating partner at Space Capital and a mentor with Techstars, Aaron Zeeb is a leader at Safire Partners, an executive search firm in Southern California focused on emerging growth companies. Zeeb wanted to work in tech but didn't see himself as an engineer. Instead, he got his start recruiting for large telecoms. This gave him crucial tech industry experience and a glimpse at the inner workings of the “hardcore infrastructure projects that were the backbone of the internet.”

When the dot‐com bust brought the first large wave of internet‐related hiring to a standstill, Zeeb pivoted to aerospace, where he recruited for contractors like Lockheed Martin and Bell Helicopter. One of the benefits of trying different career paths and industries is discovering where you don't belong: “I remember walking through the halls of some of these companies,” he recalled. “Some of these were top‐secret projects. Buildings with no windows. Ten‐foot‐high cubicles so you couldn't see other people's computer screens. Executive offices around the perimeter. It was just very awkward, very uninspiring, and very drab.”

For all the frustrations involved in working with legacy organizations, aerospace clients gave Zeeb recruiting experience that would prove crucial later in his career at SpaceX and beyond, as well as a rare window into the philosophy and mindset of the large incumbents where much of the foundational work in technology still happens.

Given the option, steer toward the roles that offer greater learning potential. When you run into an obstacle like an unexpected layoff, take the opportunity to move toward discomfort and growth. Cross‐pollination drives progress. Nothing beats a resume packed with a breadth of unique experiences. There's only so much you can learn from any single vantage point.

Skybox's Dirk Robinson points to curiosity as his career superpower. “My curiosity drives me to reach out, make connections, and learn about aspects of the systems, business, and organization falling outside my primary domain,” Robinson said. “I often spend time with people who are not normally part of my day‐to‐day, such as customers, legal teams, finance, and HR. I have found that doing so gives me a clearer picture of the systems we all operate within. This in turn helps me identify opportunities and ‘see around the corner,’ so to speak.” The importance of curiosity to your career can't be overstated.

“I am a naturally curious person,” Robinson said. “I love to learn. Looking back, this curiosity has served me well in two ways. First, when making career decisions, I prioritize working with people from whom I can learn. This has meant getting to work with world‐class machine learning researchers like Peter Hart and David Stork, who literally wrote the book on machine learning used in grad schools across the world; with an amazingly sharp team of entrepreneurial engineers at Skybox Imaging; and with executive leaders like Joe Rothenberg, Tom Ingersoll, and Camie Hackson, people who really know how to build and run large, high‐performing engineering organizations. Working with people I admire has taught me useful skills and inspired me to do my best.”

Space Capital's Justus Kilian followed his curiosity from a career in finance. As a senior financial analyst at Merrill Lynch, Kilian noticed a trend: “It wasn't just the standard world of venture capital, where the part‐time financier raised and deployed capital,” he told me. “It was the operator‐centric model that said, ‘Hey, I know how to build this. I can empathize with you, the founder, because I've done it, too.’ The operator‐centric funds were the ones raising all the money.” Intrigued, Kilian spent the next five years of his career acquiring operational experience himself: investing across south Asia and east Africa and helping portfolio companies build their sales functions, restructure their balance sheets, and develop management training programs, to name a few areas of focus. Kilian even spent a year as an interim CFO and operations manager in northern Uganda to help a priority investment achieve high growth.

“This experience gave me new insights into what investors want and where opportunity could be found in a market,” Kilian said, “as well as plenty of tactical knowledge about building and operating different kinds of businesses that actually create shareholder value and return capital to investors.”

“I came out of Harvard in 2005 with bachelor's and master's degrees in applied math and statistics,” Arbol founder Siddhartha Jha told me. “My career began in quantitative analysis. Figuring out how markets work on a very fundamental level. In fact, I spent the first five years of my career working with interest rates. Interest rates are a very good foundation for understanding how all financial markets work. At their core, most markets are a reflection of interest rates. Understanding interest rates helps you understand public stock markets, commodities, venture capital, and many of the broader trends in the economy at any given time.”

No career advisor would tell a young person interested in the Space Economy to study interest rates. Yet, Jha's curiosity about interest rates led him toward one of the most promising near‐term applications of Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) data: parametric insurance. In other words, if Jha hadn't followed his interests, he would never have founded Arbol.

“My first love was always commodities,” Jha said. “Ships, pipelines, the basic materials that drive our day‐to‐day lives. How does food make it to our tables? How does gas flow into our cars? That's why I left J.P. Morgan to join a startup hedge fund. I was really focused on understanding markets: oil and gas, corn and soybeans, copper and lead, cattle, hogs, you name it. If it's even reasonably liquid, I've analyzed and traded it in the commodity space. Those experiences gave me a very good overview of how different markets work from a production, consumption, and logistics standpoint—and how they interact with each other.”

Jha learned about the potential of commercial EO satellites working in quantitative analysis: “Increasingly, you had satellites appearing in new applications. One application was the use of infrared satellites to assess crop health. I traded a lot of wheat and corn. In much of the world, official government data isn't reliable, and sending people in on the ground is impractical. You needed a practical and efficient way to measure the relative state of, say, the wheat crop in Argentina versus the one in Ukraine. Satellites offered an objective way to do that. So I became familiar with the potential from that standpoint. I also advised a group trying to launch one of the first commercial radar satellites. Both experiences taught me a lot about the satellite industry. When we started building out Arbol's infrastructure, we knew that satellite‐based weather and vegetation data would be key.”

One important takeaway from all this is that you can never afford to rest on your laurels when operating with cutting‐edge technology. Keep one eye on your job and the other on the horizon.

“Every five or six years of my career,” Aaron Zeeb said, “I've tried to take a step back, look at where things are going, and reevaluate.” When it became clear that Silicon Valley had rebounded, Zeeb headed west, joining Google during its first big hiring spree. Talk about good timing. However, it wasn't luck but strategy that got Zeeb to Google at the right moment.

“Look at where the industry is going,” Zeeb said, “and associate your career with those things.” As the infrastructure layer of the internet was being built, Zeeb worked with telecoms. Once the internet's application layer took the forefront, Zeeb positioned himself at Google. In retrospect, Zeeb's decision to join SpaceX before the launch of its first rocket seems prescient. According to Zeeb, however, navigating tech is just a matter of paying attention and “staying ahead of where the industry is going.” This raises the question: where does Zeeb see it going next?

“Launch is the sexy thing,” Zeeb said, “but at the end of the day, rockets will be the UPS and FedEx trucks of the industry.” The real action lies in leveraging the data from that orbital tech. “It's the Applications layer of the data, the intelligence of satellite systems, the sensor technology—that's where I would focus my career,” he said. “If I were starting from scratch, these are the types of companies that I would gravitate towards.”

“Engineering will always be a promising career opportunity,” Dirk Robinson told me. “Engineering is a critical driver of human productivity, the most valuable resource on the planet. That is not to say that engineering careers will always be stable or static. The trends of software and automation will affect engineering careers as much as any other. However, there will always be a need for people with a strong fundamental understanding of the basic sciences as well as engineering principles: design, analysis, and testing. In my opinion, the most exciting engineering career opportunities in the coming years and decades will be in those fields that are transitioning from basic science into engineering: bio‐engineering, neural interfaces, environmental engineering, sociological engineering, and quantum computing.”

The Importance of Relationships

One of the most important relationships to seek out in any career is the right mentor: “Seek out mentors and become a mentor to others,” Dirk Robinson said. “If you look for them, you will always be able to find mentors willing to help you in your career. A mentor is an incredibly valuable resource to help you understand and pursue your goals. They can help you identify the problems you want to solve and provide encouragement and motivation to move forward. Every successful person I know has mentors in their life.”

“You look at pretty much anybody who's been successful and you'll find that somebody stepped in and helped them get to where they are,” Tom Ingersoll said. “They vetted them and provided a level of credibility that gave them access.” In Ingersoll's case, Pete Conrad, the astronaut who commanded the Apollo 12 mission, served as just such a mentor when they worked together at McDonnell Douglas. “Pete helped me immensely in my career,” Ingersoll said.

Likewise, if you find yourself in a position to become a mentor, go for it: “Mentoring others will benefit you, even as you help others,” Robinson told me. “Mentoring is a skill that can be learned and improved over time with practice. I have found it to be an incredibly rewarding experience, providing an opportunity to learn about patterns of success and failure that you can bring into your own life and career. It also makes a real impact on those you mentor.”

At the end of the day, the best jobs still come through personal relationships. Reputation matters, not only once you're in charge but from the very start of your career. “You come out of college and think you know a lot, and you really know nothing,” Ingersoll said. “You've got to pay your dues to learn your industry. You also need to build a network of people that you respect and, conversely, that respect you. They want someone who's going to listen, who's got talent, who's got drive, who's going to work, who's honest, who's got integrity. Make sure you put in the time to learn your craft and be the kind of person that people want to work with.” This is true of any industry, but especially true of the nascent, high‐stakes, high‐growth Space Economy.

“You hire people because of what they know, you fire people because of who they are,” Ingersoll said. “Are you the kind of person that really sharp people are going to want to work with? Are you kind? Are you respectful? Do you have positive energy? Are you a contributor? Those things aren't necessarily taught in school, but they have a huge impact on your ability to be successful in any kind of work environment.”

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Building a career in the Space Economy is just the beginning. As you move up the ladder, the challenge shifts to finding, hiring, and retaining other talented people to help achieve the company's vision.

As we've seen, there is a war for talent in the Space Economy. In the next chapter, I will share tactics and techniques organizations can use to win that war from leaders across industries. You can't achieve your own potential if you're not surrounded by the right team.