Masters with Masters

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and European Space Agency Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain shared reflections and stories in the Masters with Masters #5 program. They traded ideas about international collaboration and fielded questions from the audience in a lively discussion moderated by Academy Director Dr. Ed Hoffman at the 61st International Astronautical Congress in Prague on September 28, 2010. Dordain emphasized that cooperation among space agencies is strengthened by personal relationships. Bolden spoke about collaboration in terms of diversity and inclusion. Both agreed that competition and cooperation were not mutually exclusive - We need competition, but provided that that competition is organized to reach common objectives, said Dordain. I think that cooperation is to set the common objectives: what are we ready to go do together? I think that is the sense of cooperation. But to reach these common objectives, I think that competition is very healthy.

For the Academy's fourth Masters with Masters event, Bobby Braun, NASA's Chief Technology Officer, and Steve Altemus, Director of Engineering at Johnson Space Center, sat down with Academy Director Ed Hoffman to share stories and experiences in a 90-minute session that streamed live to all NASA centers on September 13, 2010. Braun talked about what he learned from working on the Mars Pathfinder and the Mars Polar Lander microprobe Deep Space 2. Altemus spoke about the connection between learning from past failures and communications. They also shared their thoughts on innovation within the agency.

Third in the Masters with Masters series, this event features Mike Hawes, Associate Administrator, NASA Office of Independent Program Cost and Evaluation, and Lynn Cline, Deputy Associate Administrator for Special Operations Missions, discussing insights about their careers, the International Space Station, and the future of international collaboration, with Ed Hoffman, Director, Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership.

The event featured Olga Dominguez, NASA's assistant administrator for the Office of Strategic Infrastructure; Michelle Moore, Federal Environmental Executive with the White House Council on Environmental Quality; and Dr. Brian Nattrass, co-founder of Sustainability Partners and author of several books on sustainability. Academy Director Dr. Ed Hoffman facilitated this informal discussion about sustainability practices in organizations. The Academy has developed Masters with Masters as part of its ongoing efforts to create a cohesive community of project management and engineering practitioners across NASA. This series will engage master practitioners in a conversation that yields fresh insights and promotes reflection and open sharing.

The Academy's second Masters with Masters event featured Dr. John Mather and Dennis McCarthy, who shared critical learning experiences related to the Cosmic Background Explorer, the James Webb Space Telescope, and other complex science projects. John Mather and Dennis McCarthy sat down with the Academy's Ed Hoffman in the NASA Auditorium on October 28, 2009 to share stories about leadership, perseverance, learning from mentors, and finding the right team. The discussion focused largely on their work together on the Cosmic Background Explorer, a project with ambitious goals, and cutting-edge technology and science. Mather was the COBE Project Scientist and Principal Investigator for the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer instrument, and McCarthy was the Deputy Project Manager. The groundbreaking science from COBE led to a 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for Mather and Dr. George Smoot of the University of California/Berkeley.

In its kickoff event, Academy Director Dr. Ed Hoffman moderated a discussion between Scolese and Ryschkewitsch in the NASA Auditorium on April 24, 2009 before a live audience that included members of the NASA First program. The session was taped by NASA TV and will be released as a web-based video on the Academy's website and the NASA Engineering Network. The conversation ranged over themes including formative career experiences, lessons learned from successes and failures, the relationship between a project manager and a chief engineer, and advice to young project managers and systems engineers. Speaking about the need for strong systems thinking across NASA, Scolese emphasized that it was not the sole responsibility of an individual with a certain job title. All of us have to be the systems engineer, he said. Scolese and Ryschkewitsch also compared notes on what each had learned from participating in mishap investigations. "The most important thing you learn is that you're not as good as you think you are, said Ryschkewitsch.