Closing Bell - Manifest Space: A Constellation of Talent with Aerospace Corporation CEO Steve Isakowitz 4/21/23

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

While the space economy has blasted off, diversity in the workforce has not kept pace. One industry initiative looking to bring more under represented groups into the fold – the Space Workforce 2030 pledge – is unveiling its first annual report. Morgan sits down with Aerospace Corporation CEO Steve Isakowitz to discuss the business case for a more diverse workforce and industry trends from the Space Symposium. For more Manifest Space, listen and follow here: https://link.chtbl.com/manifestspace

It's been one year since the Aerospace Corporation, a non-profit working with commercial companies, spearheaded the Space Workforce 2030 Pledge. It's a four-pronged plan to boost the diversity of the industry's talent pool. Now, from the same space conference where it unveiled the initiative, the non-profit is releasing its first annual report. We're an industry based upon trying to do the ambitious things that seem to be the impossible. And we know that if we're going to remain at the cutting edge and be a global leader, that we've got to have a more inclusive workforce. And we had found that we're competing often for the same kind of talent. So instead of competing for that talent, why don't we band together and

try to do something which I'm not aware of another industry doing this in the way that we're doing in the way working together to really expand that pool. On this episode, I speak with CEO Steve Isakowitz about the business case for a more diverse workforce, as well as aerospace's work bridging private and public sectors. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. Steve, thanks so much for joining me today. Absolutely. Thank you for joining me today. Absolutely. Thank you for inviting me.

So, you have some news coming out this week. Space Workforce 2030, a pledge was made here exactly a year ago, and this is the first year that we get an annual report. Yes, that's exactly right. So we launched this a year ago, and we'd argue space industry is the most exciting industry. It's based upon innovation, and the only way we're going to succeed is having a diverse and robust workforce. But we also note that we have not had as much progress in this area as we'd like. So a year ago we band together, at that time 25 companies, now we're up to 31, which represent pretty much the spectrum of large

to small companies in the aerospace industry. And we wanted to do something rather unique, having an industry-wide pledge to make a difference, to make sure these things are actually done at the CEO or senior executive level of these companies. And perhaps most importantly, we're holding ourselves accountable. So every year we're coming back to the Space Symposium and we're reporting by data to show whether we're making progress in this area. So are we making progress in year one? Yeah, absolutely. We have four goals that we set for ourselves, which is to increase the technical workforce, diverse technical

workforce, leadership level to see it more diverse, and to work on the pipeline with regards to universities and K-12. So in each of these areas, we've had great progress. We reported out that we've done our survey with all the companies and across eight measures, six of the eight, we've seen significant improvement in just one year. So that's fantastic. We've been working with younger children. So we pledged to try to reach over five million, and we did. We achieved that just in this year. We have working with Girl Scouts of America, trying to reach out to those two million young women out there to try to be future astronauts and engineers. And we started a national space internship program for diverse students,

and we had over 1,000 students apply for that in just the first year. So we think we've done a fair amount in the first year, and we call it 2030 because just like going to the moon took a major effort by the end of the decade, we realize we're not going to fix this overnight, so we've pledged to get major effort by the end of the decade, we realize we're not going to fix this overnight. So we've pledged to get this done by the end of this decade. Yeah. I mean, not going to fix this overnight, but it's been a disparity in terms of some of the mix in the workforce, in this sector, in this industry for so long.

Even 2030 sounds kind of ambitious. Yes. No, it is ambitious. But, you know, we're an industry based upon trying to do the ambitious things that seem to be the impossible. And we know that if we're going to remain at the cutting edge and be a global leader, that we've got to have a more inclusive workforce. And we had found that we're competing often for the same kind of talent. So instead of competing for that talent, why don't we band together and try to do something, which I'm not aware of another industry doing this in the way that we're doing, in the way working

together to really expand that pool. So what does that mean in terms of where, and I realize there's different aspects to this initiative, but what does that mean in terms of where some of these companies and where the industry is recruiting from? So you know, we often recruit at, you know, particularly with students at traditional schools, but we're also trying to go to other schools where they have greater diverse populations.

For example, we've been reaching out to historically black colleges to try to get them folded into, make it more aware. And we're trying to get these students as part of this National Space Internship Program to try to get to know each other. So our goal in this is the students get to know each other, start to develop their own network,

and as they go back to the campus, they can begin to really talk up what we're trying to achieve. And hopefully more students that maybe are choosing careers in other areas will get excited about what we're doing in space and see that we really have an open door for exciting work. One of the questions I always come back to is,

what's the economic case? Why is it so important to see a diverse workforce in an industry? Yeah, and I think this is actually a really important question because I think we have found in the industry, and I think the data is there to back it up, that if you're really going to do innovation, you can't have like-minded people with like-minded perspectives. True innovation

happens when you get people from different perspectives, different walks, different schools are going to come in and just sort of see things different. It's that ability to see things from a different perspective that really creates the kind of innovation that takes place. And I think that's been proven to be the fact. I mean I've seen studies that were done where you take like-minded people who all knew each other and given a particular task and a bunch of strangers from diverse backgrounds and ask them to do the same task. And the people that were like-minded, they thought they crushed it. And people that were from diverse backgrounds, they didn't think

they did as well. But objectively, it turned out that the people from different backgrounds actually did better. Huh. Isn't that interesting? I wonder if you think we're sort of at a cusp or entering a new era in terms of excitement about younger generations wanting to actually engage with and enter this industry and become workers in this industry. Because it felt like for a while space kind of stagnated, or at least the public perception around it.

And then SpaceX comes along. I know Gwen Shotwell actually used to have your job before you, and some of these other companies that have come since then, and it seems like there's a lot more excitement now. And I'm wondering if that's translating to the pipeline, the talent pipeline, too. Yeah, I think a couple things are happening. First of all, we do have exciting things happening in space. Web telescopes, seeing things that we've never seen before, robots on the surface of Mars. You know, we're going back to the moon and we're sending astronauts to step on the moon.

These are really exciting things. But the things I think we're doing that are very different is we're also doing a lot more effort on solving problems here on Earth, with Earth observation satellites, future versions of GPS satellites, to sort of create an internet of things across the globe to really open up so the rest of the globe can participate. And I think as young people are seeing that space really does solve some major problems that we're facing today on climate change, on things that are happening in our economy, and disparities that exist, I think that's what

really is attracting, particularly students with a diverse background will find that this is something that they can really get pulled into. And so we've talked a little bit about this pledge, this 2030 pledge. What is some of the work in general that Aerospace Corporation does? Yeah, so at the Aerospace Corporation, we're a non-profit. We have over 4,000 employees. Three-quarters of them are scientists and engineers. And we have the unique role of working across all the space government customers that are out there from defense, intelligence, civil, even commercial activity. So our unique role as a nonprofit is we get to team with industry and working with the government and sort of be that sort of honest,

deep technical broker and bringing the best minds to solve some of the hardest problems that the government's facing. So whether it's the challenges we see today from China and Russia and national security, or trying to get back to the moon and eventually onto Mars, or even just to try to help on-ramp these commercial companies. And there are a lot of them, and they're doing some of the best technology that's out there. Yeah, there's been a real flurry of new companies coming into the market, just even in the last couple of years. One of the conversations that comes up with my reporting a lot is this idea of a valley of death and how some of these companies are able to break into that government contracting market

and be able to bring some of those innovations to government. How do you help them navigate that process? Yeah, so yeah, that is a big challenge. And again, the government has had a way of doing business for so many years with many times the same contractors. Then you have these sort of new entrants, and they do have the opportunity through small contracts to start onboarding. A lot of senior people in government these days realize the benefit from it. But the challenge and this valley of death you talk about is how do you get them from these small contracts to be the major contractors for the things that you're doing as we go forward. So we've been doing things like, first of all, just making companies

aware of how you onboard with the government, where those opportunities are to work with them, help them with the due diligence to help them work through to help to have their products so it can also serve the government at the same, it's dual use for its commercial sector going forward. There's a lot of regulatory issues associated with that with regards to licensing, to be able to do things from space, getting access to spectrum, space traffic management. In fact, the freeways aren't the only place that have traffic jams these days. We're actually starting to see it in space. So there's some significant regulatory issues.

And then just technical. Sometimes they just don't have access to some of the major test facilities that the major contractors have to make those available. So those are things that we're trying to push on to try to get more of this innovation and give these companies more of an opportunity. And also to come up with sort of architectures. We used to have three or four big satellites to serve specific needs for the government. Now we're talking about these so-called proliferated constellations, hundreds of really small satellites that are inexpensive and that you can go from multiple vendors to try to bring them on board. This is a really different approach to doing space, but it's one that has really enabled a lot of innovation. So what are some of the, so you just gave me a couple of examples, but what are some of the innovations or some of the projects or some of the work that you and Aerospace Corporation are focused on right now specifically that you're very excited about?

Well, it's a number of things. One is in the area of launch. There's a lot of companies that are trying to get planes to the launch area. And so, you know, over the, for the past 60 years, this country has always had sort of the same set of launch vehicles we've been using. This decade, we're actually going to be having a whole new fleet of rockets that are going to be serving the government from traditional companies as well as more of these entrepreneurial ones. We're talking about doing a lot more things in space, so we're not just dropping off things in space, but we're talking about things like refueling things in space, moving them around, actually manufacturing things in space, going to the moon, maybe someday even mining actually manufacturing things in space, going to the moon, maybe someday even mining from the moon so it allows us to explore further on.

So there's a lot of these kinds of exciting technologies and then there's of course the so-called deep tech like artificial intelligence and machine learning. We're finding more and more as we're putting up more of these satellites and have to respond quickly whether it's a national security threat or something else that's going on, that we often need the machines to be able to provide the kind of analysis so we can make quick decisions. I so appreciate the conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts

and by watching our coverage on Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.