Leadership Training in CA!

My next trip for 2014 was for work, and getting there was an adventure! Due to bad weather in the NE part of the country, my flight was delayed early in the day. My friends and I got to the airport and tried to fly standby on any flight we could get that would put us anywhere near Los Angeles. We were willing to drive up to 12 hours if needed to get to our training event on time.

After many attempts, all four of us made it onto a flight to Las Vegas. There were a few more connecting flights to L.A. that night, so we attempted to fly standby on those as well. The first two flights were departing within 5 minutes of each other in different terminals. We didn't make the first flight, so we literally sprinted with our bags to the next one.

Thanks to a fast runner (not me), we made it on the second flight! As I sat down on the plane, I quickly realized I'd injured my knee...yep, the adrenaline rush protected me for a little while. We made it to L.A around midnight, rented our car, and began our journey to Edwards Air Force Base/Dryden Flight Research Center. We arrived around 3:30 AM, which helped us adjust more quickly to the time change...

Fortunately, our training started in the afternoon on Sunday, so we got to sleep in and take in our surroundings before diving into a fun-filled, intense week of leadership training. I am in a NASA training program called the Mid-Level Leader Program (MLLP). It started about a year ago and will end in June. There are 28 participants in our cohort, and this was our third training session together. This week of training focused on leading change. Each of our "Core Learning Sessions" are held at a different NASA center, which means we are exposed to more of the culture, technology, and challenges each center has. Prior to this session we have visited Stennis Space Center and Glenn Research Center. This session was at Dryden, which is officially now known as the Armstrong Flight Research Center (the change occurred while we were there).

Each training session is filled with great insights from our facilitators, business challenges from our hosting center, group presentations, and so much more. One of the highlights of each of these weeks has been the tours of the facilities. The views at Dryden are pretty amazing by themselves, but the airplanes they fly are pretty amazing too! The pics above are of me in a F-18, and in a F-18 simulator where I got the opportunity to land an F-18. I didn't crash! The pics below are of me in a G-III, outside the SpaceX building, and the first sunrise I saw while at Dryden.

The last day we were at Dryden was an extra special treat. A current member of our cohort, Erin, works on the SOFIA project, and she got to give us a personal tour and explain with incredible excitement what she gets to do each day. It's amazing! They are producing some incredible pictures of the sky we've never seen before, and we are learning so much from them!

To top that off a previous MLLPer, Steve Chan, was able to arrange a tour of SpaceX for us before we headed home. It was pretty amazing to see their processes and philosophies, as well as to talk with some of their leaders and better understand some of the leadership challenges they have ahead of them in the coming years. We weren't allowed to take pictures on the tour, but they did approve this group picture that includes a Dragon module behind us.

I love the opportunity to participate in training events like this. I learn so much from the people I'm surrounded by. I'm so grateful for this group...they both challenge me and support me. We have one more session coming up. I'm looking forward to it, but also sad to know this program is coming to an end for us in a few more months.

There are a few more pictures in the album.

New Opportunities

With the start of the new year came several new opportunities for me (Elizabeth) at work. On January 2nd I became the Group Lead for some of the ETHOS flight controllers, which are responsible for the environmental and thermal systems on the International Space Station, and on January 13th I started a sixteen month Mid-Level Leader Program (MLLP) within NASA! I'm truly honored and humbled to have both of these opportunities. This will be my third group of flight controllers to manage, which means I have had the opportunity to continue learning new technical information, as well as growing in my leadership skills and working with more amazing people. NASA's MLLP training has already proven to be an invaluable experience for both my personal and professional growth.

There are 28 participants in this year's MLLP from across all of NASA's centers, and I get to be one of them! We all had to go through an interview process at Headquarters in Washington DC in November where each center sent several of their top mid-level leaders forward in hopes of being accepted into the program. The fact that I was on this list and had the opportunity to interview meant the world to me! I found out the next day that I was accepted into the program with a few other friends from Johnson Space Center, and we were all ecstatic!

Everyone in the program got together in January for our first of four joint training sessions. Everyone in the group is amazing, and I'm so excited to get to spend this time getting to know them better and learn from them and the experts that are pouring into us! We spent most of this training session digging into who we are as leaders and figuring out how to stretch and grow to be better. We each have a mentor from a different NASA center to help us with this as well.

This training session was at NASA's Stennis Space Center, and we got to spend some time one afternoon touring the center and some of the tenants that reside there, such as Pratt, Whitney, Rocketdyne. It was fun to see what they are working on, and being an industrial engineer by training, I was impressed with their manufacturing processes! The highlight of the tour though was getting to visit one of Stennis' rocket engine test stands. Some of the guys that work there gave us an incredible tour of the A-2 test stand! Here are a few pictures I was able to capture with my phone.

There are a few more pictures from the tour of the test stand in the album.

The week we spent together in training was a non-stop, intense period that helped us to quickly form bonds with each other, but it also allowed us to step away from our daily lives to look closer at who we are and where we want to go. We were all exhausted emotionally and physically from the long hours and introspection when we returned home, but I can honestly say I feel like it was one of the best training experiences I've ever had. I'm excited to continue this journey!