Secretary Dole and me.
Prior to working with the White House, my job was Associate Director for Licensing and Safety in DOT’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which is the basis for this website. From 1984 until December 1994, I directed the design, development, and implementation of the federal government’s regulatory program for commercial space transportation. I also played a major role in the development of the office, it’s budget and standing in DOT. During this time, I was appointed to the Senior Executive Service. It was an incredible job with many, many different stories that you’ll read about on this website. I licensed and oversaw the first 30 commercial satellite space launches and put into place the governance framework that exists today for licensing and insuring commercial space transportation and commercial spaceports, and approving their payloads.
The work I did from 1974 to 1984 actually constituted the training ground for all that I did later. I worked as a management analyst in the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Secretary where I worked with many different government regulatory programs and was involved in some of the most challenging management efforts of that period. I got to play different roles, some of them key in such things as privatization of the Metropolitan Washington Airports; creation of the Research and Special Programs Administration; consolidation of FAA regions; sunset of the Civil Aeronautics Board; recovery from the air traffic controller’s strike; and other major management efforts. I had the great honor of being one of nine people selected for the Department of Transportation’s first management intern program in 1973.
I graduated from the University of Maryland. Before that, however, I served undercover in military intelligence in Europe with the U.S. Army. Ironically, if anyone asked me or my colleagues where we worked, our cover story was that we worked for the Federal Space Agency. In the early years, I was an instrument-rated private pilot. I was born in Manila, Philippines and grew up as an army brat, traveling the world and US. That’s probably where my quirky outlook comes from.
If you are wondering why I left the government when I did, the answer is simple. I had done everything I could in that career. I had started a new and amazing government program, had accomplished a hugely successful and widely recognized turn-around, and had worked in the executive White House. I was a senior executive. I could do more of the same, but I couldn’t top that. In October 2003, I was spending a lot of time traveling between Oklahoma City and Washington DC. when a friend told me about a hiring clinic for ski instructors at Beaver Creek. Beaver Creek is the pinnacle for ski instructors both because of its highly-rated Ski School and the fact that virtually all the lessons are private. I wondered if I was a good enough skier to be a professional ski instructor?!? I told everyone if I got hired, I would quit. How many times can one enter a new career and start at the top?