I paid my own way to ISPCS ( International Symposium of Personal and Commercial Spaceflight ) in Las Cruces , New Mexico in 2012 . It was there I rubbed shoulders with astronauts , high level aerospace executives , and generally friendly and welcoming people . I walked away from that conference with the feeling that something compelling was happening in space . The next question was — how could I apply my skills to space ? Coming from a business , and not a STEM background , the path wasn ’ t totally clear . Once I learned that companies were actually selling tickets to space — in this case Virgin Galactic , I was hooked . Once I discovered the “ Overview Effect ,” a book written by Frank White , I knew what I wanted to do — help people have this profound experience .
These explorations led me to combine my new passion ( space ) with my old passion ( entrepreneurship ) to form the Space Entrepreneur ’ s Meetup in February of 2014 . Our first meetup was three people on a Google Hangout , and our next meetup was almost 100 people in downtown Kirkland with a keynote speaker . Since then , Space Entrepreneurs has grown to well over 1,000 members , pointing to the interest in the business of space in the Pacific Northwest . I have met countless interesting and inspiring space entrepreneurs and professionals , like Christopher Richins , founder of RBC Signals , a satellite ground station company . An entrepreneurial dream of mine was to join an exciting startup early on , and I was fortunate to join RBC Signals just after they raised their seed round in January of 2017 and I have been helping them ever since .
Stemming from my involvement in the Pacific Northwest space industry also came the co-founding of Space Northwest , an organization that seeks to build upon the rich legacy of the Pacific Northwest ’ s more than 60-year space economy through innovation , technology , entrepreneurship and to build bridges to innovative careers for all .
The process of discovering my purpose has been an interesting journey . How do I know I ’ m on the right path now ? I suppose there ’ s no way to ever know for sure . Maybe the fact that I was born on April 12th — U . N . International Day of Human Space Flight ( the day Yuri Gagarin became the first person to reach space in 1961 and Space Shuttle Columbia became the first shuttle launched in 1981 )— is just a coincidence . Or maybe it ’ s one of life ’ s funny ways to let me know I ’ m on the right path .
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