Career Biography | Dr. Michaelyn Thomas

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The Spaced Out Doc community is a direct reflection of Michaelyn’s thoughts, experiences, and research through storytelling in efforts to build community with a shared vision of women empowerment in the aerospace industry. As a woman of color and executive leader in a profession with few people who look like her, her perspective is unique, and her goal is to educate, motivate, and inspire as many humans as possible. She believes that women empowerment objectives are not just for women, but rather, these objectives are for everyone to succeed, because inclusive business is good business. 

Professionally, Michaelyn is a space expert, specializing in program management and business operations for complex space systems. She is on a mission to make rocket science affordable in efforts to create equitable access to space for new and existing satellite providers. Michaelyn also identifies as a finance subject matter expert, specializing in cost estimating, cost/price analysis, and comparative and competitive pricing for complex space systems; an organizational leadership subject matter expert, specializing in building strong and productive teams coupled with an equity, diversity, and inclusion mindset at the core of organizational structures; and as a space policy analyst, researching how the market drives and influences space systems development and implementation.

Scholastically, Michaelyn belongs to two academic honor societies—Tau Beta Pi (the engineering honor society) and Dobro Slovo (the national Russian honor society). She holds a doctorate degree in organizational leadership from University of La Verne; a master of science degree in space systems engineering from The Johns Hopkins University; a master of business administration (MBA) degree from University of Redlands; and a bachelor of arts degree in political science, public law with a minor degree in Russian language from California State University, Long Beach. She has three publications, including her doctoral dissertation, which is entitled, “Exploring the advancement of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) executive management positions in the aerospace industry: Strategies identified by women that enable success”. Her two most recent publications are entitled, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work on rockets” and “Leveraging agile best practices for engineering design optimization in the aerospace industry”, which appeared in the April 2021 and September 2021 issues of STEM Magazine, respectively.

Michaelyn is also very passionate about community service, and she dedicates her spare time to inspire as many girls, women, and all underrepresented groups to pursue STEM education and STEM careers. She accomplishes this through community STEM activities, sponsorship, and serving as an executive mentor for the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship program which provides Black college students paid internships in the aerospace industry, and as a board member for the society for the advancement of material and process engineering (SAMPE) foundation which aims to expand and enhance K-12 STEM education pertaining to materials and process engineering curriculum.