Former NASA Administrator and Wash100 Award winner Jim Bridenstine has been selected to the National Security Space Association’s board of advisors.
As a board member, Bridenstine will leverage his extensive experience in the space and national security fields to drive the association’s mission to cultivate and maintain long-term collaborations between the public and private sectors going forward, the NSSA shared with ExecutiveGov in an email sent last week.
“Since the National Security Space Association’s founding, they have managed to create a coalition highlighting the national importance of space that often transcends the national security community,” Bridenstine said.
Bridenstine shared his excitement to contribute to the board, which he said “already holds unparalleled expertise and a wide breadth of perspectives.”
In April 2018, Bridenstine was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 13th NASA administrator, a role he held until January 2021. While serving in this position, Bridenstine played a leading role in progressing NASA’s aeronautic, science and space exploration initiatives.
Before joining NASA, Bridenstine represented Oklahoma’s First Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was a member of the Armed Services Committee and the Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Bridenstine assumed his first public sector role as a U.S. Navy pilot in 1998, during which he flew the E-2C Hawkete off the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. Following his transition from active duty to the U.S. Navy Reserve, Bridenstine returned to Tulsa, Oklahoma and assumed the position of executive director at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium.
“Jim brings a diversity of experience and insight that will highly inform the Association’s priorities and focus, thus enabling us to better support the national security space enterprise and our member companies,” said NSSA Chairman Joe Dodd.
Outside of NSSA, Bridenstine works as an independent consultant across multiple defense, aerospace and intelligence markets.
