Vanessa Wyche, former director of the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, has been named acting associate director at NASA’s Washington headquarters. Janet Petro, the agency’s acting administrator who announced the appointment on Monday, said Wyche will serve as her senior adviser and perform the role as NASA’s chief operating officer overseeing 18,000 employees and over $25 billion annual agency budget.
Before her NASA headquarters assignment, Wyche managed over 11,000 NASA Johnson staff supporting the agency’s Astronaut Corps, Mission Control Center, International Space Station and the Orion and Gateway.
Wyche’s other previous functions in her 35-year career include serving as deputy Johnson Center director, Exploration Integration and Science Directorate director, Space Shuttle Program flight manager and executive officer in the Office of the Administrator.
Other Recent Executive Moves
With Wyche’s new assignment, Stephen Koerner will serve as NASA Johnson’s acting director, moving from his former role as the center’s deputy director overseeing strategic workforce planning. Before becoming deputy director, Koerner served in various leadership roles in the center, including as director of the Flight Operations Directorate, associate director, chief financial officer, deputy director of flight operations and deputy director of mission operations.
In another executive movement, NASA appointed Jackie Jester as associate administrator for the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs handling all communication with U.S. Congress and serving as a senior legislative adviser to agency leaders. Jester is rejoining NASA after over three years at Relativity Space’s Washington office where she served last as senior director for government affairs, according to her LinkedIn profile. Before working with Relativity Space, she was a NASA policy adviser and had stints at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and at the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Executive Retirement and Succession
Besides the new appointments, NASA also announced the retirement of Catherine Koerner as the agency’s associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, effective Feb. 28. With her departure, Lori Glaze, the current deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, will serve as the mission directorate’s acting associate administrator.
Among the experience that Glaze brings to the position is her previous work as as the director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division before joining Explorations Systems Development. Before her work at NASA’s Washington headquarters, Glaze was the chief of the Planetary Geology, Geophysics and Geochemistry Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Deputy Director of Goddard’s Solar System Exploration Division.
