Julian Guthrie

"How to Make a Spaceship: a Band of Renegades, and Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight"

ABSTRACT -- This lecture will be based on Julian Guthrie's third book, How to Make a Spaceship. It is the story of a group of dreamers and mavericks who banded together to build and fly a manned rocket to the start of space without the government's help, ushering in the commercial space industry of today. The story includes not only the team that flew SpaceShipOne, but also the other teams in the hunt, as part of an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible. The story is driven by outsized characters—Peter Diamandis, Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, John Carmack, Paul Allen—and obsessive pursuits. In the end, as Diamandis dreamed, the result wasn't just a victory for one team; it was the foundation for a new industry and a new age.

SPEAKER -- Julian Guthrie describes herself as "a word geek.". A love of words, language, and storytelling has taken her from a childhood spent devouring books (and reading the dictionary!) to a 25-year career in daily journalism, where she won numerous awards and had her work nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer Prize. Julian has written five books, two of which are being adapted for television.

Julian has interviewed some of the world's most successful and interesting people, from Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Richard Branson, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to Melinda Gates, Marissa Mayer, Christy Turlington, and the late Prof. Stephen Hawking (who wrote the afterword to her third book). Julian has spent years researching how men and women succeed – and it is not the same.

Driven by an understanding of how stories can open minds, change lives, and jumpstart industries, Julian founded a 501c3 national nonprofit, The Alpha Girls Institute, to support and spotlight the lives and stories of women and girls across the globe.

She is now the founder and CEO of a venture-backed SaaS (software as a service) company, Alphy, which uses targeted storytelling and guided community to enable companies to attract, retain, and promote women and allies in entirely new ways. Mindset Alpha is poised to change the game for women across industries, and will soon be rolled out to colleges and universities in the U.S.

Julian's personal story shows how a love of something – whatever it is – can take you far in life. "Going from a little girl who loved to read to journalism to author to the founder of a tech company actually feels like a continuum," Julian says. "I just took my love, my skills, and pivoted into new mediums. At its core, though, I'm still telling stories."

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov