Leadership Moments from NASA

The NASA way: lessons on leadership, teamwork, and corporate culture. How does NASA take on seemingly insurmountable challenges, recover from tragedy and continue to attract the best and brightest talent?

Space exploration is as much a story of leadership and teamwork as it is a story of exploration and discovery. Leadership Moments from NASA delves into the culture of the famed organization and examines the leadership styles and insights of NASA senior executives spanning five decades of human spaceflight to share the lessons they learned from critical moments. How did they prioritize? How did they resolve differences? How did they decide what to do when no one had done it before? How did they build highly competent teams? How did they build organizational resilience? How did they fight complacency and rebuild a culture of safety and innovation?

Through the use of NASA oral histories and interviews, this book shows how NASA recovered from tragedy and adversity, and how it developed a culture of competency that continues to attract the best and brightest.

Dr. Dave Williams is an astronaut, aquanaut, pilot, ER doctor, scientist, CEO and bestselling author. The former Director of Space & Life Sciences at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, he has flown in space twice. He holds the Canadian spacewalking record and was the first Canadian to live on the world’s only undersea research habitat. He has received the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the Langley Research Center Superior Accomplishment Award. Dr. Williams is the recipient of six honorary degrees, the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Elizabeth Howell, PhD, is a staff writer for Space.com. She has been a space journalist for 20 years and is one of the few Canadian journalists to focus exclusively on space. After working for The Globe and Mail, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, CTV Ottawa and the Ottawa Business Journal, Howell struck out as a full-time freelance space journalist in 2012. Before shifting to full-time work at Space.com in 2022, she was a frequent contributor to publications for clients such as CBC, SpaceQ, and Space.com. She has seen rocket launches in the United States and Kazakhstan, lived on a simulated Mars base, and interviewed many astronauts. She also teaches technical writing and does consulting work from Ottawa, ON.