Exploring the Best Practices to Hire and Maintain Diverse Talent in the Satellite Industry

The ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, have permeated human resource departments within every industry, and organizations have made big commitments to improve equitability.

Yet while the satellite industry is far more diverse than it was 50 – or even 20 – years ago, there’s still room for improvement among employers to do more to attract and retain a diverse workforce.

As the satellite industry asks itself what it can do to understand, enhance, and put DEI into practice, panelists at the SATELLITE 2022 Tuesday session, “How to Hire and Maintain Diverse Talent” offered multiple best practices drawn from their own experiences.

Moderator Megan Bennett, a board member of the Space Frontier Foundation, said she hoped the conversation would spark dialogue around inclusivity, two areas that many younger and older satellite industry workers are navigating. Tuesday’s panel was part of a new conference track at SATELLITE produced in partnership with Space Frontier Foundation called “Inclusive Innovation.”

Erin Weber, general counsel of ABL Space Systems, said that as an attorney, she has benefitted from having access to diverse viewpoints.

“It’s difficult coming up with a scenario where having a diverse viewpoint was not beneficial,” said Weber. “The goal is to have thought about all the permutations and think about the best path forward. You kind of have to have that ingrained and a lack of ego to understand that there are so many different perspectives — no one person can think through everything.”

Renee Frohnert, a leader of business development for L3Harris Technologies, said having a close relationship with the right mentors was essential as she began her career as an engineer supporting missile defense programs. It’s also helped that she’s worked with organizations with a culture of inclusivity that welcome ideas and thought leadership from everyone at every stage of their career.

“I was helping support a missile defense contract and a junior engineer brought up the fact that they had a concern with one of the requirements,” Frohnert recalled. “Because we had this culture within the team of speaking up and being diverse and welcoming different thoughts and viewpoints, that culture allowed this person to speak up and say, ‘I’m new but I can see a concern with this requirement.’”

That requirement was changed and millions of dollars on the back end of production were potentially saved because one person felt like they could bring something up that concerned them, she said.

“If you don’t establish a culture of inclusion internally, that can cause problems with groupthink,” she said. “In the space industry, we don’t have time for failure.”

Part of such a culture is the room to learn and grow, and even make mistakes. Panelist Kenneth Harris II, senior project engineer for The Aerospace Corporation, said his mechanical engineering career involved a lot of switching, and some self-doubt, in the beginning, and mentors played a huge part in helping him grow.

“You don’t always have it all together at the very beginning. It takes a village of individuals to get you to where you are,” he said.

One thing he learned along the way: Be conscious of mentors’ time. When meeting with a mentor, “be prepared to have a casual conversation, but also have an objective for that conversation,” he said. “Don’t make mentor relationships transactional. Don’t just speak to them when you want something.”

In addition to good mentorship programs and a corporate culture that exhibits commitment to DEI, organizations need to also be aware of the unconscious bias leadership may exhibit – which is a potential turnoff to new employees.

When Bennett brought up the topic of unconscious bias, panelists said they have seen employers making strides, for example, by asking workers to attend unconscious bias training workshops.

“I’m a big fan of unconscious bias training, [it] puts everyone on the same playing field,” said Weber.

Added Frohnert: “If your company is not training its leaders or its contributors, that can make it to where there’s more unconscious bias. But if there is self-awareness, that can really support the people taking the training.”

And in seeking diverse talent, employers need to do a better job of expanding their outreach beyond their own networks, such as alumni listservs.

Harris said in his role as a member of the Prince George’s County Board of Education, he focuses on interacting with kids, and talking directly to them about what it’s like to be an engineer in the space industry.” “It really starts with you,” said Harris. “Broadening your horizon is not a cookie cutter approach. You have to approach people in different ways. When you think about ways to engage with your team, you have to engage in different ways.” VS