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Brian Muirhead

Chief Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Author, Going to Mars and High Velocity Leadership



High performance leadership, winning teams
and innovation.





Few people in business today have formed and managed teams as high performance or as successful as those that Brian Muirhead has led for NASA.
    Brian can show your organization the techniques that have made him an award-winning leadership innovator, creating solutions to seemingly impossible challenges and delivering front page results.

    He will give you imaginative new ways of doing business, a people-oriented management style, and a score of practical, broadly applicable business solutions.

    And—with verve and intelligence—he will share with you the excitement and the stories of the challenges of the exploration of with the insights they offer to business.

A recipient of two of NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medals, Brian recently completed his assignment as the Chief Architect of NASA’s Constellation project, a program with the objective of establishing a permanent base on the moon and preparing for human exploration of Mars. In that position, he provided leadership for developing and maintaining a viable architecture for human exploration beyond earth orbit. He was also Chief Engineer of the Mars Science Laboratory during the invention of the Sky Crane, which was used to land the rover 'Curiosity' on Mars. He is currently Chief Engineer of JPL and is a member of its Executive Council.
    Brian is the author of the highly-praised book High Velocity Leadership. His second book, Going to Mars, (with Gar and Judy Reeves-Stevens), offers an insightful and entertaining look behind the scenes at the leaders that make today’s exploration of Mars possible.

Brian is a fine speaker—a compelling storyteller with exciting stories to tell and the depth of knowledge and wisdom that only come from real experience in high-velocity leadership situations.

Mission Leadership

For one historic mission after another, Brian has led teams that significantly advanced the exploration of space within seemingly impossible budget and schedule constraints, while pushing the state-of-the-art in technology.
    His stories of people overcoming crises and delivering spectacular results are as insightful as they are motivating,

    The key to his success: developing "the skill, integrity and personal ownership of literally every member of the team."


The Constellation Project

Constellation is the modern version of the Apollo program, but with the broader intent to establish a permanent base on the moon and prepare for human exploration of Mars. This new position represents a new level of team building and leadership, which Brian has earned through his spectacular successes with previous projects, like Mars Pathfinder. It’s an engineer’s dream: helping design rockets and human carrying spacecraft, from scratch. And another truly unique leadership challenge.

Credentials
  • Chief Engineer, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  • Former, Chief Architect, NASA’s Constellation program to the Moon and Beyond
  • Former, Chief Engineer, Mars Science Laboratory
  • Project Manager, Mars Pathfinder Mission.
  • Senior advisor to the Mars Exploration Rovers
  • Project Manager, Deep Impact Mission
  • Engineer of the Year for 1997 by Design News magazine.
  • 1997 Laureate for Space by Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine.
  • Author, High Velocity Leadership: The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper (with Bill Simon, HarperBusiness, 1999).
  • Author, Going to Mars
  • Since joining JPL in 1978, he has worked on many challenging high technology missions including the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Earth-orbiting Spaceborne Imaging Radar (SIR-C).
  • Master’s degree in Aeronautical engineering, California Institute of Technology.
  • Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico.