Senior Project Leader-Space Policy and Strategy at The Aerospace Corporation

01:09:22

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Join us for an inspiring conversation with Catrina Melograna, a Senior Project Leader-Space Policy and Strategy at The Aerospace Corporation. In this inspiring episode, she shares her journey from pursuing a career in law to becoming a leading expert in the field of space policy. Discover how she found her passion in space law and policy, overcame challenges, and built a successful career in the industry. This episode is not only inspiring to those interested in Space Law but also helpful to anyone navigating a career shift. Learn about the unexpected twists and turns that led her to her dream job and how she overcame challenges along the way. So, tune in to this episode with Catrina Melograna today.

Relevant episode links:

The Aerospace Corporation

About Catrina Melograna:

Catrina Melograna is a Senior Project Leader-Space Policy and Strategy in the Civil Space Programs at The Aerospace Corporation. She provides support to Aerospace’s Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) program and is actively engaged in related stakeholder agencies (DOD, NASA, NOAA, etc.) associated with policy, oversight, and regulation of the commercial space industry, and related space infrastructure.

She is also co-lead of the Policy and Regulation Focus Area of the Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities (COSMIC). Prior to joining the Civil Space Group, Catrina was a strategic foresight project lead on the Strategic Foresight Team within the Center for Space Policy and Strategy (CSPS) at Aerospace focusing on transforming the space and national security enterprise through application of disciplined methods to enhance decision-making under uncertainty.

She led projects on strategy, innovation, foresight, and policy across a range of direct customer sets and external engagement opportunities through CSPS. Additionally, she provides technical expertise on international, space, and aviation law, policy, and regulation.

Prior to joining Aerospace, she practiced law in Pennsylvania, California, and Washington State, as a litigation attorney and also worked on a variety of regulatory issues. She obtained her B.A. from Louisiana State University, J.D. from Duquesne University School of Law, and Advanced LL.M. cum laude in Air and Space Law from Leiden University in the Netherlands (thesis focused on US regulatory framework for commercial space activities). 

She also attended International Space University’s (ISU) Space Studies Program in 2019 where she earned the Morla Milne award for the highest academic achievement. While obtaining her LL.M., she worked with Aerospace’s CSPS as a space policy graduate co-op. Ms. Melograna has given lectures and presentations on international and domestic space law at various conferences and universities in the US and Europe. She has also written several articles and a book chapter on US commercial space activities.

Ms. Melograna lives in Alexandria, VA with her husband and enjoys painting, playing music, kayaking, birding, traveling, and photography.

Welcome to the show where we chronicle women’s journeys to the bench, bar, and beyond, and seek to inspire the next generation of women lawyers and women law students. I’m pleased to have as part of our Space series of the show the Space Policy expert, Catrina Melograna. She is a Space Policy Lead at The Aerospace Corporation.

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Welcome, Catrina.

Thanks for having me.

I’m really glad to have you. It’s helpful to have another perspective on how you can use a law degree, particularly from a policy perspective. Also, your journey shows that the journey continues throughout one’s career, and it might be a little bit winding. Even if you end up at a law firm for a little while, you still might end up doing policy somewhere or some new area that you hadn’t thought of in law school. That’s part of our mission here to make sure that people do think of these opportunities and different paths that they can pursue earlier rather than later. Let’s start from the beginning in terms of law, at least. What made you think you wanted to go to law school, be a lawyer, or study law?

Pursuing A Career In Law

It wasn’t something that I grew up thinking that that’s what I would do. When I was growing up, I was very interested in theater, music, and art. I played a couple of different instruments. I liked to draw and paint. I liked being on stage. I went into college wanting to get an art degree. I started college as a studio art major and really liked that.

I’m not sure when the point was, but I thought, “No.” Maybe I walked past the theater building because it was near the art building or the art studios. I was like, “I want to do that.” I switched to theater in my sophomore year. I was doing a performance. That was really fun. I was in some plays, and then I decided, “I want to switch again, but this time, I want to do design.” I wanted to bring that artistic side.

Was it a set design?

Yes. I did some set design but I focused mostly on lighting and sound design. That was very cool. I got to light plays, shows, musicals, and dance performances. I also did some sound design. I would do some audio recording or recording engineering and that kind of thing. That’s what the first part of my life I was thinking that I would do, and I did that for a little while after college.

I found that the schedule that is associated with a lot of that work, stagehand and working in theaters, was pretty grueling. I know a lot of people probably don’t know what goes into putting up a show, maybe a traveling show, or light or something. It’s labor intensive. It’s late hours. I got to the point where I didn’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life. I tried a couple of different things. I ended up working at a big corporation.

For something completely different.

Exactly. I did that for a while. I was doing office work and administrative work. There was a lawyer who would come by sometimes and chat with us. I was very interested in what he did. Some of my friends in a different part of my life were having some challenges and I thought, “I wonder if there’s any law on this.” I went in and did some research. It was the first time I ever saw what a statute was or a state law based on my very basic understanding of reading the English language, which is not always applicable to reading law. It’s a little bit different sometimes.

The thing is that I was able to help my friends figure out a way to argue and advocate for themselves that benefited them and that put them in a better situation. They were able to prevail in this situation that they thought they were right, and they were. There was something in that moment that I felt empowered. I felt excited that I was able to find that on my own and then also that it helped my friends. There was a little spark there for me. I was like, “I want to do this. What if I take that to the next level?”

A couple of years went by and I talked to people who were lawyers and then I was like, “I’m going to study for the LSAT,” so I did. I ended up moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and went into law school. That is a very interesting path. I didn’t start law school until five years after I graduated with my undergraduate degree.

A lot of people go straight through. That’s unusual.

I even had some friends who went straight. They had 3 years of undergrad and then their 4th year was their 1st year of law school. I was a little bit jealous sometimes of that because they knew what they wanted to do and it was really efficient, they were getting it done, and they had a big head start on their career, education, and stuff. Fast forward, I’m realizing that all the things that I did in between, all of that discovery, and all of that thinking and self-reflection were very beneficial for me personally. I don’t have the regret that I thought I might.

It’s important to have a pretty strong why about why you want to go to law school and what you want to do with the legal training. Even if you end up doing something different, it’s good to have that because it’s so challenging. You have to have some greater reason why you’re putting yourself through the super awful first year. There has to be some payoff. There has to be something from it. If you’ve at least garnered that before you go in, it can help you persist.

Not everybody does this but I agree with you. If it’s going to not be the worst decision you think you ever made, it is having a good, strong motivation behind going into it because you are putting yourself through one of the most rigorous and challenging times of your life, truly. That’s not because necessarily you’ll never go through anything as difficult, but it’s because you haven’t probably been through anything that challenging in an educational situation. Even on a personal level, when you’re being called out in class, it’s embarrassing if you get it wrong. That was a new thing for me because I came from theater and the improv world.

That’s right. That’s improv, yes, and.

You go to law school and they’re like, “No.” It’s quite different when you get there and you’re put on the spot for things. Having that motivation, having a clear picture of where you see yourself, and then knowing and understanding what it takes to get there. I can’t say that I had that crystal clear when I was going through, for sure, because there were moments when I was like, “Why would I put myself through this? Am I even going to get to do anything cool?” and all that. You have a lot of moments of self-doubt and thinking about what else you could have done. It’s a struggle sometimes or a challenge to keep that vision of your future in mind. It is thinking back to that motivating factor that got you there in the first place.

Exactly. That’s the common thread usually. There’s something like that. Even if it ends up changing or as you change and evolve, it’s helpful to have something like that to begin with. I have a question about your creative background. It seems completely anti, at least first year of law school, of, “Don’t be creative. Let’s get the rules.” Over time, do you think your experience in the various creative arts impacted how you approach legal problem-solving?

Absolutely. I did bring it into even my first year of law school. Sometimes, that worked for me, and sometimes, it didn’t. A lot of times, on a personal life level in law school, I tried to make people laugh and release some of that tension that we have in classes or around exams. I don’t know if everybody has as fond memory of it as I do, but we were practicing our appellate court arguments for our writing class in the first year.

I conspired with my writing teacher about, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I put on this really gregarious lawyer persona from a movie and did mine as a joke for my classmates to see?” It was for fun and for laughs because I was sure they would get that I was doing it for fun, and I did. She was like, “That sounds fun.” I was acting in for a joke in this part of the thing, but not everybody got it, so it didn’t go over as well as I was hoping. A few of my friends who knew me thought it was funny.

I was going to say people get pretty serious at that point so I don’t know if the funny bone is very active.

I don’t think it was. It was fun for me, my friends, and I know my law professor. She was behind it and thought it was fun. I’m a visual person. I love drawing and painting. I don’t know if these are related, but it’s how it worked out. I’m also a visual learner. I suspect that those two things are related. Therefore, I’m also a visual presenter, a teacher, and a thinker. When I’m going through things or brainstorming, I like to draw it out. That allows you to shape things a little bit differently if you are not using images or you are not physically drawing things out.

With theater and art, storytelling is a big part of those types of things. It’s like, “What story am I telling with this piece of art? What story am I telling when I’m sitting down to play music?” That’s when you’re on stage in the theater. That is a big part of being in different perspectives, thinking from different perspectives, or bringing different elements into this one problem that you were thinking about. I don’t want to use the term outside of the box, but it’s true. That’s it. Outside of the paint box, I like to bring those kinds of things in.

All of those are different ways of storytelling and translating things, whether it’s a visual representation or thinking about storytelling and, in our case, persuasion as lawyers. It’s persuasive storytelling usually as litigators.

Exactly.

It’s helpful to think and see that there are commonalities. I know when I took some creative writing after law school and after undergrad, I was amazed at how these different disciplines have these core commonalities, including legal writing. I felt like that experience really impacted how I wrote my briefs after that, how I thought about the process, how I thought about what I was doing, and the framing of them. It became very different. That stuff informs how you approach legal questions, legal problems, and legal persuasion, for sure.

It makes it more fun and interesting for you and the reader.

Exactly. About the first year, I think about it like Picasso. You have to learn the basics first and prove you know the basics and then you can start breaking the rules. That’s where I feel like, “We can start applying all of these.”

That’s a really good art analogy. A lot of people don’t realize that Picasso in his early works was very good at realism. If you haven’t seen that earlier work, then you’d probably not know that it was Picasso.

Every once in a while, he would go back to the earlier style to prove, “I could do it but I choose not to. I still have it but I choose not to do that.” It’s pretty funny. You went to law school. What did you think you might do with your law degree? I don’t think it was space law.

It wasn’t. I did not know that was a thing until well into my 30s. Unless you really knew what you wanted to do before you went into law school, it’s an open shield for you. However, you may be limited to the classes that your law school teaches. If you’re not introduced to a particular type of law, it’s probably because maybe they didn’t teach that at your law school or it was such a small class and you couldn’t get in because everyone wanted to get in there. There are those types of things that can happen when you’re in law school.

For me, I was immediately drawn to criminal law, in general. I was volunteering a little bit through my school on the Innocence Project. We had a full criminal law class. I started taking some of the electives after that that were criminal procedures. I remember starting to want to take those classes. When I got a job the summer before you went into your third year, and then I worked through my third year, I worked for a criminal defense attorney and solo practitioner. She was amazing. She had so many cases and she let me jump right in.

I loved it. I found it so interesting. There were so many different issues. You were dealing with people and their families. It was different than I was thinking if you were going to go into corporate law or the people I was working with at different places. I felt I could be impactful and that I could help. Going back to what was that original motivator, I felt that when I was working with her on those cases. That was my goal. I was like, “This is what I want to do.” I did not know about space law. Would I have thought differently back then, I don’t know because I was a different person.

That’s a really great point, and that’s part of this. Looking back, you can say to yourself, “It makes perfect sense. All of these things fit together to lead to where I am now.” That may be true, but also to your point, you changed along that journey. Maybe if you had known about something, you would not have pursued that at that point because you needed to evolve.

Exactly. It’s really hard to say, so I try not to speculate about that. I do have a couple of inklings of that I would at least have been interested in it because I had this very cool class. It was law and philosophy. We had this incredible professor. One of the lectures he gave was about time, space, and physics. He also had a degree in physics.

I was really interested in that. I was like, “You’re in law school. Focus on the law,” but I was like, “This sounds cool.” I started reading a little bit about gravity, time-space, dark matter, the microwave, and all this stuff that I hadn’t thought of in a very long time. I started, at least in that class, going off on that little tangent, but I did have to bring myself back because the task at hand was to get through law school, pass the bar, and get a job.

I remember having one of those moments at the National Space Society meeting this 2024. The person who was speaking before me on the track was talking about space-time, how you could ground it, and all of this stuff and I thought, “I am not sure I’m in the right room. I’m not talking about anything like that. It’s very interesting. I’m not sure anyone’s going to think mine is very interesting after this.” you do get exposure to all kinds of different ideas and the eclecticness of it. If you’re curious, it’s interesting.

One of the top adjectives that I use for myself is curious, maybe to a fault. I want to know all the things. When I hear something very interesting, as you had the same reaction, I’m like, “I want to know more about that.”

It’s like, “Let’s follow that down the rabbit hole.”

Lots of rabbit holes.

Criminal defense, interest, and work. What did you do following law school?

I came out of law school at not a great time in the economy. It was 2011. I was in law school during the worst of it.

I was going to say at least it wasn’t 2008, so that’s good.

Judicial Clerkship

That’s when I started law school fortuitously for myself. Coming out, there wasn’t a lot to choose from slash the jobs that you wanted, everybody else wanted them too. I applied for those types of jobs that I was interested in. I wanted to work for the public defender’s office and there weren’t any openings for that. I didn’t stay sad for too long because I had an incredible opportunity. I applied for and got a judicial clerkship. That was with a civil court judge. That was amazing. That was a one-year term job, which was really great right after law school. I had exposure to hundreds of motions, arguments, and tons of trials.

My judge was such a great teacher and mentor as well as being a boss. He was encouraging me to go to other courtrooms that were in the courthouse and watch the trials. I got to see and sit in on tons of voir dire. It was also a great opportunity to meet the lawyers in the community, the trial lawyers, and the litigation lawyers that were coming in. I was every day meeting people, talking to them, and getting to see what different cases people were working on. That was so cool.

Whenever I talk to law students, I’m like, “If you can get a judicial clerkship after law school, go do it. There is no other place where you’re going to experience the variety of law, issues, the networking opportunity, and that amazing opportunity to sit with a judge and talk to them about how they’re thinking through things and assisting in writing.” I started writing memos and things like that. I got to read all the other lawyers’ writing. Brief after brief, I’m reading, thinking, and analyzing. I can’t think of another type of job that you would get to do besides being a judicial law clerk. That was so cool. I did that.

If you can get a judicial clerkship after Law School, do it. There is no other place where you will experience the variety of law, the networking opportunity, and the amazing opportunity to sit with a judge.

That’s really great. I did both a district court and an appellate court clerkship. They were different but very valuable. Before this episode on the show, John Owens from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was also talking about externships on his episode. He was saying that a lot of people apply for judicial externships, so the pool of people who apply for that is quite a bit smaller than for the clerkships, which are quite competitive. That’s something else I hadn’t realized. That was something helpful for people to think about applying for an externship during a semester in law school.

That’s a good point. I can’t recall if I knew that existed. I probably wasn’t paying attention because I was working with the attorney at that time. That’s really good advice to seek those things out. Maybe it’s not the same for everybody, and I know people do different tracks. I found that the third year was lighter on the coursework. That’s your year, for most people, to do that work and go get that professional experience that you’re not necessarily getting in your classes at law school. It’s so different from hands-on experience.

I completely agree with that. The third year is a good one, whether it’s clinic work in the schools, which is so much more prevalent this time, or an externship, something where you’re able to marry your academic learnings to the real world. That’s great.

All the other skills that you pick up with that that you might not necessarily have had before. A lot of people haven’t even had a job before. Those basics in communication with the client, basic communication with coworkers, courtroom decorum, and what it’s like to file something. I don’t even know what you do now, because back in that time, we had to walk it to the courthouse and stamp it.

Exactly. No more with the electronic stuff. That’s so true. That’s great. I’m completely supportive of clerkships too. It was one of the most transformative experiences that I had. Even though I learned how to think like a lawyer and certain training in law school, I felt like I learned how to be a lawyer from the judges that I worked for and from watching all the lawyers who appear before the court.

Clerkship is one of the most transformative experiences.

That’s really great training. Maybe you’re learning a little bit through osmosis or what they say.

Exactly. It’s so impactful being part of it and seeing things. Also, a lot of times, very experienced people are not conscious about what they’re doing anymore. If you were to ask someone, “How do you do something?” they would give you 4 steps but they’re really doing 10 things. It’s only by watching them that you can see what’s effective and what they are doing.

That’s such a good point.

They’re not conscious about it anymore. They’re not leaving it out on purpose. They’re like, “I didn’t realize I did that.” If you raise it with them, they’ll say, “I did?” Getting insights into how a decision-maker looks at the filings and looks at the case completely changes how you understand what’s helpful in the presentation on the other side. You never get that opportunity to have that kind of insight again. It’s so helpful in so many ways, the clerkship.

It’s valuable to the firm that wants to hire you or for yourself if you’re going into practice for yourself. When my clerkship ended, I felt like I had a better opportunity to go into the law firm that I really wanted to having seen the attorneys from that firm that I respected and wanted to be like. I was fortunate I got to go to that firm. After my clerkship ended, I applied. I know that all of that stuff that I learned lawyers find valuable sets you up really well for being able to go in as a first-year associate, bringing in that experience with you.

I was still not doing criminal defense though. I went into a not-super-great job market but I was like, “I want to do law. I really like this firm. The people are nice.” I started off doing healthcare and medical malpractice defense. I did that for a little while, and then I moved around a bit after that. I met my husband. He was living in Los Angeles, so I moved to Los Angeles. I practiced for a while in California. I did similar work but also property, premises liability, personal injury, and all the things right that you do with that type of insurance defense and defense litigation in general.

That was all very interesting. We ended up moving to Washington State. We ended up moving to Seattle for my husband’s job. I became licensed in Washington and was doing similar work, including construction. That was interesting. I really liked that. I didn’t know much about it before but I liked all the technical and the engineering parts of it.

Thinking about what’s your day-to-day and whether it is boring or not boring, the type of thing that you’re doing. In construction, it very much, to me, wasn’t boring because I was always having to learn something new like an HVAC system, a type of paint that you have to use for certain things or the way a foundation was built. Those hit you every day. There’s something new to learn. I found that interesting. A few years later though is when I had my space spark. Everything changed after that.

That sounds intriguing.

I was doing my job, being a lawyer, and doing these types of things that I had been doing for the past few years. My husband, who is a professional photographer, was the one that suggested it. We started doing some night photography. It was very new to me but fascinating. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to take a picture with your iPhone of the stars or the moon.

It never turns out the way it looks.

International Space University

My husband, Jordan, has all the equipment for it, so we were out doing that. We’ve got some amazing images in our first few tries, so we got a little obsessed with it. We were planning vacations and stuff around dark skies, where can we go see the Milky Way this time of year, and those kinds of things. We then were doing some artsy things with lights and the stars behind us. It was really fun.

On one of these holidays that we were taking, we were in Hawaii. We went to the observatories at Mauna Kea. We did this night sky tour. We were taken up by a tour guide and we got to see the observatories, which was really cool. We were looking out over the mountain across. Our tour guide mentioned something about an off-world analog mission that was happening and you see it from where we were. I had never seen one of those. I was very intrigued. I was asking questions about it and he didn’t know a ton.

I looked it up as soon as we got done with the tour and I was fascinated by the thought that there were these people living in this little dome and they were simulating either Mars or the moon at that particular time. There were people in it at that time. I could be mistaken about that. I had never thought about that before. I can’t explain the feeling that it gave me. I was curious. It was more than that. It made me think that I would want to do something like that.

I liked the thought of the experiments. I’ve always been interested in space and sci-fi. I grew up with a grandfather who was an aerospace engineer. He had a telescope and shared that love of space with my sister and me when we were little. I never did anything with that, but I think that maybe this was a re-ignition and not necessarily my first spark. Maybe there was a little bit of fuel there already.

I looked this up and I found that there was an institution called The International Space University. That was another one of those sparks where I was like “What is that?” I looked that up. What a cool organization. It’s a university. It’s in France. It started in the United States back in the ‘80s, but they have several different programs like a Master’s and then they have some certificates. It is focused on the interdisciplinary aspect of space.

That's what’s so interesting about it. It’s not often that all of those things come together in one place.

This is why it was the perfect thing for me to see as the first thing to see because it pulls together the art, the literature, the law, the policy, the engineering, and all the technical stuff. They value all of it together. They want to instill that importance that the space industry, the future of space, and the future of humans in space is critical that all of those pieces are present and influence that future because they’re all very important. I’ve never really heard that expressed before or I have never encountered that sentiment before. That was really intriguing to me.

Long story short, I was like, “I’m in. I want to do this.” My husband was super supportive. I quit the job that I had. They had a week-long program. It’s a higher level but it is quite a deep dive. That’s where I learned about space law and policy. It was over for me. I was like, “This is it. This is what I want to do. I’m going to figure out how to do it.”

That is quite the challenge. Finding out about it is one thing. Finding out that there is such a thing as space law and then figuring out where in the constellation of space law you fit and can contribute the most is a whole other journey. Did you have something particular in mind? Did you think you wanted to do the policy part or you were continuing to explore after ISU?

I was continuing to explore. I may in the beginning still have been in the mindset that in order for me to be in the space industry, I had to be a lawyer and for that to work, I needed to work at a space company in-house. That’s the first thing I did. I was like, “I want to start applying for these things and working for these things.” I wasn’t even considered as far as I know. I didn’t have the experience. I hadn’t done any kind of tech law. I hadn’t been in-house counsel. I ran into that.

It was a huge roadblock. I was very discouraged because I knew that with my passion, my curiosity, and my eagerness to learn, I could do it. I know I could, but it was convincing people that when they could go get another lawyer who has the experience and who’s excellent. It’s about what you do and trying to get creative with that.

I ended up going to the summer-long program for ISU. That’s an intensive nine-week program. I got to do that in France. That was very cool. I met a lot of people. You work on big teams and some smaller teams. You start to see, “I like this aspect of these types of projects.” We were working on technical projects. I was a lead on one of the parts and liked that. I liked being a project leader for a particular part of the project. I also worked on the law policy part. I enjoyed the writing, the research and analysis of it, applying it to our project, and looking up the rules about this mission that we want to do, all the things we would need to know from a federal law standpoint, and also the international aspect of that.

I still hadn’t figured out exactly what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I could still go to work at a company as counsel, but I came out of that and I was still running into that roadblock. COVID hit and I thought, “l I don’t want to do nothing,” so I applied for and got into Leiden University’s LL.M. program for air and space law.

It is an excellent program and an excellent school.

I was so nervous and so excited. I really wanted to get in. I remember getting the letter that I got in. That was a good day. I was so excited. The other benefit to that program is that I hope that I would be able to get an internship and then someone would have to hire me because I’m going to go get that experience. That was a great way to do that.

First of all, the program was great. We had COVID, so it wasn't as fun and network-y as it could have been because things were closed and we couldn’t be in person very much. I still had that network, which are really great people and professors. I did an internship at the company that I work at, The Aerospace Corporation. That was such a great opportunity.

It was also where I learned that I don’t have to be a corporate attorney and I don’t have to practice law. This was very much a policy and strategy group of people that I was working with. We were focusing on new issues, emerging issues, and future issues. We were looking at international and domestic law and policy and then also thinking about other things I’d never thought about like the national security aspects of that. There’s such a wide range of issues. I worked in a group where different parts of that group were focusing on those things. It was an incredible opportunity there to even focus a little more on what I wanted to do or what I found interesting.

That’s true. You have the opportunity or the options of externships or internships when you’re in law school or an LL.M. program. That doesn’t open up some more opportunities to get more experience. That was smart of you to think about that.

The Challenge In Career Change

Thank you. It was the right move for me because I got the education and then I also got that experience that I would not have gotten if I hadn’t been in that program. I do try to talk a little bit to people who are mid-career like I was and who are doing not a complete total pivot but a pretty large pivot. A career change is hard to do mid-level because you have become good, recognized, and experienced in a couple of these other things. You want to go do this thing. How do you get people to understand that while you haven’t had a job in this particular area of law, you have studied lots of different laws? You had to learn law on a daily basis. This is your jam. This is what you’re good at.

You had to learn the law, but you do have to learn how to communicate that skill.

You do have to learn how to communicate those skills and break it down into, “I have experience. I’ve done this. This is what that means. This is how that translates to this job that I would like to do. It is directly transferable. It’s written in a different language because we’re talking about law over here, but I’m going to find a way to communicate that clearly to you so you can see that while it’s not exactly the same thing, it requires all the same foundational skills and expertise.” That’s a job in itself to be able to do. That is critical when you’re trying to do what I did by completely changing that path.

It’s so true, thinking about that as being an educational mission. You need to educate people on how that translates. You can see how it does, but it is being conscious about being able to explain it well to someone who doesn’t have that background that you have going into it.

People make assumptions about lawyers or people who went to law school, good or bad. Hopefully, mostly good. There are assumptions about what we do. I don’t think there’s a common understanding of the breadth of what we have learned and experienced in our jobs. It’s our responsibility. It’s our job. We have to be able to communicate that in a way that makes sense to go into another job.

It's our responsibility and job to communicate in a way that makes sense. to go into another job.

I get this question a lot. People say, “Space law? What is that? What is that? What are we talking about?” People get the international piece of it to some degree. There have to be treaties because of the international character of the actors. What answer do you give when people say, “Space law? What does that mean?”

Along the same lines, I say that space law is a subset of international law. There are international treaties. There are agreements that the United States is a party to and that other countries are parties to. You take a step further and the countries that have signed on to those treaties and those agreements will ratify those treaties. They’ll implement their own national or domestic space law for their country, their citizens, and their space actors.

In the United States, we have the most robust space law in the world, and there’s a lot of it. There’s a misconception that there’s no space law. I tell people we have a lot. We have some hefty statutes that have been written down for quite a while. New ones are being written, amended, and evolving. There’s a lot out there. It’s the body of hard law or soft law that regulates or oversees space activities. The United States, for example, has a lot of space activities, commercial and government. There are laws for all of that. That’s space law.

To me, one of the most interesting or unique aspects of space law is the connection between domestic and international obligations. One of the very few treaties within it contemplates this connection that there’s a responsibility by the signatory state for its individual and private actors within its purview and continuous supervision element written into the treaty itself. That allows for more alignment between national laws and international laws. That contemplates that there will be domestic laws in order to implement those treaty obligations. There’s a synergy between those that’s super unique in this study.

When a country signs onto this treaty, they can be a signatory, but then they need to ratify that. Meaning, they need to put that into their own law. You’ll see that the United States space laws, it talks about those international obligations that we have. It is quite connecting that with the same language, recognizing that we have international obligations. Like we have responsibility, we also have liability. Those are very important parts of it that our agencies, our government, and our legislators have put into the domestic law that we have to ensure that we are fulfilling those international obligations that we signed onto a long time ago.

We must ensure we are fulfilling the international obligations we signed on to.

Exactly. At least that’s what the outer space treaty quite almost universally signed on to, which is unique in treaty law. Sometimes, there’s an interesting, or at least hopefully, inspiring story from the externship at aerospace to your role at Aerospace after you received your LL.M. Did the externship help you at least get to understand Aerospace more and meet some people that would help you get the position that you have?

Sure. I learned a lot from the people that I was working with and whom I now work with. They have excellent resources and knowledge. They were very willing to teach you. You learn not just the work that we’re doing, the policy work, and the analysis work but also, the inner workings of a company and how the company itself functions. That was a great opportunity.

The other thing too is that it’s not just about meeting the people that you’re working with in that internship. It’s also being proactive and networking in the company but also networking opportunities from the people that you’re working with. That was really helpful for me as well. I got to intern in person. For the most part that summer, I was in DC. I was able to meet a lot of different people from there as well.

I always say to people to network because you want people to know who you are and see who you are. You’ll be in their minds if they’ve met you before. It’s critical piece of finding those opportunities so that you can do the job that you want to do. You got to go out and meet those people and talk to them. That gives you the opportunity to be known for a job that you apply for at that same company. They can say, “We worked with Catrina. We liked her. We think she did good work. Let’s bring her back.” I was lucky to have that.

I worked for a different part of the company than the part I interned with. Aerospace is a very big company. That’s cool in that sense because we’re working on so many different things. You have an opportunity to see all of these different things happening in the space industry and the space enterprise all at once. They’re really great about encouraging you to talk to people in the company, see what they’re doing, learn about all the different pieces and all the different players and everybody is doing, and this great picture of how we are contributing to the entire space enterprise.

That's true. You get a lot of different insights into different aspects of it because Aerospace is involved in all of those instead of being one part of it. That’s for sure.

The Importance Of Domestic Law In Space Law

This is a great place for me to say that it’s independent. It’s a nonprofit. It runs a Federally Funded Research and Development Center. We call it an FFRDC. It’s the only one that’s dedicated to the entire space enterprise. I’m really fortunate to work at a place that is so focused on that and then was trusted advisor to the government on those space activities.

I think of it as another think tank, at least the part that you work with. It’s similar to RAND in that regard in terms of being a trusted advisor on many different key policy areas and strategy areas for the government and for others.

The policy part you’re talking about is the Center for Space Policy and Strategy. They have the best space policy experts in there. That’s one part of Aerospace. There are over 4,000 employees, the majority of which are scientists and engineers. That’s a really cool part of my job coming out of law practice and then being a lawyer in my day-to-day, I get to talk to scientists and engineers about space exploration, launching things, and asteroids. Name your space thing and we’ll probably have someone who works on it and you can talk to them. What an incredible position that is. I feel truly lucky every day. I can’t describe how much that fulfills me.

When I think back about those few years ago when I was disheartened, it felt like such a monumental challenge that I knew I could try but there was no guarantee that I would find a place that I really wanted to be in. I kept trying until that happened. I don’t know when I would’ve given up. I assume at some point, you have to because you have to get a job. At least I did. I’m very lucky that I did find that for myself, especially getting to be where I am.

Some of the decisions along the way that you made helped with the luck a little bit. Having the experience at ISU of being able to talk to a multidisciplinary group would be something that The Aerospace Corporation would find helpful because you’re not just talking to lawyers. You’re talking to a lot of other people. You’ve demonstrated that. I had a question about mentors, sponsors, or people who helped you along the way in that regard. I’m assuming there’s at least some from your LL.M. program from ISU. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit too.

I have some very amazing women mentors. That was a really important thing for me. I also joined something called the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs’ Space4Women program. That’s where they pair you with mentors. I got to do a little bit of that early on. I would like to give back and eventually be one of the mentors for that program, hopefully. There were other people that I’ve met through ISU. My professor, Dr. Tanja Masson-Zwaan was the chair or the lead of the policy and law department of the ISU program that I attended. I met her in that program.

That’s the connection.

I had so much respect for her. I found her to be incredibly smart but also a wonderful person. There are several programs you can choose from if you want to get an LL.M. in air and space law, but there was no choice for me. I was like, “I have to go where Tanja is.” Since the time I met her, she has been generous with her time, her advice, and in friendship. That affected the outcome and some of the choices that I made. As a professor encouraging you but also giving you that critical feedback that you need to get better to learn more, I got that with her.

When I was in DC I, I met a few other women as well, a few of whom you have recorded on your show. There is this amazing community of women space lawyers. I have felt nothing but support, kindness, and encouragement from this group of people. That was really one of the contributors to pushing myself further to get into the community. Aside from the work being fun, interesting, and stuff, the people that I would get to work with, know, and learn from were a big motivator for me. I have big thanks to those women who helped me out and are there when I text them. If I’m feeling like I need to ask a question or I’m feeling inevitable imposter syndrome, I have people that I’m comfortable talking to and I’ve never felt more included and encouraged.

The work is fun and interesting, but the kind of people you get to work with, know, and learn from can be a big motivator.

It’s important that you mention that because in deciding where you want to practice, there’s the subject matter, things that are intellectually interesting, that you enjoy, and that you’re good at, and where that connection between where your passion lies, what you’re good at, and what the world needs all meet.

There’s also this other aspect of, “Is it fun for other reasons? Do I enjoy working with the people who are in it? Is there some shared element that we have?” There’s a lot of joy in that mutual support, which is an important consideration in determining where you want to end up and what you want to do. It’s a little icing on the top. You’re like, “I’m really interested in this area. The people are cool too. This is great.” It all works out.

That’s also one of those things you’re not really taught.

That’s why I want to bring it up. I’m like, “That’s super important.”

You go for the thing. You want to be happy in your job. You want to like what you do. I was never specifically taught it hinges sometimes on the community that you’re working with. That could change, but I felt it deeply when I met the people who were in this community and realized that that in and of itself was a reason for me to keep trying to be a part of that community.

It fuels the fire in that regard. You’re like, “This is amazing.”

I’m like, “I want to hang out with these cool ladies.”

They’re cool. They’re really smart. I like to work through tough problems with them. It’s all good. They’re good people to have on your team. Can you share to the extent you can what kind of work you are doing at Aerospace? What does space policy look like where you’re at?

I have done a variety of things at Aerospace. I’m going back to what I was saying a little bit earlier. It’s a very cool situation to be in. The Center for Space Policy and Strategy, I’m no longer in that department. I work in the civil space programs but I work very closely with the space policy people. Also, it’s part of my title. I do that. We have different department names.

Some of the things that we do, we look at emerging issues and challenges in the space domain or space adjacent. A lot of people are talking about AI and those types of things. Those get analyzed and talked about. We have access to these wonderful engineers and scientists to get to the nuts and bolts of how things work. That informs some of those policy analyses. I also work with our program office with the Federal Aviation Administration, Office of Commercial Space Transportation. We give technical support to them in their space activities. That’s a very fun program to work on. That also will include some space policy issues as well.

I get to do all these different types of jobs that bring in those legal skills that I had. When you’re doing some program-type managing, you’re bringing in those leadership skills, communication skills, and organization. When I get to research and analyze as a space policy or law expert, I bring in that research, that analysis, that writing, and then that communication part of it as well. It’s a great way to use all of those things that I’ve learned combined with the passion that I have for learning about space.

There are a lot of space laws, but there’s also a lot of developments in space, some novel activities, and things like that. It’s an exciting time to be involved in it because there are some foundations, but there are a lot of things where you need to innovate or set some norms and standards for new activities. It’s fun to be on the ground floor of that.

That was one of the first things that I got excited about in space law. I thought, “What other area of law is there that is currently being developed?” It’s not so much we have this really strong historical foundation of regulation and we’re evolving it to try to catch up with the technology. You could say that in space law, it’s still nascent. The technologies are evolving quickly. That was intriguing to me. I was like, “What a cool opportunity to get involved in an area where I might get to be a part of new laws that didn’t exist before.” That was cool. That was right up my alley.

That’s what’s unique about space law too. It’s not exactly what people say in terms of there’s no law. There’s a lot of development that needs to be done that are pretty fundamental frameworks. It would be great to say all of this stuff happens and people don’t think about it. When I was working on this, we helped create that framework.

That’s a very cool thing to be part of.

Lightning Round Of Questions

I usually end with a little lightning-round set of questions. I’m going to start with a few of those. Which talent would you most like to have but don’t? This might be very hard because you seem to have a lot of talents. We’ll see if there’s one that you don’t.

Thank you. I don’t have all the talents, so there is room. I wish that I was really good at math and that I liked it. If I was good at it, I might like it. I would love to study astronomy and take part in the scientific side of space exploration. I’m always interested in that. I read about it when new things come out. I wish I had taken that path when I was younger. I wish I had the talent of being a math genius. Is that a talent?

I think it is because the genius level requires a certain amount of talent. If we had that, we might be engineers and not lawyers.

In this job, I’ve met a lot of engineers who also study Policy. They are impressive. There are a lot of people like that.

It’s in truly emerging technology companies where the legal landscape is still in flux. Whether you’re talking about drones, air mobility, or space, the CEOs or the founders of those companies are much more knowledgeable about policy and legal frameworks than CEOs in other arenas. It’s almost like in order to direct the company.

That’s interesting. That makes sense. When you are working in an emerging field, having that policy knowledge is going to be nothing but beneficial for you.

Having that policy knowledge will be beneficial when working in emerging fields.

Criminal Law

Exactly. It makes sense when you think about it, but then having these conversations with some founders, they start having legal discussions with you like they’d been to law school or something. You realize they haven’t, but they have that deep understanding to know where to go next with the company and how to design things. The law is uncertain. It’s fascinating. It requires a different kind of multidisciplinary aspect and way of thinking to be in those emerging industries. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself and what is the trait you most deplore in others? It could be the same. It might be different.

For myself, I don’t like that I need so much sleep. I feel like I need way more sleep than most people for me to be functioning well. I’ve met some people.

Those people who are like, “I can only sleep three hours or something and I’m good.” That’s not me either.

Imagine how much more I could do. I don’t know if I’d fill that time with doing things. Maybe I watch more TV, but I don’t like that I need so much sleep.

I’d like to think that I would use that extra time productively, but I don’t know. It’s the same kind of thing.

Maybe I would use that extra time to rest.

Read some books for fun, something like that. Go for a hike.

Maybe I would exercise. I don’t know.

Who are your favorite writers?

I don’t know if I have favorite writers. I have some favorite books. I don’t know if you’ve noticed a theme with me, but I’m a little all over the place with the things that I like to do, the things that I like to read, and all of that. I really like sci-fi and fantasy. My favorite series of books that I have read have been the Dune books. That’s Frank Herbert. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Dune. I know a lot of people who have read Dune. The world that he builds and how you feel like you’re in it.

I remember watching the new movie that came out, which I felt nailed that feeling, but I got that feeling before I saw the movie. I got that when I was reading the book. It also has parallels to things. The things that are happening in the book were like a result of perhaps this world. That kind of stuff I really like, but I like those books in particular and the way that he writes those.

What you said about getting that atmosphere both from the book and in the film, that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, you see the film and you’re like, “That’s not at all what I got from the book. I don’t know who had that idea, but it wasn’t mine.”

Another series that I finished was The Three-Body Problem. I really liked the books. No offense to Netflix, but I wasn't into their adaptation. It’s books. As you read Game of Thrones and then you watch Game of Thrones, there’s no way you’re not going to be disappointed in some ways. I didn’t necessarily feel like that in Dune, at least for the atmosphere world-building aspect of it. I thought that was well done.

Who is your hero in real life?

My hero in real life is my mom. She has gone through some things that are challenging. It’s her positivity and her resilience. Even when she was not feeling good, she would still comfort me. There’s something there that I really admire. I hope that I can be as kind and as loving a person as that. She has inspired me.

There’s a generosity to that, right?

Yeah.

It might be related to this, but for what in life do you feel most grateful?

That’s related. I would say, my family and my friends. I love all my family and friends, but I love my husband a lot. He has been a wonderful partner. He is really supportive, especially in this space space.

I was going to say you had to do so many things that were outside the box. You were like, “I’m going to Strasbourg France. Now, I’m doing this.” He’s like, “Sure.”

He has been like, “Yes,” and, “Go do it.” You can’t ask for more than that. I really feel grateful for that.

Given the choice of anyone in the world that could be more than one person or could be a combination of people, some who are with us and some who are not, who would you invite to a dinner party?

I would invite my grandfather whom I spoke about a little bit earlier. That’s because it would be cool to talk to him as an adult. He passed away before I went into space law or space things. Given his love for that and then he was the person who introduced me when I was little to space, it would be so cool to sit down, talk to him about it, and show him what I ended up doing. That would be amazing. I would invite Stephen Hawking. What an amazing, smart person. What an opportunity to talk face-to-face with somebody that’s so influential in our physical world. That would be very cool.

That’s great. What an interesting conversation amongst all of you too. That combination of guests sometimes can lead to some interesting discussions in themselves.

I probably wouldn’t get a word between those two, but I’m going to try.

You might be a fly on the wall to some of those discussions in this particular setting. The last question is what is your motto if you have one?

I have a motto. It’s, “Stay curious and boldly go.”

That’s very appropriate for the whole space thing.

It’s got a little bit of Star Trek in there.

I like that.

It has a little bit of general curiosity. I like to say, “Stay curious and boldly go.”

I love it. That’s a perfect way to end and put a bow on the whole discussion of your journey to space law. Here’s to your continued success and impact in that arena. Thank you so much for sharing your journey. Hopefully, we’ll encourage other folks to consider that as a career even earlier in their journeys in the law.

I really hope so. Also, this is to encourage people that they may not have chosen that earlier on. It’s almost never too late to change it regardless of if you’re going to space or not. An important message I want to get across as well is that if you have the opportunity or you start thinking about how you might be able to change something if you want to, you don’t have to resign yourself necessarily to the thing that you’re doing. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

It's never too late to change, regardless of whether you're going to space or not.

It goes with your stay curious part because sometimes, that curiosity will lead you to new places. It may not necessarily be that you are like, “I don’t enjoy whatever area I’m practicing anymore.” It could be more like, “I’m curious about this other area,” and pursuing that curiosity. There’s some value in that. There’s a reason you’re curious about something. Pursue it and see where it goes. Do not be afraid to do that even if you’re many years out of school or whatever. That’s what keeps us going.

That’s what I’m trying to say. That is what I mean by that. Go check it out. Go see what it’s all about. Don’t think you’re too old.

Exactly. It’s the whole reinvention thing. I don’t know if it’s a reinvention as much as evolving and allowing yourself to evolve. There’s a lot of joy in that.

It’s growing.

I agree.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about that. I had a good time. It was a good conversation. I really appreciate the invitation to talk with you.

I sensed there would be something in your whole journey that would be interesting, and this is it. Whether your journey takes you to space law or not, there’s something about that. It is staying curious, evolving, and surrendering to that instead of saying, “This is only what I do.” Keep growing. Thank you so much.