Episode 111: Caryn Schenewerk
Space Law Expert and Former Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Policy at Relativity Space
01:04:10
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Show Notes
Caryn Schenewerk works at the cutting edge of space law and policy -- from the highest levels of the federal government to the early days of SpaceX and now as an adjunct law professor, co-author of a leading space law handbook, and the leader of Relativity Space's regulatory efforts and policy engagement with all branches and levels of government. In this episode, she sits down with MC Sungaila to share the lessons she learned from her evolving career, and the developing opportunities in the space industry. This episode is the second episode to feature women leaders in space law, and the first one featuring a guest who bridges academia and space law practice.
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Relevant episode links:
Relativity, Michelle Hanlon - Previous episode, Jessica Aronoff - LinkedIn, Stranger in a Strange Land, Theresa Harris - LinkedIn, International Space Law and Space Laws of the United States
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About Caryn Schenewerk:
Caryn Schenewerk
Caryn is honored to serve as an adjunct professor of commercial space law at Georgetown University Law Center and recently co-authored a textbook, International Space Laws and Space Laws of the United States. Prior to joining the space industry, Caryn served as Deputy Associate Director for Legislative Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President. Caryn has also served as Counsel, Policy Director and Deputy Chief of Staff on Capitol Hill; her last Hill position was with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Caryn started her legal career in international trade law.
Transcript
I'm so excited to have joined the show, Caryn Schenewerk, who is the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Policy at Relativity, previously at SpaceX, and also previously in other government policy work. She has a very wide-ranging career. She's at the cutting edge of the law with regard to private space launches and exploration. It's a great follow-up to the episode we had with Michelle Hanlon, who focused on the academic aspects of Space Law. Welcome, Caryn.
Thank you so much. I love that you talk about the bench and beyond, especially for those of us who are thinking about what is beyond Earth.
When I said it this time, that is very appropriate given that we're talking about beyond the bounds of Earth even. It's pretty exciting stuff. I'm a space nerd and geek. I'm interested in it and excited about our new explorations of it. There's so much both from how you are working at the edges of policy and the edges of the law that is interesting but also, the variety of work that you've done with your Law degree, which will be hopefully in itself hopeful and inspiring to law students.
You can choose one path. You can take another one. You can keep going down the rabbit hole to the things that interest you and the opportunities that arise. You're not stuck forever in whatever your choice is once you graduate from law school. You've seen opportunities and taken them when they have shown up. That's a good lesson as well. Sometimes people get too focused, "This is the only thing I want to do." Look to the other side of the road for different opportunities which you have. Before we get into your legal career, I wanted to start with initially what inspired you to go to law school and become a lawyer.
Like you, I grew up in a family that was dominated by engineers. My father was an engineer. The path I thought I would take when I first started school was to become a doctor because even though I am not that old, I'm also not that young. Young women were not becoming engineers in my world. I had no role models as an engineer. The expectation was I could become a doctor. I started undergrad. I started studying to become a doctor and realized that this was not at all what I wanted to do.
I've done debate and was very successful in debate when I was in high school. In college, I got into Model United Nations, which is a form of debate and policy thought and engagement. I loved it. I started realizing that while I didn't want to become a doctor. I was interested in international affairs. I managed to land an internship in DC after undergrad working for a nonprofit that was focused on international affairs and international women's rights at the base of it.
When I looked around at the people who had interesting jobs that I was interacting with, many of them had legal backgrounds. They weren't necessarily practicing law anymore and perhaps had never practiced law but were applying the legal skills against their background. It was an a-ha moment that I could identify with the way that they broke down problems and developed advocacy plans and efforts with the engineering world I've grown up in and that I felt very comfortable in.
It's very hands-on. I was thinking about problem-solving, tactically problem-solving, taking apart things, and doing a lot of things with my dad that felt tactical and addressable but then applying some of that skillset to thoughts, behavioral aspects, and policy aspects. That's what made me decide to go to law school. I didn't go to law school to become a traditional lawyer from day one. I went to law school because I wanted to engage in policy.
I thought my career at the time would take me more in a human rights humanitarian direction. My friends used to joke that I took the liberal arts approach to law school because I took few bar classes. I ended up going and doing an LLM in International Criminal Justice and Armed Conflict, which has been quite a nice contribution to my practice area now. That was where I wanted to go with my career. It didn't work out that way, but it certainly was what I was thinking. That's how I got to a Law degree and into law school.
Sometimes our original inspiration can change from before we're in law school or when we're in law school. We realized, "I don't know what this means. What I do may not be where my highest and best use is." You find other things along the way that you find interesting.
What happened to me is I failed. This is an important life lesson. How do you make the most of a failure? I failed to realize that if I wanted to practice International Law, I needed to have more than one language. I came to this idea of what I would do with so much American arrogance that I thought I could go and get this Law degree at an international school.
I was studying in England. If I did well in my studies, which I did, I would have opportunities in the international arena, but my arrogance led me to completely miss the idea that I needed to be at the least bilingual. I wasn't. The opportunities that were out there for people with my background at that point and with my degree were not open to somebody who only spoke English.
That's interesting because you're thinking, "I have to get my legal training in this," but not the practical thing or what's going to be on those job requirements. Speaking different languages would be helpful. I remember that I was asked to write a brief for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. I was like, "I hope it doesn't have to be in high formal Spanish or anything because I'm not going to be able to do it. English is fine."
They assured me it was fine. It turned out I needed a brief ultimately that was in high formal Spanish, which I managed to work out, but the first thing is you look at all the different languages. You're like, "It might be helpful in case they might want me to use another one," when you look at the courts. That's interesting. I was focused on this part or these criteria, not the other.
It was a great lesson because it made me realize that I needed to think holistically about any opportunity I was going to pursue. If there was something that I wanted to accomplish in my life professionally or even personally, there's a good survey of all the actual requirements. This ties very much to what I do now in the space industry. You need to understand all of the regulations and requirements, whether those are engineering requirements or legal requirements and regulations.
If you're going to embark on completing a task or developing your professional life, you need to understand what all those things are and be prepared to develop a plan to achieve them to meet that goal. I didn't have what turned out to be a good plan. I came back to the US and took a job with a law firm I had spent my two summers with in DC. That was an international-focused law firm, but it was focused on international trade. It's a trade remedies-focused law firm. In the end, I can't complain because I'm so thrilled with where I am in my career. The experience I got at that firm set me up for the various and interesting steps along the way to land me where I am.
It's always in retrospect. When you look back, you go, "It's these various things that happened to me, which may not have seemed to be very good at the time or were not what I had planned. When I put them all together, they put me in a particularly sweet spot for the next opportunity." All of this thinking about international law and the understanding of how that operates in treaties is such the backbone when you're dealing with international issues with regard to space companies. You need to understand that it's not easily obtained. You have that and the trade. All of these things building on each other leads you to be well-positioned for where you are now.
The trade practice is an administrative law practice. I became familiar with practicing Administrative Law, particularly practicing something that's before administrative judges and judicial systems. That is very much about my practice area because I spend my time with the Code of Federal Regulations on a daily basis. I'm in the CFR. That's where I was back then. There was Case Law back then and administrative decisions that I could look to that we don't have yet in this area of practice, but it certainly let me become technically capable of doing the work I needed to do.
That's pretty neat. That worked out well. You worked in government policy as well. How did that come about?
I was practicing at the firm and doing International Trade Law. A friend of mine from law school had gone to work for a member of Congress. She was changing jobs, so she recommended me for her role because it was his ways and means council. Two of the main topics that the ways and means committee of the house deal with are tax and trade. International Trade Law and what was happening with trade negotiations at the time was an important skillset to have to bring to that role and to be able to advise the member on.
That allowed me also to develop tax awareness. That was a great opportunity because I had not practiced Tax Law. I loved Tax Law in law school. It was one of my favorite classes. There's an engineering aspect to Administrative Law, like looking at what the code says, applying that against a fact pattern, and then deciding how you want to then advocate how that has policy implications. Tax is interesting because so many of our priorities as a country are codified in our tax policy.
There's so much interesting underlying policy and social impact.
There's social engineering that happens through tax policy. That ties to what I do now because with where we want to push the industry or what we want the industry to achieve in space, we very much need to understand how the regulations of that industry will incentivize or disincentivize activity in the industry. Are you promoting innovation? Are you promoting safety? Are you disincentivizing innovation? If you disincentivize innovation, does that have an impact on safety? If you're dictating a certain approach, does that mean that we can't come up with a more innovative approach that would be safer?
It was great to study that tax piece, understand that policy, learn from people who were practicing advocacy around tax policy, interact with them, call upon professors and practitioners, and learn from them about how they saw the activities happening in person. It would be somebody on the Hill calling me and saying, "I want you to explain. If I take this approach, what would that mean for your company? What do you see that meaning for the industry?"
I relied heavily on outside experts and found that to be an inspiration for how I try to behave with regard to mentoring and also having a high level of integrity in my advice and counsel to people who are trying to tackle hard problems internal to the government. I did Congress for about five years. I had the honor of working for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords when she chaired the space subcommittee and got to know her and her husband, now Senator Mark Kelly, who also happens to be an astronaut.
That got me involved in space policy because of her role on the committee and thinking about space policy. When I went from there to the White House and the Office of Management and Budget, I worked on a thousand different issues, but one of them was a proposal to adjust the authorization for NASA's programs of record in 2010. It was a big shakeup and point of discussion and debate in the space industry. That solidified my interest in space policy and also gave me access to people who were thinking about space policy in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise had.
It's interesting when you talked about the importance of talking to experts, the access to experts, and being able to weigh, "Does what I'm going to do have some impact that I'm not aware of? We want to do X with this legislation, but is it going to cause Y, which we don't want to happen." The corollary of that in the court system is amicus briefs from different organizations saying, "Think about this when you're making a rule." That's the corollary to that in the policies. I don't get a brief, but I can call them and get input or testimony from them to make sure we're on the right path.
There are a lot of great examples in the law of that. It's having experts testify in a hearing that is there to talk about the science itself or whatever the fact pattern is that you're trying to distill. In our practice area, it's being able to work with the engineers. I'm working with my clients within my company as the subject matter experts to then be able to translate that into something for the people that I'm interacting with, whether it's on Capitol Hill, the administration internationally, or regulators. I can do that translation.
They're people that do due diligence for companies. If you're doing mergers and acquisitions and all of those kinds of things, you get such an opportunity to learn about the business that's happening or the specific issue. I love that about the law. That's such a wonderful aspect for lawyers. We get to learn about all these different topics potentially or different aspects of a topic and then be the legal voice for that issue.
It is interesting. I like having all different subject areas, areas of the law, or industries that we work with, digging into it, learning it, and being able to convey what that is to a court or an agency and represent what they do. It's cool. It's fun. I love the variety. It's exciting. I was wondering about that leap to space. Within your government policy work, you had contact with that, which would then be valuable for a company to have.
There are two things that contribute to my effectiveness in my role. One of those is that background of understanding what it means to try and gather good information. The other one is how I now understand from being inside the government how the government works. That's incredibly effective. It's something that I often counsel students on and people that are interested in some feedback on my career and mentoring. If you're going to be in a practice area that involves engaging with the government, it is helpful to spend some amount of time in the government or partner yourself with somebody who has been in the government.
If you're going to be in a practice area that involves engaging with the government, it really is helpful to spend time in government or partner with somebody who has been in government.
What you see and your perspective is based on where you sit. If you can move around in different chairs to look at the same problem and see it from different positions, then you can understand, get to the root of the problem, and come up with the best solution. It's one of the reasons why diversity is so great. Having a diverse set of experiences within a topic area like Space Law, for example, is helpful being in a company, in the government, or at an agency. Any one of those can add some diversity to your experience and perspective.
That's a good point. Certainly, with legislative advocacy, government affairs, or policy work, there are a lot of former elected officials or others who have been involved in the government who do quite well with that because it's very important to have an understanding of how everything works because there's no treatise on it. There's no guidebook on how it operates and also what is important. The regulations may say one thing but then understanding what is important within an agency either at various points in time or what their real concerns might be that might be unstated. You can't get that unless you've been in there making those decisions before.
It's one of the reasons why in the textbook that I co-authored with Steve Mirmina from NASA, we included a chapter on the Administrative Procedures Act and the actual act of engaging with the law. We even included a list of the committees of jurisdiction. It took up some space in the book. If you have a legal space issue policy and you want to pursue a change to it, here are the people you need to go talk to. It's not just, "Talk to Congress." You should know specifically who has what jurisdiction to address your issue.
That is so helpful because I remember when taking the SpaceGC class with Brian Israel. He would automatically know, "That's an agency problem." I kept thinking, "How do you know that? How do you know which one that would be?" It would be helpful to have a chart that could direct you to different places. That's so exciting. You teach at Georgetown, also. Tell me about how your book came about and what gap you were hoping to fill by co-authoring it.
Steve originally worked with the publisher to develop the concept of a book. I'm very honored that he decided I would be the right person to invite to co-author it with him. I remember when he called me. I left SpaceX and decided that I was going to take some time off before I made a commitment to my next job at Relativity. He caught me in a moment of weakness. I like to joke, "I'll jump out of a plane a dozen times before I thought I would jump into writing and authoring a textbook."
I was wondering about that because I was thinking it didn't come up very often. I wonder how that happens. Often somebody suggests it, but the timing was sweet.
The timing was good for the ask. Steve is impressive. He's a wonderful lawyer. He focuses on International Law at NASA. He also does courses at a couple of different schools at this point. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown. He publishes not infrequently. I don't. I wish that I could find the time to do it. I published when I was at the law firm years ago and haven't done anything since. That was on invasive species in Trade Law. It couldn't be further from space.
He called me up and invited me to do this. I remember that every part of my being was saying no. Somehow I found myself saying yes. I'm not the biggest fan of long-form writing. I thought, "How am I ever going to find the time to do this?" We were lucky. We both had three students in our class that took my class in the fall semester and then his class in the spring.
They also competed in the Space Moot Court. They were impressive. I thought, "We can do this, but we need to see if we can recruit the three of them." Almudena, Ramzi, and Laura joined our little cabal to get this done. Between that and the fact that it also coincided with COVID lockdowns, that is a positive thing that came out of being home and not traveling nearly as much.
We managed to get it done. The book is very much targeted as a practitioner's guide. There are other books that are used for space, but they are often talking about academic issues and reviewing trade agreements, policy ideas, or potential hypothetical legal conflicts in space. Ours is very much targeted, "If you are in law school or if you are a practitioner practicing Space Law, here is a guide that will give you the statutes, the regulations, and the treaties."
We put some definitions around what they say and what they mean for you to have a starting point for your practice or for figuring out where to go to dig into your clients or your company's issues. We reviewed the FAA's launch and re-entry licensing, the FCC's spectrum licensing for communications satellites, and NOAA's remote sensing licenses for remote sensing satellites. We talk about the role of NASA in the DOD and some of the emerging legal issues in space as well as international treaties.
It's not that long of a book, but it's meant to be helpful to somebody who's trying to figure out, "What does this even mean? What's the definition of launch? What's the definition of remote sensing? Who do I talk to? What office do I apply to? What is even their website? What does that process look like? What does the application look like? What are the timeframes?" It's meant to help somebody get through their day-to-day, dissect a problem, and then attack it.
That's great. There are certainly treatises and textbooks, but they don't have that approach. It's a good addition to what's out there. I ordered it. I haven't gotten it yet. It's on its way.
I'll note that it exists where everything else I feel like I procure for my life exists, which is on Amazon. I used to joke that all of my money came from Elon Musk, and it all went to Jeff Bezos.
I feel like all of us, even more so during COVID. Everything is coming from Amazon. Tell me how you made the transition from your government work then to working for space companies.
I was working at the Executive Office of the President and the Office of Management and Budget. I decided that I would spend a decent amount of time in the government and was interested in going into the private sector. I spent a lot of time thinking about how we incentivize private actors and promote the idea of things like American manufacturing, high-tech jobs, STEM education, and good infrastructure in the United States, whether that was tax policy, trade policy, spending at NASA, or what that might be. It's an important thing to realize the limitations of what you know. I realized that my experience was limited by my lack of time in the private industry.
I was curious about what it looked like to work in a business setting and to need to make decisions based on your business's interests. I wanted to go to a place where I felt a lot of identity with their mission and where I felt like I could get behind the mission of the company that was doing the things that I had been promoting through high-wage jobs and high-tech American manufacturing. SpaceX was the perfect opportunity for me. I met somebody who worked there. When I did a survey of what I wanted, I didn't say, "I want to work in the space industry." I said, "Here are the skills that I have." I learned from that language problem.
You're like, "I'm going to lay it all out."
I laid out what were the skills that I had developed, the problems I wanted to solve in my lack of experience, what I found interesting, what I liked about the work that I had done so far, what I didn't want to do more of, and what I want to do more of. One of the things that I wanted to do more of beyond being at a company that did certain things is I personally and professionally wanted to find an opportunity where I could transition into practicing law again because I have been doing this policy work.
Maybe you're council advising, but you're not practicing law. It's certainly a practice area, but there was something about legal work that I wanted to get back to. When I did that survey, I met somebody who worked at SpaceX and initially asked them, "How did you get that job? I'm curious in pattern matching how you ended up at a company that's doing these things that is the kind of company I want to end up at." He made my life so much easier because he said, "We're hiring."
You were like, "I'm ready to do a matrix."
"I'm ready to start this whole research project based. This is how you get that job." Instead, he had been told that he should talk to me by virtue of the things that I had worked on, the knowledge I had, and the experience I had in the White House. I aligned with the person he was looking to hire. I got lucky.
It's the timing of that. You were asking, and he's like, "I'm hiring. I was told to talk to you." That's cool.
Timing has been a big part of my story. The other piece of it is exactly why he came to talk to me. Why I got the job with Gabby Giffords was somebody said, "You need to talk to Caryn." It's because no matter whether I loved my job or not, I always did it full-on. I always treated everybody with a great deal of respect and tried to engage with a high level of integrity, especially when I realized that I didn't love what I was doing and I wanted to change. It made me double down my efforts to impress people with my abilities because I knew that was going to be an important part, especially in the line of work I was in. Your reputation is so incredibly important. That's true in the law. You are your work in many ways.
In law, you are your work in many ways.
That's exactly how I came to that opportunity. I was talking to a couple of different people about different roles. I went out to SpaceX to interview and see the facility. I immediately felt like my heart surged at the fact that it was a place where things were being built. I grew up in this engineering world. I met Gwynne Shotwell, who was the President of the company and still is.
I joke that I went from thinking, "This could be cool. This could be a place where I might enjoy working," to talking to her about the opportunity and the company and hearing her vision and her story. I was singularly focused on that, "This is the job I want." It happened over the course of a conversation of 15 to 20 minutes. It was a possible opportunity to be like, "I have to do whatever it takes to get this job."
What about that conversation turned that for you?
It was very much about getting her perspective on the company, where the company was headed, the mission, and what she saw as the opportunity for somebody in my role to be. I saw that there was the idea that everybody in the company had some ownership. You needed to be an entrepreneur in your world because it was still a startup at the time to design it and problem-solve it. They were facing some pretty significant challenges and wanted to accomplish and continue to accomplish audacious things.
They were coming at it from a bit of an underdog position relative to other companies that were in the industry and also people's perspectives on them. I felt sure that I had the ability to make a difference there, that I would be a significant value-add given my experience, and that this was a problem that I felt was a meaningful problem to help them solve. She is one of the best salespeople on the entire planet. I was so excited to work with her. I was like, "If there's anybody I would follow, I will follow this woman."
I asked that because I've heard different people from some general counsel saying, "I went to a particular company because of the leadership there. There was a particular leader who was either so inspiring or amazing. I could learn something specific from this person." I don't think people always think about what skills and things from the leader in that company they can learn. That is almost sometimes part of a decision, whether you would take the job.
People don't put that in their matrix always. They're not thinking about that, but this was so inspiring that it was part of her vision. It's being part of that vision and having a meaningful role in that. A lot of reasons people choose where they go and what they do is that it has meaning to them and they're having an impact. Those are important elements as well.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. As I matured in my career, I came to see that and understand that. That was part of my matrix for what I chose at that time because I was coming off of working for President Obama and the most amazing people in the White House. In the past, I always worked for incredible people, but when I was younger, it had been more about the role and the opportunity for me. Here, it was about the role, the opportunity, and exactly the leader that I would work for.
That couldn't have been more important to me when I chose to go to Relativity. That was a more dominant aspect of what I was interested in when I chose Relativity. I was interested in the company, but it was very much about the leadership of the company, the other people who were there already, and the way that was shaping up. I also couldn't be more excited to be working for my CEO, Tim Ellis, at Relativity, who was one of the most intelligent and thoughtful people. I can't say enough about how high his IQ and EQ are.
That's a very powerful combination when you have both of those in spades. There is SpaceX DNA in Relativity also.
There are a lot of SpaceX alums at Relativity. We bring a lot of experience that we learned in being at a scrappy startup at SpaceX. I see folks like myself who are looking for the next opportunity and taking a little bit of risk for themselves. That is an important thing to think about. What is your personal and professional risk posture? When are you willing to take a risk on yourself? That's part of my leaving the White House. I had an amazing role. There was no need for me to leave, but I wanted to take a risk and learn something different. I went to SpaceX, which felt risky at the time.
Now, people would be like, "That's so cool." Who would think that was a significant risk even a few years ago?
In 2011, we had not launched Falcon 9 yet.
I want to put that in context for people. It's the timing and what was happening at that time. I could see the risk or the possibility that it might not happen being overcome by this sense of vision and possibility. The company would be like, "Let's go for it."
It's also knowing what your role will be and what the professional opportunity is for you, whether it's a professional opportunity to develop as I did as a legal expert at SpaceX in domestic Space Law. Had things not worked out the way they did, I still would have walked away with an experience I would not have otherwise had if I had taken the safe bet. My trajectory would not have significantly changed in what I consider to be a positive direction. Consistently, when I've taken risks, it has always been worth it because the risk was based on what I saw as a significant possible benefit. No matter what, I was going to get something from experience. That continues to be true.
It's expanding your skills. The thing about skills is that you take those with you wherever you go. It's portable.
When you move, you could decide which ones you want to build on more and which ones you might want to turn the volume down on. That's very much how I chose to go to Relativity. It was the opportunity to build a team to contribute meaningfully at the executive level, take a risk that I could do those things, be a leader in the company, contribute to its culture, and bet on myself in that regard and on a company that doesn't have a billionaire backer.
That is developing a new and interesting technology that's being applied against space but might also have other applications with 3D printing. For those who don't know, Relativity fully 3D prints our rockets. It's the world's largest metal additive manufacturing capability. That's an exciting possible technology that could be game-changing for many industries but is particularly a great use against the rocket problem.
I always think that's one of the interesting things about innovations and developments for space or in space. There are so many positive ramifications and uses back on Earth for those technologies and can have a very widespread impact.
That's very true. I often get asked the question, "Why is it that we invest so much in space? Why should we be doing space exploration?" Much of the answer to that is that it helps us understand our planet. Measuring things from space becomes important. You can't run data and make decisions unless you can measure it. There are so many capabilities, like the ability to clean water and process the air in the environment. What will take for us to survive on Mars would have significant benefits to our ability to continue to survive on Earth medical-wise and energy-wise. Many aspects of the problems that we have to solve would be beneficial.
You can't run data and make decisions unless you can measure it.
That interplay is so strong and has been ever since we started that exploration. It's exciting because there are a lot of other uses which we may not even know about yet from the work that Relativity is doing.
It's very exciting to see this developing and to be in the early stages of it.
That's interesting too. Especially working with a company, what stage is most exciting to you? Some people enjoy being at the beginning stages of things or being at startups. The founders would enjoy being founders but don't want to be the maintaining CEO. They move on to the next thing. One of the previous guests, Jessica Aronoff, is in a different context, but she ran nonprofits. She worked at a foundation. She's now working at another nonprofit children's museum in Santa Monica. If you look at the outside of what she's doing, you're like, "They seem a little bit different moving to the private foundation from the legal nonprofit to now a nonprofit that's not legal."
She said, "The part I love is working at the next stage of an organization, not necessarily as the founder but putting everything together, seeing the vision of where it can go next, and putting it on its journey to become more than it already is. I like to go to the next thing after that. That's the common thread between all of these different things that look externally different." That's another consideration of thinking, "What is meaningful to me? What is my highest and best contribution to a company, and at what stage?"
It's important to note if what you're looking for is a place that has opportunities for every year to be different than the last or if you want to become deeply entrenched as an expert in a topic. That's your subject matter expertise that you are then going to find joy in contributing to the company or the endeavor on an ongoing basis. What I have loved about my career throughout its entirety, but especially in the space industry, has been that every year is different than the last.
If you want to become deeply entrenched as an expert in a topic, then you are going to find joy in contributing to the endeavor on an ongoing basis.
I'm constantly building my knowledge base. There are things that I no longer think about as much as I did at some point in my career, like international trade or tax, but there has been this opportunity to constantly learn. I get bored pretty easily. That's an important aspect for me of what I'm doing. The company is innovating, the industry is innovating, and the law is innovating and changing. There's a level of creativity and engagement with understanding the innovation happening in your industry and your company. I need to know what the technology is.
I get to learn that and then what the law is. I get to learn about what the deficiencies in the law are, pursue fixes to that, figure out how the fix wasn't good enough, and pursue further fixes to that. I get to learn about the industry itself. What are my competitors doing? How can I either work with them so that we can solve problems together? How can I learn about commonalities and common problems and build coalitions? How can I learn ways to try and give my company a competitive advantage? That constant learning is a key aspect of my desire to show up every day.
All of this is so helpful because it's layering on your initial comment where you're like, "Different languages would be helpful here." This is more like what makes you tick, what makes you excited, and which kinds of things you enjoy doing. That's beyond what subject matter of the law. Law school is focused on, "Do you want to be a litigator or transactional? What kind of law do you want to practice?" What that looks like and your role in that can be very different depending on where you are.
That's an important point for especially law students to think about. You're not choosing a subject matter. You're choosing the way in which you're operating within that. Even the particular subject matter can change from trade, tax, and all of those things to where you are now. One wouldn't say there's a direct line to Space Law from that, but there is from the particular standpoint of what you enjoy doing and what access you enjoy being at. Some people would not like that at all. They go, "I don't like all that uncertainty all at once."
I like problem-solving. I like moving from one problem to the next problem. It's why I found it so surprising that I was co-authoring a textbook because it's such a significant undertaking in terms of the volume of work. It's why I probably will never have a PhD. That's it. Understanding that about yourself is challenging when you're entering the practice of law, but it's also important to take the time to figure out what motivates you to show up and work hard.
It's really important to take the time to figure out what motivates you to show up and work hard.
I've consistently found that when I can identify what's demotivating or why I am not working hard at something and what I don't like about this, that's usually a good indicator for the need to pivot, evaluate my strengths and weaknesses, and be honest about them and how they can contribute to my success. That has been an important lesson that I've learned over my career. When I've aligned myself with the right opportunities, I find myself running full speed ahead. When I have chosen to do things or tried to do things where I wasn't working as hard at it or as interested in it, what was that about? That has usually been very indicative of what I need to do to make a difference.
It helps you refine each time what it is that's important to you or essential to have you working at optimum.
My career is very much a story of not being strict about sticking with something too. Some people say, "You have to have some stick-with-it-ness." When you're doing it, you have to stick with it, but it's okay also to say, "That's an interesting opportunity. I'm going to take a risk on a pivot here and try something new where I can identify and pattern-match my skillset and capabilities to that mission or problem set. I can succeed at it."
It gives me the opportunity to learn something new, contribute in a meaningful way, and develop my professional career in the way I want. That willingness to jump at an opportunity, to work hard so that the opportunities appear because people recognize your work, and then to take a risk and jump at the opportunity is very much how I landed where I am that I would not otherwise be here.
That attitude is so instructive, especially in law school. That sense of risk is beaten out of us to some degree, "We manage the risk. We cabin the risk." It's still okay to take smart risks for you, but that's more of a business school term than what we're used to in law school. It's your process of looking at the holistic for yourself, the company, and the next opportunity. It's the whole matrix thing.
It's looking at it from a perspective that you reevaluate based on additional experiences and input at each of the places you've been. There's a very nice intentional approach to that and a personal approach to it. I don't know many newer attorneys who would look at that in terms of making the choices or the next move in that intentional way that is designed to maximize your happiness in a way and the meaning of your work, which is often where happiness comes.
In some cases, it has involved in my career not finding joy in the work but finding joy in the process or the learning and knowing that doing this well will pay off in the long run. Even though I didn't enjoy being at a law firm as much as lots of other people enjoy being at law firms, I knew that was time I needed to spend learning how to be a lawyer because that's the other thing. They don't teach you how to be a lawyer in law school.
I always say that I learned how to think like a lawyer in law school, but then I learned how to be a lawyer largely from the federal judges I clerked for. God bless them for training me in a more practical way. How to be a lawyer was after law school.
Thinking like a lawyer is incredibly valuable. It is such a life skill that I love having. It's interesting to reflect as an adjunct professor on the feedback I get from my students to this point. The traditional paths that they are usually presented with in law schools don't look like my path. I failed in some ways, followed a risky approach in some ways, worked hard, and then pivoted. Those things are a very important part of what I bring to my practice and then to being a professor at the law school in terms of the value that I can bring to the students I interact with.
The other piece of it is introducing them to the idea that there might be practice areas that aren't considered real practice areas now, but twenty years into their career, they could find themselves being an expert. I don't remember cybersecurity, for example, being something that was taught in law school when I was in law school years ago, nor space. People would have thought it was a little bit silly. Now, both of those are incredibly important topics. These are industries that are growing immensely. They're serious national security implications. Having good lawyers that are learning how to practice in our field is important.
Your adjunct teaching is a gift forward to the next generation that we will be coming into working with and representing more space companies also. There's so much value in teaching as an adjunct because being there and talking about your experiences is something the students don't encounter. In reality, here's how this works. Get that exposure.
I found the adjunct professors that I had when I was at the University of Texas Law School were my favorite. My Tax Law professor was an adjunct professor who flew from New York to Austin every week to teach classes. What a generous thing to do. It was incredible. I also realize now that he might have done that to some degree because maybe he found as much joy and reward from it as I do because as much as I may contribute to the student's experience, the amount of joy that I get from being an adjunct professor is immense. It helped me hone my communication skills around my practice area.
It encouraged me to learn about areas that would be more peripheral to my practice but are still in the space topic and be able to communicate around those in ways that I would not have otherwise. It has gotten me to sit down and write about what I do and how I practice this area of law. It allowed me to help support students in our industry. I have colleagues now who went through my class. I have a connection to them that I would not otherwise have. To anybody who is considering becoming an adjunct, I can't encourage you enough. It's such an excellent way to give back and a rewarding thing to do.
I can think about a couple of times when the light bulb has gone off for students. They realize, "I could practice this and be good at it." Working with them is the same thing. Helping them with opportunities is worth it. All the time that we spend doing it is great. I was going to ask you what caused you to do it and what caused you to keep doing it. I thought that was it, but you came forward with it. It's rewarding. It's amazing. In your circumstance, it's cool because then you have colleagues in your space now, and you have that connection with them.
It's neat to see the students learn something that they never thought they would learn about. What is a launch? What is re-entry? Why does the FAA have authority over that? What is remote sensing? Why does the FCC operate independently as an agency from the other space authorizing agencies? It's to see them also connect the dots with other areas of study or experience they have had.
How is this similar to something that they might have studied about the law of the sea? How is this similar to something that they're thinking about in their Cybersecurity Law class or their National Security law class? How do they connect those dots to Contract Law? How do we solve issues in space? We have to draft good contracts for launch services agreements between the government and the federal acquisition regulations.
Seeing them draw those connections or say, "I may not become a space lawyer, but I am very interested in this acquisition question. Maybe I want to be a contracts expert," is fun to see too. To the point that I've made about my career, they could pivot. This might not be the thing you do, but maybe you become an export control expert and advise a whole host of companies. Five years from now, you might want to go in-house. An area of the law that most space companies have in-house is an export control expert or a contracts expert who has done Government Contracting Law and securities. If you practice securities, you could be in a space company doing securities because many space companies are publicly traded or at least raising funds from venture capital.
That is interesting because you're putting together the legal needs and usefulness. You could see all of that and map out a plan for that. Where creativity comes from is putting together the analogies and the different parts of the law and saying, "How can we put these together in a new way in this context?" By encouraging people to think about those different areas and the analogies, you're also helping the law move forward because the more people you have thinking about those creative cross-connections, the better.
The importance of diversity plays out in all these arenas.
On the bench, I hear that too. The judges will say, "We're dealing with a wide variety of cases and subject matters." It's very helpful that I have a colleague who is a public defender or was in different roles in the system because we only practice 1, 2, or 3 different kinds of law. We can't know everything with practice experience. It's nice to have that. How does this work? What is the potential impact beyond what we see in this case when we're making the legal or policy decision?
One of the things you touched on that I'm curious to explore a little bit more is in terms of mentors and those who have helped you navigate these different turns. You've certainly talked about your role in paying it forward and mentoring your students and others in this space. What role have mentors played in your career? What does mentorship look like? Sometimes people think it only looks this one way. Especially students and new lawyers are like, "This is good. You want to take advantage of this. This is mentoring. This is what you've been told is helpful." I'm curious.
I always think of mentoring as a two-way street, but I also think of it as a whole circle. I find that there are times when I am talking to somebody who is earlier in their career than I am, but the feedback I'm getting from them could be considered mentoring from them. How can I show up better on a day-to-day basis? How are they showing up in their careers? What have they learned? What tools are they using that I might not be aware of by virtue of my time in the industry, in my career, or when I entered the law profession? When somebody might think that I'm mentoring them, they're mentoring me.
The way that they're approaching the questions that they ask me and the concerns that they have are queuing me into things that are new about our professional careers and the way that they're evolving. That's something important. One of the things that's true about being a good mentor and a good mentee is I often lead with the question, "What value is it that you think I can bring to your life?"
What I'm looking for in that question of somebody is, "Have they thought about who I am and what my career has been? Have they put the time in to prepare for a conversation with me?" It does sound a bit arrogant, but I mean it in the sense of, "Why are we having this conversation?" I want to help you and get to the root of the way that I can help you, but you have to help yourself to have me help you. You've got to show up ready to have the conversation. I want you to show up with questions.
I don't see a mentor-mentee relationship where I tell you about my career in a way that I could generically tell anybody about my career to be as helpful. If you can show up and say, "I noticed that you started not practicing space. Now, you're practicing space and an expert in it. What does that look like? How did you do that? Why shouldn't I be scared to jump ship from a law firm after three years? Do I have to stay for five? Everybody says it's five. You left at three."
As you take advantage of mentors, take the time. I try to do this with people that I consider to be mentors. It's taking the time to be thoughtful about your time with them because as you become more advanced in your career, the responsibility that you have generally is increasing. My day-to-day life feels much heavier than it did when I was young. I find valuable the time that I'm going to spend talking to somebody. It needs to be valued. That's an important piece of it. I also can't say enough about how much I enjoy engaging with younger people and how much I learn from them. It's part of why I like teaching. It's also part of the benefit of being a mentor when you have a positive back-and-forth and engagement with people.
There are a lot of things in that, but two things jumped out at me that are important, especially for those who would like to be mentored. The first thing is a level of responsibility on both sides in terms of knowing what they're interested in learning, having enough particular interest, and doing the work in advance to learn about you and your journey. Nobody likes to be a generic mentor. Is there something very specific that I can provide to you?
I love the question that you put forward because it's open-ended. It brings out how much work they have done in advance and what specifically they're thinking about. Are there particular things in your journey that you can share as opposed to something very general? There's that and the give and take between mentors and mentees. Sometimes people are afraid to ask for advice because they feel like they're not giving anything in return, but that's not true.
Most people who are interested in mentoring have the attitude that you have. It's a two-way street. I always got something back from having done that, whether it's a pleasure in seeing someone achieve what it is they want to achieve down the line and get better in their skills, having some role in that, and paying forward from other things that people have done for you in that regard. In the interplay and the interactions you get, the mentor gets something to you, but it's important to be a responsible mentee.
That was great. I love your question. I'm going to use that in the future. Some people are more intentional about that than others, "There's this specific thing I wanted to ask you about." You're like, "I do know about that." It's always nice to have that. Thank you so much for doing this and joining the show. You have some great skills, not just your entrepreneurial bent as a lawyer, but you have a very high EQ, as you mentioned before. That's something you've honed over all of your different roles.
It's so important to you to be effective in all your different positions, especially working with different layers of government and things like that. Before I close, usually, I have a couple of lightning-round questions which I like to ask. If you have a few minutes, I'll be happy to ask them. The first thing is this. What skill or talent do you not have but wish you had?
I can't sing or speak another language still.
I was going to ask about that. Did that change?
They're tied.
Singing is a different language to some degree. Who are your favorite writers?
I am a big fan of Toni Morrison. I have a literature background. Alice Walker is one of my favorite poets. I enjoy historical pieces by David McCullough. I enjoy his books. Those are the first ones that come to mind. There has been some science fiction that I've read over the years that has been fun, like Stranger in a Strange Land. I read that when I was young. Those are the ones that come to mind in terms of authors that I go back to.
I was wondering about the science fiction part, "Is there going to be any of that in the reading?" Who is your hero in real life?
A hero that everybody would know would be Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That's a very easy answer for a lawyer for obvious reasons. Otherwise, my heroes tend to be people who, on a daily basis, choose to be kind.
That's interesting. It's a choice. I don't think that people think about that.
It takes patience. It takes giving people the benefit of the doubt. That is something that I try to recognize. Kindness is incredibly powerful.
Theresa Harris, who works in human rights, was on the show also and is a friend of mine. She also had something close to that, which was, "Life is too short to work with unkind people." That's a choice. You can opt out. If people are unwilling to be kind, you have an option to choose that for yourself and who you work with. Sometimes you can forget that, "I have a choice about both how I act and who I interact with." Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I would invite her husband as well because I understand that he is an amazing cook.
I was going to say also the cooking part. That's what I was going to say. One of my friends said, "Do I have to cook?" This is great. You will have a husband and wife and a great cook. Last question, what is your motto, if you have one?
It's being resilient. "I can do hard things," is a big motto for me.
That's true for the companies you've worked with and you also personally. Thank you so much. You are such a gracious and kind human, as well as someone excited about doing hard things. You're a great person. I'm glad to have met you. I'm glad that you shared your insights.
Thank you so much. That's quite the compliment for somebody who has dedicated their career to so many wonderful human rights matters and has made such a contribution as a legal professional. Thank you so much for inviting me to talk with you and honoring our profession with your work.
Thank you, Caryn. I appreciate it. Your insights will be particularly helpful for students and new lawyers navigating to think about their careers in a very holistic and intentional way. You will have mentored a lot of people you may never meet, but it will maximize your mentoring.
Thank you for the opportunity.