Episode 151: Ruth Pritchard-Kelly

Space
Written By Third Boxcar LLC

An Expert on Satellite Regulatory Policy

01:07:22
TPP Ruth Pritchard-Kelly | Space Law
 

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Show Notes

To continue the series featuring leading women in space law, Ruth Pritchard-Kelly, an expert on satellite regulatory policy, joins The Portia Project podcast to discuss her career in satellite policy and her role in leading legal strategy for several space startups. She also shares some powerful and moving career and life advice.

 
 

About Ruth Pritchard-Kelly:

TPP Ruth Pritchard-Kelly | Space Law

Ruth Pritchard-Kelly

Ruth Pritchard-Kelly is an expert on satellite regulatory policy with over 30 years of experience. She has advised governments as well as both public and private companies on regulatory, spectrum, and sustainable space policy, and was most recently the Senior Advisor for Space Policy at OneWeb. Pritchard-Kelly has a Master’s Degree in space and telecommunications policy from George Washington University and a J.D. from the University of Maryland. Ms. Pritchard-Kelly is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Secure World Foundation, and has served on the Boards of the US Telecommunications Training Institute, the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, and the Commerce Department’s Spectrum Management Advisory Committee.

 

Transcript

In our continuing feature of leading women in space law, Ruth Pritchard-Kelly is joining us in this episode. She has an illustrious career in all things satellite and previously in several roles, including policy roles at OneWeb and for her enterprise, RPK Advisors. Welcome.

Thank you so much, MC. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Thank you so much for joining. I appreciate Michelle Hanlon, a previous guest, for suggesting we sit down and chat as well. She's lovely. You wear many hats. You are also serving as an adjunct professor at her school at Ole Miss.

I am and I’m enjoying it. All things to do with teaching, advising and mentoring are where I'm putting my energy. I couldn't say enough good things about it.

That's such a great opportunity and it's a beautiful program too so I'm sure it's fun to be part of it. I usually start from the beginning with folks in terms of what inspired you to go to law school, be in the law generally and then I suppose, eventually in your very specialty area.

I had no idea of being a lawyer. Like you, my father was an engineer. We didn't know any lawyers. Lawyers were the butt of many of his jokes. All I knew was I did not want to be an engineer. I decided to be an actress. I got a degree in Theater and tried to work as an actress. As you may know, they don't make much money.

Like many people, I went to work for my father, the engineer, as a day job. I was filing papers. I was the mail room clerk. I slid open letters. I date-stamped them. I walked them physically to people's offices and put them in their inboxes. It happens that he was a satellite engineer. If he had been a carpenter or a scientist, who knows? I was there when there was a big international incident, a fight between France and Germany.

My father was hired, I believe, by the ITU as an expert witness in effect. The situation was that Germany had launched a brand new satellite providing German-language television that could be received all over Europe. If you know anything about a satellite, it shines like a flashlight in a circle, in a beam, a footprint as it is on the ground.

The French were angry that this German-language TV was being broadcast over their nation. My father said, “It's in outer space. Under the treaties, it is allowed to broadcast. However, you, as a sovereign nation, are also allowed to prohibit your people from receiving that signal if you want to be the country that prohibits its people from receiving information.” That last sentence was enough to make the French sit up and say, “That sounds terrible. We are not the kind of nation that prohibits its people from receiving information.”

I thought, “What is that? That's not engineering.” My father's like, “That’s spectrum policy.” I said, “Where do I sign up?” I went first to George Washington to the program that is known as its Space Policy Institute. At the time, it was only its first or second year. It was getting itself accredited. I got a Master's degree in what was then called Science and Technology Public Policy, which was focused on why donations support basic science. Why did the US decide to go to the moon and then change its mind? Big questions. I went to work for a different small satellite company, a startup. I was very excited and they had a legal problem. I was helping the lawyers do some research.

By then, there were computers and the very earliest internet. I did some digging and came up with some very helpful information. The lawyers who are still in the business said, “You'd make a good lawyer.” I thought, “I would? I'm 30 years old.” Someone said to me, “You're going to be 34 in 4 years whether you get a Law degree or not so why don't you get the Law degree?” I went back to school again at night. These degrees were both done part-time at night.

By this point, I was married and I had one baby right before the start of law school and a second one in the middle. I didn't see my husband for four years but he was invested in this too. That's important. This was something we both thought was valuable for the family. My other degree probably could not have supported a family on the one degree and salary. We both thought, “A lawyer makes more money.” Maybe he could stay home with the kids and do writing during the evening.

It happened, as these things do. We got through it. I got the degree and the kids are fine. They're both adults. The husband is still with me. I worked part-time for almost fifteen years. I taught law school and bar prep. I was a substitute teacher in their school. I did a doc review. I'm sure we all know what that is. It is soul-sucking but it makes money. I did whatever I could do that let me get home by 3:00 so that I was there when the kids stepped off the school bus. That was what our particular family had decided was the right way forward.

When they got into high school and college, I went looking for a full-time job. Somebody that I had known from the early days said, “There's a satellite company that's starting and they're looking for people who have done market access. Have you done market access?” I said, “No. I have no idea but I'm willing to try. That sounds interesting. I know I want to work for a satellite company.” They said, “The job is in The Hague. Is that a problem?” I said, “No.” I went home and pulled out an Atlas. I was like, “I’ve heard of The Hague. I know it's in the Netherlands.” Honestly. At that point, I could not have done more than say vaguely that it was here in Europe.

I did. I went to The Hague for a year. It was amazing. I loved it. The Netherlands is a very easy country to live in, especially for a solo person. The infrastructure all works and everybody speaks English. I tried to learn Dutch but they laughed at me. My husband came back and forth to visit. At the end of the year, the company let me move back to Washington, DC because they had expanded and had an office there. It was a company that is O3b, part of SES, the big Luxembourg company. It was a great fit for me. After a few years there, I went to yet another startup satellite company, OneWeb and had a wonderful few years there as well.

I love your attitude when they asked, “Is that a problem to go to The Hague,” you’re like, “No. Let me find out where that is.”

Have you ever heard people talking about doing improv comedy? One of the main rules or if there are any rules, is you can't say no. Someone's suggested something very weird and your brain doesn't have any idea how to talk about that. You have to say, “Okay.” For careers, honestly, that's probably a good attitude. Your first reaction should be, “I'm going to do that now.” Maybe you can recoup and say, “That’s not the right direction for me.” You should be open to things that you hadn't considered before because how could we possibly know everything that there is to do? I was going to be an actress. Remember that? See chapter one.

You should be open to things you hadn't considered before because how could you possibly know everything there is to do?

It's interesting because when people think about that, those who have had training in acting, you would think, “If they go into law, they're going to be trial lawyers.” There have been so many who have that story. One of the newest justices on the Utah Supreme Court became an appellate lawyer and then is a Supreme Court justice. She's like, “I was going to be an actress or in musical theater.”

It’s the same thing with Andrea Sheridan Ordin, who was one of the first female US attorneys in the country. She was intent on an acting career. Even as she was going into the law, she was like, “I could have this but I still want to go into acting.” She ended up excelling in some pioneering ways. That's part of it too being open to that and then using those skills. You said, “The improv helped me think about this in a different way.”

It's funny. When I speak to groups of American law students, I often ask, “How many of you did the high school musical?” It's overwhelming. It's usually more than 50% were involved in high school theater. It doesn't work so well outside of the United States because high school theater is less of a thing. There is a great deal of the same skillset. If you are good at memorizing lines, speaking with people, not being embarrassed when you don't remember the line, stumbling forward and saying something and still looking good, that sounded fine.

My jobs have always asked me to go to a lot of conferences and panels. I’ve spoken about a lot of stages and they are stages. You choose your costume and get ready to be on stage in front of people. For me, I don't think twice about that. Whereas there are so many people at every company that are very concerned. They're not comfortable and they don't want to do it. They are absolute experts at what they do but they don't have that soft skill of not caring what somebody thinks about them on stage or not worrying about it. That's been a good use of me. A lot of lawyers have that, whether they tried to be an actor or not.

That's another theme that's come through this too. All of the different skills that people have are not necessarily extra-legal skills. Parts of their personality work together perfectly and translate well to different things that they're doing in their law practice.

I like to encourage that in students not to be embarrassed by the fact that they memorized poetry, played the clarinet or liked to do theater, these hobbies that sometimes as an adult you're a little embarrassed about. All of that gives you comfort with yourself and being able to exhibit yourself. That makes you a better spokesman or advocate for your client, whoever that is.

Whether it's somebody in a court case or a company in a big international negotiation, you are still using the skill of convincing the audience to laugh when you want them to laugh or directing people on the emotions they should feel. We call on all of that. Like you in a courtroom or me, in a dark, windowless basement somewhere in Geneva trying to convince the regulator of a small nation that my idea is good for their country.

That's a good visual. I was going to ask you, “What is this like?” You're like, “Here's what I'm doing. It's not the glamorous part of it.” What you said resonated with us thinking about that. What you're saying is not only are they different skills in the full part of you as a person. It helps people to see the authentic you. People trust people when they know people are being genuine and showing their human side but all of that is part of persuasion too, which is what we're doing as lawyers.

Persuasion is such a good word. It's true. No matter what kind of law we do, we are trying to persuade someone to think the way we do and led them in such a way that they could not come to any other conclusion. I’ve written my essay in good Iraq form and everyone has come to my conclusion. It's true. In any form of law, we're so pleased when we get that result and somebody we've been working with agrees with us. The light bulb goes off and they say, “You're right. That is the best policy for my country.”

I was thinking about your story about your father. The last piece is the persuasion piece. What country do you want to be in?

He was not a smooth tactful person at all. He was a very Black and White binary engineer. He’s like, “It doesn't work. Where's the hammer?” He was also an American and so had grown up with the concept of freedom of speech and a Jew who had grown up through the Depression and World War II. He understood full well why the French did not want the German language in their country. He truly believed that that was not the way to solve their concerns.

I agree with him also. Going into the world of telecommunications policy for me is very much about allowing people access to information so they can come to their conclusion and make educated decisions about things. If they don't have access to the internet or television that day, then it's harder for them. That's not the kind of world we wanted to live in.

Going into the world of telecommunications policy is about allowing people access to information so they can come to their conclusion to make educated decisions about things.

It's almost like Simon Sinek when he talks about what's your why, what is your meaning and your larger purpose in what you're working on. That sounds like that's part of your inspiration for doing the work that you do.

Maybe.

Other than sitting in a dark windowless office in the basement at The Hague, what does it look like when you're doing policy and advocating? It's not in court.

Almost all the companies I’ve worked for, even the one that eventually was bought and is public, were all startups with new technology. The issue is that there are no rules yet. Whatever the technology is, there is no regulation. It's ironic that it's called regulatory affairs. If there were a regulation and you were the lawyer, you read the regulation and write up a letter that answers all the questions.

In many countries, there's an application form with tick boxes. I have never worked for one of those companies. There has never been a tick box that fits my technology. What you have are a lot of conversations. You can have the conversation in writing. You can write a letter to the regulator but mostly what happens is you start participating in what are called public consultations.

You hope a regulator will throw out to the public the question, “We're thinking of allowing new satellites and more than two cable companies.” The public has 30 days to respond, let’s say. That's a big part of it. You have to talk to them, think of them and accept that they are your twin and equal. This is somebody who is as smart as you are and is struggling with this problem. They have to be fair and neutral when they respond but they don't have the information you have. You are the expert. How do you politely provide that information?

I'm shocked at how many times I read submissions on consultations and they act as the regulator must be an idiot. Let me tell you that that is not going to win you. These are not idiots. In the US certainly, people go back and forth between private industry and our regulator. Other countries don't encourage that. They think that maybe you get little dirty hands doing that. I don't think I agree. We've got great rules about time off in between.

What it means is it's hard to have an expert in government. Government jobs tend to pay less than private industry. They have other benefits. People go into government jobs honestly because they want something that's regular. It's 9:00 to 5:00. I know what's facing me every day. I'm going to get a pension at the end. I’ve got healthcare. It's steady. You have to keep that in mind too. These are not people who are excited about the idea of disruptive new technology.

The word disruptive makes them sweat. Who are these people? How do I talk to them? You submit written things and then offer to come and do a private workshop, which is a meeting in person where you can answer the questions they might be embarrassed to say in public. “Here's a whole slideshow on this new technology. What are your questions? I’ve brought engineers and financial people with me.” They say, “We can't do that.”

For example, our regulations are only written for C-band antennas. I'm like, “Let's go to the ministry. Let's go to the policymakers in your government and see if we can get them to say that broadband is a good thing. Can we get a high-level statement?” Sometimes you have to go up to the parliament or the congress in the country. Depending on the size of the country, you might be meeting with the president or some of her staff because you've got to work in both directions.

You have to work from the top down so there has to be a policy that says we need to open up to new tech. A lot of governments are not comfortable with that. Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be just a satellite. You have to work with the regulator and support them. Say, “You have the power to expand your regulations.” Let's call it a special license or a temporary, maybe a scientific or experimental license.

“You've got this power. You can give this to me as long as I don't cause interference with the existing licensees.” It’s the pincer movement from a war game perhaps, where you're working up from the bottom, coming down from the top and most of it is in person. You have to be in their city and conference rooms, bringing another cup of bad coffee. A lot of tea is drunk. It helps if you speak the language.

The satellite companies are mostly fully global. They tend to have teams where there are people who speak Russian, Mandarin and Arabic, as well as French, Spanish and English. Maybe there'll be something odd off to the side because the people are more comfortable if they think you get their culture, understand their burdens and you're coming to offer them a solution.

You're coming to make them look good to their government and people. They're big teams and they do a lot of travel because you're usually going to countries that don't have a travel budget. They're not going to be sending a team of twenty people to Geneva for the next ITU meeting. If you want their law to change, you have to go to them. I loved that.

Meeting them where they are both physically but also understanding psychologically where they're at. These are not entrepreneurial risk-takers. It's the opposite of that.

These are people I have only ever worked for squeaky clean companies from an ethics point of view. I also have never turned up with even a fancy dinner, let alone an unmarked envelope. All I can offer these people is a reputation. All I can say is, "Not only will you not be embarrassed and get fired. In fact, you're going to look good to your boss and the people in the country. Take this tiny risk and special temporary experimental license. Let's see. We promise we'll stop our behavior. You have the power.” You want to make them feel like this is their decision and that they can control it if it's not what it turns out you said it was going to be. I have found by and large that I’ve worked for good companies and the product that they are offering has been valuable and valued.

You need the cooperation of the governments to operate.

With the companies, the technology that I have worked for all uses the radio frequency spectrum. The issue with radio waves is if you don't have permission and you interfere with somebody, you both suffer. You have to have worked it out. There's a regulator in every country that cans out licenses that used to be radio and TV. By and large, it's satellite. Internationally, it's at the International Telecommunications Union.

It's an incredibly effective regime because you can't be a bully and push away or be the first to market. If someone else is there, your customers will also suffer from interference if you start doing your thing. You have to be cooperative. It might be a unique resource in that way. It might be a bit like air and water. If I take water and I'm doing fine, you suffer. It's only broadcasting radio waves where my people will also suffer the interference. You have to have worked out coordination. I have coordinated with other people that are using these same frequencies.

Even in entrepreneurial ventures where people are usually pressing forward, it makes the business side align with the approach you need to take diplomatically. Everybody needs to be in alignment and working together on that because it gets you nowhere to be the bull in the China shop there.

Even being the race to be first to market is often not the only race. If you announced your plans after someone else at the ITU, the ITU rules say, “You had the ability to view everything that's already been announced, even if it hasn't been built yet.” You should have designed your system not to interfere with them. The burden is on you to have designed a system that can share because even if that country is taking a long time to build it than they plan to, they've got seven years. Just because you launch in year six, you better launch something when they launch next year if the burden was on you to design a system because the plans are all there for you to see.

The reverse is not true. The company that files first has no idea what's going to be invented in the future. You can't design a system that can accommodate who knows what because it's in the future. For sure, you could have looked at the plans at the ITU filings they're called and seen, “Indonesia already has a filing. They're going to use the same frequency band and they're near me. Let me design a satellite,” in such a way that it won't interfere with their system when it comes to fruition. It involves the engineers as well as the lawyers.

I was thinking of two things from that. One would be, from a development standpoint, you have to be taking that into account as you're doing your work and the new filings come in to make sure that you're adjusting to that. Your background with the engineering side with your father is integrated into the legal work that you're doing. It seems to work out perfectly.

I hadn't thought about that but you are right. I grew up with somebody who talked technical terms, even though I knew I wasn't interested. I'd heard of Megahertz. I was comfortable and I knew that exponential had an actual meaning and what a decibel was. All of the lawyers who are in the tech industry somehow have comfort with technology, even if they aren't engineers themselves. That is important that you have to be able to. You have to be able to work with them and understand that although they may have a very black-or-white way of seeing the problem, you can help them find the gray. That is your job and that's been a fun part of the job.

That's another constituency that you're communicating with in this whole process too. Being able to communicate and then translate, all of that is part of the job as well. It sounds so much more intertwined than maybe in other settings understanding all of that and knowing with the new filings that come out, there's a constant back and forth between the actual physical work that's being done and the plan and the legal questions.

It goes both ways. I can go back to the engineers and say, “The law says you have to be able to share with the earlier filings.” I can also go to the regulators and say, “The technology can't do that. Let's see what we can do. What you're thinking of asking is against the laws of physics or prohibitively expensive.” That's a popular one with startups. It’s telling a government, “You can impose that regulation but then I go out of business. Maybe you think that's okay but how about if the whole space industry goes out of business? How would the United States feel then?” Probably the two biggest policy arguments that I see are prohibitively expensive for the startup. The other direction is, “If we don't do this, this other country will get there first.”

Competition with another country drives a lot of policy and regulation. It's often a country that is perceived as a bit of an enemy. As we know, regimes change. I have seen a lot of regime changes in my career. Just because we're not speaking to that country today doesn't mean we won't be speaking to them next week. I remember the first ITU meetings that I went to and there was a guy from North Korea. It was two people because I don't think they go anywhere as a solo. I turned around and there were Cuba and Palestine, not even considered a country by some people but there they are.

Everybody's at the ITU. I don't think it's unique. In general, the UN’s agencies work that way. For me, a girl from the suburbs, it was heady and I appreciated that. In the satellite and space world, there's a huge discussion about all the bits of garbage or debris that have been left in outer space. A lot of regulators are already looking at, “Can we demand? Can it be a condition of your license that you clean up after yourself and that you do not leave your garbage, object or satellite in outer space? Can you bring it back?”

That is possible for some satellites. What happens when the satellite fails in orbit? You can't talk to it and say, “Come on down into the Pacific Ocean.” They're like a remote-controlled airplane. You've got people on the ground who are flight engineers that are flying the satellites. They need to be able to talk to the satellites. Sometimes satellites go dead and you can't talk to them. What do you do? There is a fresh new industry with 2 or 3 big players that want to be debris removal companies. There's a Swiss one called ClearSpace and a Japanese one called Astroscale but they're both in embryonic. They're not even ready for beta testing. They're just starting up. It's too soon for a regulator.

I’ve had that conversation in the last couple of years with several different countries. It's too soon for this to be a demand. You can start thinking about it and talking to your operators to say, “What do you do when your satellite dies? What do you do at the end of life? What have you thought about? Are you prepared? Have you done as much as you could knowing the state of the industry?” It's too soon for the regulator to demand and you will pay someone to go into outer space to sweep up your little debris. It's a conversation. It's never like, “We've answered that question, now we move on.” It's always growing and adjusting. The back-and-forth discussion is so important.

You're going to have continuing discussions about this so you need to have a good open channel for dialogue. You're talking about problem X but in five years, it's problem Y. You need to be able to have an ongoing, at least good working relationship with these folks. I had this epiphany when you were talking about it's too soon for this particular focus for a company. I thought in this kind of space, even the governments can say, “If you want to have a startup, that’s great but it’s not time for that.” We're not at that stage where we think that's something that we want to focus on regulating or we think there's a need for that. That's interesting. There's this interplay.

There's a life cycle with technology that meshes with a life cycle of regulation. Something will start with one of those temporary experimental licenses. “Go ahead and try this until we see if it interferes.” For example, there are very small satellites sometimes called CubeSats. We're in that category. Every engineer in every university and country designed and built their satellite and launched it. The problem was you couldn't talk to them and control them. The idea was it would do an experiment. It would test the upper atmosphere and then fall back to Earth or burn up in the atmosphere.

There got to be so many of them. Someone described it as tricycles on the Autobahn. It was suddenly all these little tiny things all over the freeway of outer space. The regulators are like, “We have to stop and make changes. I'm sorry but you ruined it for everybody else. You will have to have some control over those objects in outer space.” That's true, whether it's people cutting down trees in a forest and thinking, “There are so many trees, not a problem,” but 100 years later, it's a desert. Keep up with the regulation, let something in and then say, “Here's a harm. Let's address that harm.”

One of the problems with the debris is most of it was left by 2 nations, maybe 3. Most of it was left by the US and the USSR because they were the only players out there for 20 or 30 years. It’s little tiny debris at this point. It breaks up. It crumbles after a while but they're the size of bullets. Like a bullet, if it hits your satellite, it's devastating. The question is, “Who's going to clean that up?” Certainly, regulations from this point forward can demand a good scout. You clean up after yourself. That is coming for all the satellites coming in the future. It won't be too long until the regulators around the world say, “Whom have you hired to bring your object back to Earth when its operational life is over?”

The embarrassing thing is who has the US hired to go clean up the 25,000 pieces of plastic, metal and porcelain that so far have not caused a problem? Let's be clear here. There has not been a third party that has been affected by debris so far. Are we just being lucky? This stuff does fall back to Earth. Occasionally, it does hit other objects. There's going to be a lawsuit and an injury. We hope that it isn't catastrophic. We talk about that too.

There's the international Manfred Lachs Space Moot Court. These moot courts spent a lot of time thinking about a disaster. What if this happens and these five nations all end up in the international space court? Young lawyers like ourselves are thinking in advance of the problem that we suspect is coming. How would it shake out? That's all part of the, you allow new tech and regulate it when it becomes a harm to somebody else. You have to think about the international aspect of this environment because it is an environment.

You allow new tech; you regulate it when it harms somebody else. You have to think about the international aspect of this as an environment because it is an environment.

The shift overall, particularly in launch, didn't exist before but even what you referenced in terms of the satellites, was a very small number of nations that could do this in the past. As the technology has grown, more nations are capable of that. You have all of the private players and companies as well. It's getting more dynamic, the whole environment.

It’s the shift over the years, both with being able to make cheaper satellites like assembly lines like a car and cheaper launch vehicles that are able to put 100 little satellites on them at a time. Satellites used to take two years to be built by hand. Each piece was cut by hand. OneWeb and Starlink are building 3 or 4 satellites a day in their factories. That's going to happen all around the world.

It's going to be cheaper to make and launch and more affordable to have an industry that happens to be in outer space. People are talking about whether would it be cheaper to build things in outer space because there's no gravity or somehow would it be more effective to create new chemical bonds in outer space where there's no gravity. Does that affect our medicine or pharmaceuticals? Are there products that are better if made outside of gravity?

It's not like you want it to be in outer space but you're taking advantage of that environment. People want to mine asteroids. They want tourism and people to visit the moon for fun. I'm sure that's coming, even if there is a catastrophe. Look at the US. We slowed down for 40 years after going to the moon but China is about to get there. Let me tell you what drives the United States.

Another country succeeding. Capitol Hill is losing its mind. Also, people like to explore. This is some part of our genetic makeup. We are curious. Even if there is some disaster or accident in a few years or decades, we will pick it up again. I do mean all of humankind. We will be going to the moon more regularly and beyond. It's who we are. I don't even want to scuba dive or go spelunking. I'm like, “Could I not be able to breathe?” I'm not interested in that. That's not what I want to do. Thank you.

We have different types of folks for different things. We need adventurers and explorers. There is that kind of curiosity among humans. The curious and adventurous part is not limited to any particular nation. It's the human nature of curiosity. That's such a great dynamic explanation of everything that goes on in your work. I don't think there's any other way to get the flavor of that without you going through all of the different ways you'd approach those problems and what kinds of problems, challenges and relationships you would need to make things happen. Thank you so much for doing that. That was amazing.

My pleasure. I do like what I do. I couldn't have described it to somebody when I was eighteen. I didn't know what this is. I’ve always taken a lot of interns. I’ve encouraged other satellite tech companies to do the same because you're not going to learn about this very niche industry from anywhere except inside.

You want to ensure the next generation for the company's sake and the industry's sake. That's important as well. That makes a lot of sense in this setting. You do a lot of mentoring in that regard with the interns and your teaching at Ole Miss. Where I last saw you was you were moderating a panel.

It’s the Women in Space Engagement, WISE, which is the mentoring arm of a much larger professional association, the Space & Satellite Professionals International, SSPI, which is an individual networking association. I mentor with SSPI-WISE. I also network with the UN's mentoring group, which is called Space4Women. The ITU has a network of women, the ITU NoW. That group springs into action before any of the ITU’s major annual meetings.

I am so happy at this point, in the twilight years of my career, to be helpful to people coming up who have a lot of questions and aren't sure about the arc of their career. It's so important to be encouraging and calming. You can't know what's going to be offered to you. It's good to have a plan, short-term and long-term. This is what I would like to do but when somebody opens your door and says, “I’ve got a project involving X on planet Y, do you want to come talk?” Don't say, “I don't know anything about X or planet Y.” You've got to say, “Sure, let's talk,” because you don't know and you can't predict the future.

I started my career when there was no internet or cell phones. One of the first projects I worked on was the very first cell phone application back around 1981. There was so much emphasis on the word cellular because that was the new technology. There had always been mobile phones. Some people may remember very old movies from the ‘60s that have a huge boomerang-shaped antenna on the back of the president's car. There were maybe a total of 10 mobile phones in 1 city.

Engineers invented a way to make cell towers in effect so that you could reuse those frequencies that you have to share over and over again in a cellular pattern. That was this incredible breakthrough in cellular mobile phones. No one even thinks about that anymore. I think about what we do on this personal device that we call a phone. I don't make phone calls on it. It's a mini-computer. Mostly, I send text messages and look at Google Maps, which also involves satellites. We don't think about it. You just want it to work wherever you are.

For those who think they might be interested in this or maybe in the future work in the satellite area or space area, what advice would you have for them? Maybe some of these groups are some of that advice in a way.

One of the two groups that come to mind is Space & Satellite Professionals International, SSPI. It's mostly the US but got 5 or 6 chapters around the US. There's also a very active chapter in London, Tokyo and India, which has a big chapter. That's personal growth and it's networking. You go and there's a short twenty-minute lecture on something. Everybody breaks and has a drink. You talk to each other.

Networking is the most important way of getting your next job, hearing about what's going on and for other people to see you. You're more likely to be offered a job if they already know you. You have to be visible. Another great group for people in telecommunications, in general, is the Federal Communications Bar Association, FCBA. It has online continuing legal education and student membership. If you happen to be in the DC area and you can go to a meeting in person, even better.

There are lots of groups for young people interested in space law and space policy like the Space Generation Advisory Council, SGAC. They've got events regularly. Believe it or not, LinkedIn. A lot of younger professionals don't think about LinkedIn as a tool but you should. It is a professional networking platform. People will post all kinds of webinars and announce, “I'm doing a webinar next week.” You can join it as a participant. Go look for hashtags #spacelaw and #spacepolicy.

People are welcoming. They're delighted to get more people into the industry, believe it or not. Even though there might not seem to be many jobs, more companies will need lawyers who understand outer space law, even if they're doing contracts or employee healthcare. If your employee is an astronaut, that might have some different healthcare issues. They should go be interested and not worry about, “Nobody's hiring.” They might hire tomorrow. You'd never know.

Your point about LinkedIn is very well taken. Particularly with the space law community, internationally, people will post things. That's often how I find out about conferences. “That looks like an interesting program. I’d like to learn about that.” Particularly in the space law area, it seems very active in that regard. Since the pandemic, LinkedIn has changed, even for lawyers. People used to post whatever award they got or something like that and wouldn't have a communication platform. That's changed in the legal industry if you're using it right, particularly as a law student or new lawyer. It can be very helpful to meet people.

Keep in mind that HR departments look at it. You want to look at your LinkedIn profile with an eye toward the job you want and think about the words you've posted at the very top. Do they mention things like policy and regulatory affairs? Even if you haven't had a class in that, maybe you can say interested in space policy and then the computer that trolls through the internet looking for space policy, people will still pick you up because you're interested in it. I do think that sometimes, the younger professionals who haven't used it themselves don't realize that the HR teams are all using this. That's a tool to get you where you want to go.

That's a good point in terms of law firms may not be using it in that way but companies are.

There’s another big difference for new people entering between firms and companies. Firms all hire in September. They're all looking for a cohort fresh out of law school. They'll all start with no company hires in September. Companies hire whenever somebody leaves. Who knows when that's going to be? That entry-level position could open any time in-house.

Also, companies don't hire in advance. They don't say, “I will hire you in May to start in September.” No. “If we have an opening now, we probably want to fill it next week.” You never know when someone's going to leave, move up the ladder or go to the government or a law firm. It's a very different hiring rhythm in the private industry than within the firms.

That goes well with your being prepared and open to opportunities. I hadn't thought about that difference but it's true. Within law firms as an industry, it's very set. You know what you're going to do. You have your judicial clerkship two years in advance. You have your summer associate and you notice it's very planned out. That's not the way it works in the business world or the private company sector. That's something to think about and pay attention to.

A law student who goes to a summer associate position at the end of their first year is probably going to be asked back for the second year and then offered a job. At the end of the first year of law school, you could be with the company you are going to be with until you retire. It's possible. There are people that do that. They move up through the ranks and make partners. They love it. It's a fit for them.

Yet in the United States, companies don't work that way. Almost no one ends their career at the company they started at. That's a very 1950s concept and people used to think it was what they wanted. In the US, people spend 2 to 5 years at a company and then move on. I do keep saying the US because Europe still has a very different attitude toward jobs when you get a permanent position after you've been there three years. People do stay forever. You can't be let go because the company doesn't need ten people on the legal team anymore. That's protected.

In the United States, companies don't work that way. No one ends their career at the company they started at. That's a very 1950s concept.

That's very different from our experience.

People get ripped all the time in the United States. “No hard feelings. We just don't need ten people anymore.” There's a nimbleness and agility to careers in the US. I'm not sure about Asia or other parts of the world but certainly, Europe is a little steadier. They value the security of the employee relationship more than the US does.

I was thinking about my friends who were in tech overall and this trend was so much earlier than it trickled down to even US law firms. This sense of like you were always moving if you were at a tech company or startup for more than two years, what is your problem? Everybody was on the move. If you weren't on the move, you were missing out. It's a different perspective.

There's nothing wrong with the person who, at 23, gets a summer internship and stays with that company until they're 65. There's also nothing wrong with people who want to move every 3 to 5 years. I’ve found with startups that there are certain personalities that are good at the early stages of startups. As it becomes a more mature company with more bureaucracy and organization layers, middle management, those mavericks that liked the startup, move on because that's not the atmosphere they like. That's fine.

There are other people who look at those early stages and say, “That's a hot mess. It’s a yawning chasm of ignorance and I'm not joining that company.” That's fine too. You come to know more about them always saying something like, “What's the corporate culture?” That's the corporate culture. Do you want that yawning chasm? Do you look at that and say, “No one tells me what to do. I can make the manual. I can do whatever needs to be done that's great?” Do you say, “These people have no idea what they're doing. There's no one to teach me anything. There's no organization. No, thank you?” You are looking for a different company and luckily, there are lots of both.

That's an important component of advice and mentoring as well, which would be don't just think about the subject matter or the type of law that you want to be doing but how does it fit? Not even the culture. It's more than that when you're talking between startups. Your role is different in those different settings.

What is a better fit with your personality with what makes you feel comfortable or uncomfortable enough but not too much? It's still growing but not in complete chaos. Which thing do you prefer? That's knowing yourself. In making the decisions, you have to have a good sense of yourself and know what works for you and where you would be of the highest and best use for your client or the company as well.

Maybe you don't know until you've had 1 job or 2. “Was that a good fit for me, yes or no?” You can move on with that knowledge. “That was not a good fit. We're not throwing any stones here but never again,” or, “I missed that. What was it about that? That's right. I did everything. I was the general counsel. I was only 26 but there was no other lawyer. I did the contract for the snack machine and the launch vehicle.” There’s no wrong answer, just self-awareness.

That sense of continued exploration is an important thing for law students and newer lawyers to think about. Part and parcel with that concept of your summer associate job, you could know what you will be doing for 3 years of your professional life. Sometimes there can be a sense that if you're not doing steps 1, 2 and 3, it's a complete failure or something. You have to have this certain way of progressing with your career.

What you're saying is no, push back against that a little bit. Be open to other things and then examine for yourself, “Did I like that? What did I like or not like about that? What's the next move for me?” Instead of what I think I should be doing based on all these messages I'm getting from the law school or the profession about what's the most prestigious or the best place to go? What is the best next place for you?

You crystallized something there, MC. Yes, some people are cut out for law firms. I'm surprised that the law firm structure has changed so little in 200 years. I thought about the big economic downturn from ‘07 to ‘09 and nobody was paying for lawyers. They were too expensive. I thought, “Finally, law firms are going to change,” but they didn't. They came through that. There are enough people who are not like me. There are enough people who enjoy that structure and environment and it's right for them, both as lawyers and customers. As clients outside, they're looking for something. They like the firm. The firm has a quality that has continued and endured for a long time. It is not right for me.

I worked at a firm for 3 or 4 years, not even full-time. I already had kids and I went part-time. I'm very grateful to that practice for allowing me to work part-time. I loved the people but the rhythm of a law firm was not for me. I was disappointed in myself when I realized that. I thought I was a bit of a failure. It took me many more years to say, “No.” It wasn't right for me. That does not make me in any way a failure. I have different skills. The firm wasn't the place where they were best used.

It’s such an important message because I remember being in law school and thinking, “This is the path. If you don't follow this path, it's all over.” There can be such a rigid view about that. There's such a rich number of ways to practice and also to be open to the fact that at different points in your life, one thing might be fine and then something else will work.

Especially for most young professionals who have not yet had families, you don't realize all the different permutations of a family that you will go through. Even if you stay with the original partner, it’s all the different ways that you will try out like no kids, staying home, going to work part-time, nannying and taking the kids with you to work. Most people become parents. Not everybody but most people. Most parents try 3 or 4 different models of family life and you're combining 2 different careers. The kids start having interests and you're like, “I'm sorry, you can't be on the baseball team because dad has the car.” Suddenly, it's four careers. What you don't necessarily realize when you're a single human being at the age of 24 is how the Venn diagram of your life will get very complicated.

I was thinking of evolving but I like the Venn diagram. I also like the four careers component because I can think of friends with kids whose schedules are massively complicated between all of the athletics and the various other things that they're doing.

Those are careers. At least when you're fourteen, the clubs you're involved in, the sports you're doing or whatever it is like Math Olympiad gets respected also by the family unit. I'm not going to call it failure but you want to allow yourself not to think that there's only one true path. There is no one true path to a great job, future happiness and perfect children.

Life isn't static and you're not static. Everything's evolving and adjusting to those different things at different times. That's an important thing. Especially newer lawyers were ingrained with that sense. Part of the fun is that things change and evolve.

When you haven't done it before, the first year of law school is frightening. In year two, you're like, “I got this. I know how law school is handled.” The first year of college, it’s like, “Oh my God.” The second year, it’s like, “I got this.” You haven't been in a job before. You were talking a little bit about training. They call it adulting now but professionally, they’re like, “How do I respond to an email in a job? Do I tell people when I'm leaving at the end of the day? I don't know. I’ve never been in an office. It's all been pandemic.”

Once you've had even a little experience with that, you feel much more confident. “This is how you work in a company. This is how I work in a team. It's not that much different from when I was on a team in kindergarten.” Unfortunately, you need a little experience to feel confident in yourself and it comes quickly.

You need a little experience to feel confident in yourself, and it comes quickly.

That's awesome advice. That's a perfect way to close for people thinking about their careers. They don't have to decide everything now. Let's go that way. Sometimes people think that way, especially law students.

It is good to have an idea. “I'd like to work at a firm. I want to work at a small firm, a big firm, a local firm or a firm on the other coast.” That's fine. That's great. You can be headed toward that. If something else happens and suddenly you can't go to the other coast or somebody offers you a different job entirely, be open to that because you can't know that that's a bad choice. If it turns out that it wasn't a good choice, okay. You're probably not dead. No harm done. Change your mind and go towards something else. There's such little downside and so much potential for something fabulous when you allow yourself to listen to new opportunities.

Typically, I close with a few lightning-round questions. You have a lot of talent so this one might be hard. Which talent would you most like to have but don't?

For my job, I wish I were a little more tactful. Sometimes, I'm very frank and I say what I think. Sometimes that's not what people want to hear.

I tend in that direction too so I understand but I'm being very honest with you.

“What's wrong with that? It's the truth. You didn't like that?”

There's a downside to that. Who are some of your favorite writers?

I love reading novels. I'm particularly interested in the immigrant experience and short stories.

I love short stories too. It's a very particular technique.

A couple of authors come to mind. There's a woman of Indian heritage called Jhumpa Lahiri.

I know exactly what you're saying. She's a beautiful short story writer.

She wrote incredible short stories. There's another author called Nathan Englander who has also written some incredible short stories about the Jewish immigrant experience. I'm trying to remember the name of the author who wrote Americanah and that was about an African woman's experience in America. There's a dark humor to people who find themselves suddenly in a different culture. It didn't matter whether I came from that culture at all to read about the struggle. It's often very funny in a lovely, gentle, dark way. I’ve enjoyed those books a lot.

That sounds like a great collection. I hadn't heard of Nathan Englander so I'm going to look that up for sure.

I can't remember what his first collection is called but the second one is called What We Mean When We Talk About Anne Frank. It's a party game that they play. Would you have protected Anne Frank if she came to your house? What about Joe next door? Do you like him enough? Would you hide Joe next door? Needless to say, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It’s the party game that gets out of hand.

Who is your hero in real life?

I bet I'm not the first woman lawyer to say Ruth Bader Ginsburg but I'm going to say Ruth Bader Ginsburg because here was this tiny human who stood up. She was such a champion for the underdog. I fiercely believe that those of us who do have a voice have to stand up for those who don't. It's a big part of my credo. She's up there.

She's a remarkable career as an advocate and then as a justice. It's pretty neat.

She raised kids and kept a partner. These are not easy things. She managed to do it all.

For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

This may sound corny but I'm grateful that I'm an optimistic person. I try to enjoy the day I have and not regret too much the day I wish I'd had. A lot of people get very anxious about, “Is this the right thing? Is this the right day? Should I be taking time for a coffee? Should I be doing something else? That didn't go the way I wanted it to.” I'm like, “You need to be a little more okay with who you are, where you are and what you have. Chances are you might be a little happier in general.” Whatever you want to call that quality, enjoying my here and now, I'm grateful for.

You should be more okay with who you are, where you are, and what you have. Chances are you will be a little happier in general.

That can take a bit of practice for most people.

For sure, especially for young women who are often given messages about self-improvement a lot.

Even for those who are anxious or worried about the what-ifs. A lot of law students and lawyers are that way because that's part of what gets us into the profession. We always think, “And then what will happen?” Our job is to work on that future risk but that always puts you in the future and not in the present.

It's not so much that being present but also like, “I turned 62 this year. It is what it is.” I'm not going to regret not being 22. That's pointless. I will enjoy like, “This is 62. I'm going to enjoy it because what option do I have except not to enjoy it? For sure, I'll be unhappy.” I'm grateful that my constitution is such that I can enjoy sitting on the porch and looking at the birds.

That's a great way of looking at things at various phases of life. That's awesome. Given your choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party?

I might want Obama. Why not aim for the stars? I want a smart, articulate person at my dinner party. Let's go with Obama. Maybe Jhumpa Lahiri. We can go back to Jhumpa. She taught herself Italian. Let's do that.

Here’s the last question. What is your motto, if you have one?

Do I have to live up to my motto? No, it means something I strive for. Here's what I think. Make it better for those around you. Whether it’s I cleaned up the dinner dishes, I went and volunteered at a homeless shelter or I stood up in front of the Supreme Court and argued for the rights of women, whatever it is, make it better. You are probably in a position to make it better for somebody who doesn't have the skills and the opportunities that you have. Take that opportunity that you've found and make it better for other people too. I don't know if I live up to that, MC.

Take that opportunity you've found and make it better for other people.

A motto could be aspirational. I like the way you talked about examples of that, which is in little ways every day for the individual people around you, moving out from there into the community into greater spheres as you move on and recognizing that we have that impact in so many different ways. Use it for good as they say.

This has been so enjoyable. I appreciate all of your insights. A lot of your approaches to life and opportunities in life are so refreshing and instructive. Even for those who say, “Satellites aren't on my list but I like that approach for other opportunities.” It’s speaking about your motto of a ripple effect for people thinking about their next challenges and their careers, whether it's in space law or not. Thank you so much for joining. You’re a special person.

Thank you so much, MC. I have enjoyed this.

Thank you so much.

Third Boxcar LLC
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