Ezinne Uzo-Okoro

Ezinne Uzo-Okoro is Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center.

Dr. Ezinne Uzo-Okoro’s career runs in three chapters: 17 years building and delivering spacecraft at NASA, three years setting national space, aeronautics, and advanced manufacturing policy at the White House, and — now — deploying capital and building companies at the intersection of defense, space, and sovereign markets.

In 17 years at NASA, Dr. Uzo-Okoro held engineering, management, and executive roles across earth observation, planetary science, heliophysics, astrophysics, human exploration, and space communications — a portfolio of over 60 missions and programs representing $9.2B in total program value. At NASA Headquarters, she led NASA’s heliophysics spaceflight portfolio as a program executive. At NASA Ames Research Center, she directed the Small Spacecraft Mission Design Division, including the Mission Design Center; led the mission design concept for the eight-satellite HelioSwarm constellation; and, across several Chief Engineer roles, held technical authority over more than 20 programs in systems engineering and software. At NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, she delivered flight hardware and software on TESS (launched 2018), NICER (2017), GPM (2014), Constellation Program–Orion/EFT-1 (2014), ELC (2009), and Cassini’s Saturn orbit insertion (2004); co-led the $300M Spacecraft Communication and Navigation Integration Project with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Glenn Research Center; and served as technical authority on more than 20 operational missions. Her research produced NASA-owned patents in remote-sensing image registration algorithms.

At the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, she translated that technical depth into national policy — developing 12 national policy actions in three years across space, aeronautics, and advanced manufacturing. She authored the U.S. action plan for orbital debris and space sustainability and secured G7 alignment on it; set national priorities for U.S. preeminence in Low Earth Orbit; prepared U.S. critical infrastructure for space weather impacts; set national priorities for the aviation industry; and built supply chain tools to accelerate resilient manufacturing solutions — her advanced manufacturing policy contribution. She coined the term “In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing” (ISAM) and authored the strategic action plan for U.S. leadership in robotic on-orbit servicing, now a blueprint adopted by space agencies in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. She convened the U.S. government across civil, private, and national security aerospace, aeronautics, and advanced manufacturing to improve government efficiency and sustainability. She created the first Space Forum at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, bringing Rwanda and Nigeria into the U.S.-led space sustainability principles.

Since leaving government, she has channeled that technical and policy depth into capital allocation and company building. She was a venture partner at SineWave Ventures and founded Terraformers.com, a regenerative agriculture venture building networked backyard garden platforms in Silicon Valley and Nigeria as a precursor to food production in space. She is now Managing Partner at Calthorpe Group, deploying sovereign capital into critical technologies; a Non-Executive Director of QinetiQ (LON:QQQ), a UK-based defense company; and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where she served on the Space Task Force that produced Securing Space: A Plan for U.S. Action (February 2025). She teaches space power and national strategy at Harvard Kennedy School and advises multiple technology startups.

She holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; master’s degrees in Aerospace Systems (Johns Hopkins), Space Robotics (MIT), and Science & Technology Policy (Harvard); and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. She is a 2018 Presidential Leadership Scholar (a program led by Presidents Bush and Clinton) and a recipient of the 2023 Commercial Space Federation Commercial Space Policy Award, among other NASA honors. Her story is profiled in President George W. Bush’s book, Out of Many, One.

She is a retired marathon runner and an active permaculture gardener.