Donna Shirley, recently retired as Director of the Science Museum and Hall
of Fame in Seattle, Washington, and currently President of Managing Creativity,
is a well-known manager, educator, speaker, consultant and trainer on the
management of creative teams. She retired in August 1998 as Manager of the Mars
Exploration Program after a 32-year career at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California.
Prior to becoming manager of the Mars Exploration Program, Ms. Shirley
managed the team that built Sojourner, the Microrover, which was landed by the
highly successful Mars Pathfinder project on the surface of Mars on July 4,
1997. In 2003 she retired from the University of Oklahoma College of
Engineering where she was Assistant Dean and an instructor of Aerospace
Mechanical Engineering.
Ms. Shirley has an MS in Aerospace Engineering plus over forty years
experience in engineering of aerospace and civil systems, including thirty
years in management. She has numerous technical and management awards including
four honorary Doctorates. She is the author of Managing Martians, published in
1998 and 1999, and Managing Creativity, available at her web site. She has one
daughter who is in graduate school.
