Do Renaissance Persons Work in Satellite?
by Lou Zacharila
New York City, December 8, 2023--How does someone get a job like mine in this great industry? Running two great trade associations and advising a range of great companies – and being able to tell my story in places like this publication every other month?
In my case, it was poetry.
1980: There was no way I was going to get that job as an advertising copywriter at the big agency in New York City. I had gone through several interviews, showed them all my terrific writing from my Summer jobs reporting for local newspapers, being a Sports Information Director at my college and my quirky enthusiasms in print, submitted to every magazine in North America.
It wasn’t enough. The HR Director liked me. I knew she wanted to find a place for me but this stuff wasn’t doing it for them.
“Do you have anything else?”
“I have some poetry. I’ve been published in a few magazines and journals. But that’s it. You’ve seen everything else.”
“Bring it in.”
Three days later I was hired as a copywriter for one of the largest ad agencies in New York, working on the US Army’s “Be All You Can Be Campaign.” The rest is long history. I eventually founded a company and ended up, through seized opportunities, with a business serving the satellite industry.
It is an unusual path for this industry. Or it was.
Today?
When I do my “Better Satellite World” Podcast, I speak with people in all different disciplines because the industry needs them.
Geoffry Craig, for example. The Senior Product Strategist for Ursa Space was a journalist in the commodities industry and had a few other careers before landing a job with a space data analytics company that is on fire. You’ll hear my Podcast with him in a few weeks at www.sspi.org/podcast
The point is that with the range of companies and jobs in need, companies like Ithaca-New York based Ursa are literally hiring economists, journalists, data analysts and, yeah, artists.
This is the New Renaissance. We are leading it.
Over in England, we had the Right Honorable Lord David Willets speak at the annual SSPI UK Chapter awards dinner. Called by the Guardian the “last public intellectual in politics,” he is a big thinker on education, boomer economics (see his book The Pinch if you are baby boomer and want to take an honest, hard look at what you’ve contributed – and taken – in your long years!) and of course Space. Lord Willets is Chairman of the UK Space Agency and served as Minister for Universities and Science. His mind is expansive and he is among the best and the brightest in many different areas.
Perhaps this is the real requirement for today’s commercial space and satellite worker. It is something I see more and more. They need to be more broadly educated and never think that what they have - and have not shown - will not find its way to the HR office. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker? Who knows?
Rub-a-dub-dub. Don’t forget to keep writing that poetry either!
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Lou Zacharilla is the Director of Innovation and Development of the Space and Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) and host of the Better Satellite World podcast. He can be reached at: LZacharilla@sspi.org
