News

June 16, 2011 

Dear Members,

In 2009, WIA had a vision of creating a one day conference that set out to bring together individuals from across the industry to discuss innovative trends and issues, in a collaborative and engaging way, with diverse panel discussions and impactful speakers.   It was our hope to position WIA as a true thought leader in our industry. 

Our first conference, led by Daryle Lademan, Cindy Malawy and Bruce Wald was our pioneer adventure in paving the way for WIA to accomplish this lofty goal.  This leadership team, coupled with a successful conference planning team set the bar for our quality programming and vision for WIA's one day Aerospace Event.  

With the bar set high, the 2011 Conference Planning Committee began their planning early for Aerospace 2011:  The Road Ahead.   I am so pleased to share that once again, WIA exceeded our goals for this conference.

From all of the overwhelmingly positive comments we received from our attendees, it is clear we exceeded your expectations as well.  Nothing pleases us more than knowing we have achieved our goals of meeting our member needs, raising our profile in the industry and providing both an excellent networking and educational opportunity for the industry.

And along the way, sponsorship increased by 23% and registration increased by 42%!  Those are numbers we are proud to have achieved! 

Here are a few samples of the comments we received from our evaluation:

• "One of the best conferences I have attended in a while!"

• "Excellent speakers: Pam Melroy & Kathryn Sullivan. Last year's, woman from Biospheres & luncheon speakers, were excellent as well -- keep to this high-bar of professionals to speak at WIA conferences. --The ISS Panel in the afternoon -- excellent exchange of information. Good panel, good moderator."

• "Variety of panels available meant that there were many that I was interested in, with very distinguished panelists"

• "Opportunity to engage with speakers; questions from the floor; variety of topics (NASA and DoD focus)"

When asked if they would recommend this conference to a colleague in the future, 96.2% indicated that they would. 

The success of this conference would not have been possible had it not been for the dedication and leadership of our Conference Planning Committee.  I'd like to take a moment to recognize this planning committee. They are as follows:

Sandy Coleman, ATK, Conference Chair

Samantha Segall-Anderson, SAIC, Conference Committee Co- Chair

Bruce Wald, ITT, Conference Committee Co-Chair

Stephanie Bednarek, SpaceX

Bridget Chatman, Raytheon

Mary Beth Crile, ITT

Joyce Hayes, PRTM

Sandy Molettieri, Goodrich

Annita Nerses, ITT

Lillian Ryals, MITRE Corporation

Stephanie Schierholz

We encourage you to volunteer and get involved in one of our committees.  Not only is it fun, but it makes a difference.  Simply send an email to info@womeninaerospace.org to volunteer.

We are in the process of posting handouts that were made available to us as well as photographs on our website.  Check back online and our facebook page to see what might be of interest to you.

As I shared before, we were fortunate to have incredible industry support from our sponsors.  For those of you that follow us on facebook and twitter, you watched us recognize our conference sponsors virtually every step of the way.  We'd like to take a moment to once again thank this year's conference sponsors for all that they did to make this year's event such a success.  Our sponsors were as follows:

ITT - WIA's Conference Presenting Sponsor

ATK, Ball, The Boeing Company, CSC, IMSG, Intelsat, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ULA, Aviation Week, Pratt & Whitney, Space News, Aerojet, Booz Allen Hamilton, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, PRTM, SAIC, DFL Space, Infinite Links, SpacePolicyOnline.com, and Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, L.L.P.

I'd like to provide a special thank you to ITT for being our Presenting Sponsor, and especially to my co-chair Bruce Wald for his leadership and dedication to our conference. 

It was such a rewarding experience to serve as Conference Co-Chair, during my term as President of WIA. Thank you for providing me with such an opportunity.    WIA has many more exciting events and initiatives planned for the months ahead.  I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events and connecting with you soon. 

Thank you for sharing in our success for Aerospace 2011.  We look forward to seeing you at next year's Conference! 

Sincerely,

Samantha Segall-Anderson

President and 2011 Conference Co-Chair

Women in Aerospace