Will Pomerantz

Co-founder, Patti Grace Smith Fellowship & Brook Owens Fellowship

Will Pomerantz is Vice President for Special Projects and Employee #001 at Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit, the innovative launch company for small satellites.

In addition to being a co-founder of the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, Will also co-founded the Brooke Owens Fellowship.

Will also serves as the Chair of the Board of Advisors of SEDS-USA, the world's largest student space organization. He is a member of the Editorial Board of *ROOM, a Space Journal,* and a mentor for TechStars, the world’s largest start-up accelerator network.

Will is a graduate of Harvard, the NASA Academy, and the International Space University. He has also worked at Virgin Galactic, the XPRIZE Foundation, Brown University, the Futron Corporation, and the United Nations, among others.

In 2004, Will co-founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of SpaceAlumni.com, an early social network for space professionals. He has served on two US Federal Advisory Committees: the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee and the National Academies of Science and Engineering’s Committee on Building a Better NASA Workforce.

Will is a working father and the proud husband of Diana Trujillo, the Robotic Arm System domain lead for the Mars Perseverance mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.