Steve Isakowitz, the former White House budget official who helped run NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Director prior to becoming the U.S. Department of Energy’s chief financial officer in 2007, has joined Virgin Galactic as executive vice president and chief technology officer.
The New Mexico-based suborbital spaceflight company said Sept. 8 that Isakowitz will lead technical oversight of key programs, development and management of new programs, government and industry business development, government affairs, advanced technologies and strategic analysis.
Isakowitz, a former NASA comptroller and deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, studied aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as a launch vehicle project manager at Lockheed Martin prior to joining the White House Office of Management and Budget, where as the branch chief for science and space programs he oversaw the formulation of NASA’s annual budget requests.
Isakowitz’s son, Matt, works for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a Washington advocacy organization that counts Virgin Galactic among its founding members. Craig Steidle, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s current president, was Isakowitz’s boss at NASA.
