El Segundo, Calif. (Dec. 17, 2013) – Aerospace vice chairman and former ambassador Barbara M. Barrett has been elected chairman of the board of trustees. Lt. Gen. George K. Muellner (USAF, Ret.) has been elected vice chairman. Their elections are effective Dec. 13, 2013. 

Barrett has served as ambassador to Finland, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, vice chairman of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board, CEO of the American Management Association, and president of the Thunderbird School of Global Management. She has taught leadership as a fellow at Harvard University. She serves on the boards of the RAND Corporation, the Smithsonian Institution, Sally Ride Science, and the Space Foundation, among others. Barrett is a certified astronaut who trained at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia. She was elected to The Aerospace Corporation’s board in 2006. 

Muellner began his board service in September 2011. He is the retired president of Advanced Systems for Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems business unit and served as senior vice president and general manager of Boeing’s Air Force Systems. Muellner retired from the Air Force in 1998 after 31 years of distinguished service. 

The Honorable Peter B. Teets has retired as board chairman. He began his board service in June 2005 and was elected chairman in December 2008. Teets is a former undersecretary of the Air Force and former director of the National Reconnaissance Office as well as former president and chief operating officer for Lockheed Martin Corporation. 

Mr. Vincent Vitto has retired from the board and Dr. M. Elisabeth Pate-Cornell has completed the maximum number of consecutive terms allowable under the bylaws. Vitto began board service in December 2007. He served as president and CEO of The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., a research and development laboratory, from 1997 to his retirement in 2006. Prior to that, Vitto spent 32 years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Pate-Cornell began board service in December 2004. Pate-Cornell is the Burt and Deedee McMurtry professor of engineering and past chair in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. She is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies. 

The Aerospace Corporation is a California nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center and has almost 3,500 employees. It provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space missions to military, civil, and commercial customers to assure space mission success. The Aerospace Corporation is headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., with multiple locations across the United States. 

Contact Jessica Brown, 310-336-1195 or jessica.a.brown@aero.org