I’m a Senior Project and Service Manager at Starion Italia in Frascati, close to one of ESA’s main locations – my roles have always involved supporting ESA.
What’s your role?
I’m a Senior Project and Service Manager working for Starion Italia in Frascati, which is close to the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Centre for Earth Observation (ESRIN). I’ve worked for the company for 13 years and from my very first day of work I’ve been involved in supporting ESA in space-related topics.
What’s a typical day in your working life like?
I’m responsible for a variety of projects. One is management of the Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre (NEOCC) project, the main centre of ESA’s Planetary Defence Office. NEOCC’s role is to observe and compute asteroid orbits and assess the risk of them impacting Earth.
In parallel, I’m also the service manager of a ‘frame contract’ through which we provide engineering support to ESA, in particular for long-term data preservation. For this, I coordinate a team of six engineers who support the needs of the ESA Heritage Space Programme in terms of data preservation and valorisation.
One of my main tasks is resource management, which involves managing colleagues who have different cultures and work in different locations.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
My job gives me the opportunity to travel around the world – for example to Thailand, Vietnam, Sydney and Munich – to attend European and international working groups and meetings, and to work with major space agencies including NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the German and French space agencies (DLR and CNES).
Over time, Starion has assigned me projects on different topics (Earth observation, asteroids, space missions and so on), each of which is different, giving me the opportunity to grow my competences and skills.
I am really enthusiastic and open to learn, and I think that every day is a good day to learn something new. I think this is a skill that is much appreciated by my line manager. When referring to me he often says: “To stop her, you have to kill her.” I like to think that this is the nicest compliment he could give me!
What has been the biggest achievement in your career?
Starion has given me a lot of opportunities to manage projects with high budgets and at the same time I continue to be a focal point for our long-term data preservation community and a point of reference for ESA in the Heritage Space Programme.
How do you wind down?
Having a son, I can’t relax very much, but I like to de-stress my mind and my body by going to a CrossFit class at the gym every morning. That sets me up to be ready to address issues and solve any problems that may happen during the working day.