Jennifer Kunz, Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) director at Kennedy Space Center, believes everyone should have a life quote that defines how he or she operates.

“You’ll hear something some time and it will resonate with you,” she explained. “When you hear it, write it down.”

Personally, she’s guided by

“When you’re good, you will tell people; when you’re great, they will tell you.”

When choosing a quote, Kunz suggests people consider what they want to be known for and what will help get them through tough times.

“You’re going to have good days and bad days,” she said. “What are you trying to leave this place having remembered you for? I get compliments on my team all the time about how they [programs] would not be able to get the job done without our people helping them.”

But how does Kunz build a team that motivates people to tell her that they’re great? By emphasizing communication and team relationships.

“I believe in open communication,” she said. “I heard one time, and I saw it in a briefing and I use it all the time, ‘a manager who doesn’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.’ I think that’s true. You have to create an environment where people learn from each other and openly communicate and can talk about the things that need to be improving as much as they can talk about what’s succeeding.”

Kunz is also proud of the shift she’s seen in how SMA communicates with programs and projects and the resulting positive relationships. She notes there was a time when SMA was seen as the “safety cop,” but she’s seen that change. Specifically, she feels the shift from a “no because” culture to a “yes, if” culture has made programs and projects want SMA as a part of their teams.

“’Yes, if’ is the culture — that’s our mantra,” said Kunz. “With ‘yes, if,’ there’s always a way to solve a problem. Having done that for a few years, people are constantly telling me that our folks are making a difference and they can’t do it without us.”

Beyond the “yes, if” culture, she also attributes Kennedy’s SMA success to the quality of the people on her team and the positive relationships they have among the members.

“I believe that this workforce is as successful as it is because of the people we bring in here,” said Kunz. “You spend a lot of time with the people you work with, so create a family environment.”

Kennedy SMA: Responsibilities and What’s Ahead

The director of SMA is responsible for supporting all the center programs and the institution, and also ensuring mission success. At Kennedy, this involves supporting everything from the Commercial Crew Program to the Launch Services Program (LSP) to Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) to research and technology.  

“They all have very specific program missions and we [SMA] are co-located with those teams, so we do everything from influencing the design and system safety all the way through mission success, whether that’s through orbit or launch,” explained Kunz.

As SMA director, Kunz is also responsible for the safety of NASA and contractor personnel performing operations.

“I always tell my team I want them to go home the same way or better than they came each day,” she said.

Kunz spent a significant part of her career with EGS, time that prepared her well for her current role as SMA director. During her time supporting and leading EGS, she saw the startup and eventual cancellation of the Constellation Program, which she feels set the groundwork for a lot of aspects of the current multi-user spaceport run out of Kennedy. Kunz helped keep the team motivated until Space Launch System and Orion came along, and personally learned a lot that she applies in her role today:

“I think building a team from a handful of people to the program that I left to come here was by far something I’m most proud of,” said Kunz. “I learned a lot from things not going the way we planned them. I learned a lot about being a servant leader. When things don’t go as planned, it does remind you why you’re there as a leader and it’s to motivate your people.”

Kennedy’s active work with commercial partners and new role as a multi-user spaceport changed the dynamic at the center, adding complex layers to managing SMA from the institutional perspective.

“We have these commercial providers who have their own missions and way of doing things working on our base with our NASA programs and we have to make sure one doesn’t affect the other,” said Kunz.

And she doesn’t see this dynamic changing back in the future, but rather expanding even further.

“Long term, when I look at Kennedy Space Center, I think it’s entirely possible that we’ll have numerous flight programs with smaller vehicles launching daily,” said Kunz. “I don’t see any reason why this can’t one day look like an airport. It is a multiuser spaceport now. But how do we operate in that kind of domain and make sure folks don’t impact one another? Everyone wants mission success and our overall goal is to make sure everyone stays safe.”

Looking at the short-term, Kunz is still focused on preparing for the future. She feels that to be effective in an SMA role, it’s important to have expertise, but also experience and maturity. It can be difficult to guide someone in a program or project to meet a requirement or be more effective or efficient, and learning to do so can take time. While Kennedy and many of the centers currently have that experience, looking just a few years ahead, that may change. Kunz estimates that within the next five to 10 years, Kennedy could see near complete turnover. As a result, Kunz is focused on how to best capture that knowledge and pass it on to future generations of NASA employees. A lot of the current employees learned these skills through programs like the International Space Station and Space Shuttle, but right now, NASA is in an in-between state. While the agency is looking ahead to future programs like the Artemis lunar exploration program, it’s not currently flying.

“How do you get young people to come in and learn from that experience?” said Kunz. “You want to share that [experience from those programs] but we have a much lower flight rate now and it can be harder to learn.”

In addition to looking at ways to transfer knowledge from experienced personnel to new hires, Kunz is identifying ways to share knowledge across disciplines and programs.

“What I have witnessed [in my six months as SMA director] is an extreme level of expertise within all of their swim lanes,” said Kunz. “But how can we cross pollinate across Safety and Mission Assurance and learn from each other so we can share what we see with other programs and the institution?”

Kunz spent 28 years as a program person and notes that it can be very easy to zero in on the assigned program and how it does things and lack an awareness of how other programs operate.

“Safety and Mission Assurance — like engineering — we support all the programs,” said Kunz. “We have a vantage point of learning that if we can share among our own team, we can share among our programs. How can we do that better? Because the world is moving fast. Everywhere we can we need to not reinvent the wheel. If someone is doing something really good in one program, how can we help a sister program do the same thing?”

All these goals boil down to strategically looking ahead and determining what is needed to meet the agency’s commitments. According to Kunz, the way to a successful future is to first focus on the present; however, this one-day-at-a-time approach doesn’t negate planning and preparing for things ahead.

“You have to make sure your workforce is trained and ready to take on a different environment, but you also have to meet the challenges we have today,” she said.

For example, Artemis is the current agency program driving a lot of Kennedy’s future work, but there are a number of commercial, LSP and International Space Station Research and Technology projects and missions this year that are important for the center to focus on and make successful first. Looking at how to successfully prepare her team and center for Artemis and Mars 2020, Kunz again focuses on relationships.

“When you’re doing something for the first time, it’s difficult, and the best way to do that within an agency the size of ours with our complexities is to have good relationships,” said Kunz. “Exchange of information, open conversations and meeting our commitments now is what we can do now to meet the challenges of the future. We need relationships and expertise and open communication with all the stakeholders.”

In the end, Kunz simply wants to build and foster a team — or family — with a clear purpose with regard to NASA’s future:

“We’re always focused on building our expertise, but people also come to work because they want to make a difference and have a meaningful job and have a contribution.”