Jeannette Plante
Quality Program Executive
Jeannette Plante is the Quality program executive, responsible for NASA’s Quality program policy and requirements, chairing NASA’s Quality Leadership Forum and Joint Audit Planning Committee, and managing the agency’s Supplier Assessment System.
Previously, she was the program manager for the NASA Workmanship Standards Program and the division chief for Quality and Reliability in the Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) Directorate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). She led NASA’s Workmanship Standards Program for printed circuit boards, printed wiring assembly and wire harness manufacturing quality and Electrostatic Discharge control policy.
Plante’s technical background encompasses more than 29 years of work in electronic parts and packaging for NASA flight projects. She started her career as an electronic parts engineer supporting the NASA Parts Project Office who maintained the NASA standard parts list, researching and negotiating new standard military specifications for NASA use. She worked in advanced packaging through technology development and insertion research in multichip modules and advanced substrates. As head of a consulting company, she led a team that developed a prototype for a NASA Electrical, Electronic and Electromechanical (EEE) parts database, provided EEE parts engineering support to flight projects, and helped the NASA Engineering and Safety Center publish a guide for the reliable selection and application of DC-to-DC converters.
In 2007, she became the NASA Workmanship Standards Program manager and provided Workmanship leadership for NASA GSFC in-house production and for oversight of GSFC projects’ external suppliers. In 2015, she became the division chief for Quality and Reliability for the GSFC Safety Mission Assurance Directorate, and now is responsible for the Reliability and Risk Assessment Branch; the Software Assurance, Mission Operations, and Ground Systems Assurance Branch; and the Quality Engineering Branch.
Plante holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.