As manager of the Mars Exploration Program, Donna Shirley became famous last July when the Pathfinder safely landed on the Red Planet and its rover bounced its way into American history.
But after shattering one glass ceiling after another during her 31-year career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Shirley stepped down from her post last week. She will continue to work with the Mars program in an emeritus capacity, but intends to pursue other career interests.
Born and raised in a small Oklahoma town in the 1940s and ’50s, Shirley didn’t shatter the stereotypical female mold she just disregarded it. In high school, she skipped home economics in favor of mechanical drawing. She got her pilot’s license at age 16. At the University of Oklahoma, she was one of a handful of women engineering students.
After a brief stint as a technical writer at McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Shirley moved to JPL in 1966 to become its first female engineer. Later, she was manager of the team that built the Sojourner rover, the whimsical vehicle that bounced along the Martian landscape in a large plastic bubble. Shirley’s work with Sojourner earned her the management position for the entire Mars Exploration Program in 1994, making her JPL’s highest-ranking woman on the technical side.
After the successful landing of the Pathfinder, Shirley was named “Woman of the Year” by Ms. magazine and even had a comet named after her. This July, Shirley had her autobiography, “Managing Martians,” published by a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc.
Question: Why are you stepping down from your position at JPL?
Answer: Where do you go after you go to Mars after trying to get there for over 30 years? It’s like being the first person up Mount Everest. What do you do for your next trick? I decided it was time to move on and pursue my other interests. Actually, I’m so booked up for the rest of the year with speaking engagements that I had to calm things down. Also, I’m not leaving JPL entirely. I will be an on-call employee and I’ll come back for the launches and landings. I’ll get to see the fun part. I’ll just be missing the day-to-day activities.
Q: So what’s next for you?
A: I’ve become very interested in management issues. I got frustrated by the lack of practical management books and I think there is a lot of disservice with the management fads and quick fixes out there. So I wrote a book on management, I’m doing a lot of lecturing and consulting on it, and a partner and I are teaching a class on it here at JPL. I also want to work on my Ph.D. (in management from the Fielding Institute in Santa Barbara), which I’ve been stumbling along with for the last year without much progress.
Q: Have things felt anticlimactic since the Pathfinder landing last summer?
A: I’ve been too busy to dwell on that, but I haven’t had that kind of high since and I’m not sure I ever will. Seeing the Pathfinder land after all those years of work was a life peak experience, second only to my daughter being born. I still can’t watch the movie of it without getting choked up, and I’ve seen the movie hundreds of times. In some ways the Pathfinder landing was like the Apollo moon landing for this generation. We did something risky and no one knew if what we were doing could actually be done. The team was jumping up and down and crying during the landing. Nothing else in the Mars program is ever going to have the impact that the Pathfinder did, I don’t think, and it’s a shame since there are other projects finding out much more information.
Q: Looking back, how would you describe your career at JPL?
A: Well, it has involved a lot of ups and downs. Just about the time I thought I would never really make it, something great would come along like the Mariner 10, which went to Venus and Mercury. That was really an experience. We’d be working 20 hours a day trying to fix broken spacecraft by sending it commands. It was exhausting. Then I went into the energy business, got into economic analysis and policy, got into management. Then I worked on the space station and learned a tremendous amount about NASA. So with every project I’ve been on, whether it was a success or a failure, I’ve really learned something.
Q: Do you have any qualms about stepping down from your position?
A: Right now, I’m very excited about the change. Let’s see how I feel later on. However, there is so much on the Internet regarding the Mars program that I can log on every morning and see how the missions are going, and I will be retaining ties to JPL. I do plan to stay plugged in, I’m just going on to do something that I find more fun right now.
Q: What sparked your interest in aerospace engineering?
A: I always wanted to fly. When I found out that aeronautical engineers were the people that built planes, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I was 10 when I found that out, and that was it.
Q: You never questioned your vocation?
A: Oh, I questioned it. I even dropped out of engineering school after three years when it got really hard. I was tired, and I was madly in love, and all that stuff. Engineering was very difficult to me, but I wanted to do it. That determination kept me going.
Q: What was it like working at JPL in the ’60s?
A: It was a lot wilder and crazier than it is now. I was the only female engineer when I got here in 1966, so the meetings were all men in cigar-smoke-filled rooms, and me. It was definitely a boys’ club mentality, but there were engineers and computer geeks and all types of people, so the environment was generally pretty accepting. There were some turf wars and rivalries going on, but it was a pretty freewheeling, nice place to work. Over the years, the government has felt it necessary to regulate more and more, and now there is a much tighter sense of political correctness. Equal opportunity says hire more women, which is good, but they focus a lot of time and energy on that rather than getting the job done. I’m not sure where the balance should be.
Q: You’ve received a lot of accolades over the last year as an outstanding professional woman. How do you feel about that?
A: I actually am torn. It’s very pleasing to be recognized for your accomplishments. And I think my career path has been harder than if I had been a man, with certain barriers erected that otherwise wouldn’t have been there. On the other hand, I feel like kind of a fraud because so much attention has been placed on me when the Mars program actually is very much a team effort. As for having received so many awards, it’s really a sad reflection on our society that there are so few female role models that one person gets so many accolades.
Q: Why are there so few female role models?
A: Because in the ’50s with Donna Reed and Loretta Young, there were no role models for being a professional in the workforce. The societal message was: Girls can’t do this. I was the first girl not to take home economics in school. Everyone thought I was really strange, and I was really strange.
Q: What do you think of the recent “X-Files” craze?
A: Oh, it is just so annoying. I’m on radio talk shows a lot, and people have called to accuse me of covering up evidence of life on Mars on behalf of the government. It is so offensive because it’s a personal attack. These people are saying that I personally would lie about our discoveries. It’s just absurd. It’s very scary that people don’t understand enough about nature to know what is real and what is not real.
Q: Do you believe that there is extraterrestrial life?
A: There is life somewhere in the universe. I don’t know, however, if it is intelligent life. Intelligence doesn’t seem to be a survival characteristic. Intelligent civilizations may destroy themselves before they can evolve further. Humans haven’t been around very long and look what we’ve done to our planet already.
Donna Shirley
Title: Manager, Mars Exploration Program, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Born: Wynnewood, Okla., 1941
Education: B.S. in aerospace engineering and B.A. in journalism, University of Oklahoma; M.S. in aerospace engineering, USC
Most Admired Person: Her 21-year old daughter, Laura. “Laura was an attention deficit disorder child who has overcome it. She impresses me immensely.”
Career Turning Point: Being chosen to lead the Mars rover team at JPL
Hobbies: Acting in local theater, writing, skiing
Personal: Divorced, one daughter
