Career Overview

I’m a Program Manager and Systems Engineer with 15+ years of experience in complex program delivery, cross-functional leadership, and organizational design. My background spans Europe and the United States — working across aerospace, defense, and digital transformation initiatives — in industry, academia, and government.

I focus on the intersection of program governance, systems thinking, and organizational readiness: the unglamorous, essential work of making ambitious projects actually happen, and building the infrastructure (technical and organizational) that lets them keep happening.

Focus Areas

Systems Thinking — How large organizations actually work. Where bottlenecks hide. How to move fast without breaking things. Most program problems aren’t technical; they’re structural.

Program Governance — The discipline of shipping hard things. The phase-gates, risk registers, and governance structures that separate plans from reality.

Digital Transformation — How aerospace and defense organizations adapt to AI, automation, and new operating models. Not the hype. The practical, messy business of change.

Experience

Collins Aerospace (Kidde-Deugra Brandschutzsysteme)

Program Manager June 2024 – Present · Germany

My current role sits at the intersection of defense systems and organizational change. I lead programs in fire suppression and safety systems for military ground vehicles across EMEA and global platforms — managing a €15M+ annual portfolio for strategic defense clients while simultaneously working on the organizational infrastructure behind it: ERP modernization, risk management process improvement, and the ongoing work of making a global corporate framework actually function at the local level. The technical problems are rarely the hard ones.

CAE GmbH

Senior Project Manager June 2021 – May 2024 · Stolberg, Germany

CAE builds the aviation simulation systems that militaries train on — full-motion flight simulators, synthetic environments, mission rehearsal tools. In Stolberg I managed the delivery and integration of simulator systems for the German and Austrian armed forces, working closely with Airbus and multinational defense partners across contracts each valued at €10M+. Beyond execution, I contributed to proposal development and business acquisition — which meant learning to speak both the language of engineering and the language of defense procurement, often in the same conversation.

University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH)

Project Manager / Principal Investigator June 2015 – April 2021 · Huntsville, Alabama, USA

Six years at UAH spanned two research centers and two quite different roles — one deeply technical, one more organizational — and the combination shaped how I think about program management today.

Rotorcraft Systems Engineering and Simulation Center (RSESC) (2015–2019)

I came to UAH as an engineer first. As Principal Investigator I led hardware and software development for ISS payload projects in collaboration with NASA and the US Department of Defense — building ground systems, running compliance testing, and deploying into the field for atmospheric research missions aboard airborne platforms. Getting research-grade hardware to work reliably in demanding environments teaches you things that no governance framework can.

Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) (2019–2021)

The second chapter at UAH was a different kind of challenge. As Project Manager for CPU2AL — a $20M NSF-funded program coordinating nine universities alongside government and industry — my job was less about the science and more about keeping a sprawling, multi-institutional effort coherent. Reviews, reporting, subcontractor management, and commercialization strategy for plasma-based technologies with applications across aerospace, manufacturing, and medicine. Complex stakeholder environments and ambiguous mandates: good preparation for almost everything that followed.

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Team Lead / Human Space Flight Operations Engineer January 2009 – February 2015 · Cologne, Germany

This is where the career began in earnest. DLR’s Human Space Flight team in Cologne operates at the heart of European ISS research — and for six years I was part of that machinery, overseeing the processing of 30+ materials science samples in microgravity and coordinating operations of the Materials Science Laboratory across ESA, NASA, Airbus, and international research partners. It was methodical, high-stakes work that demanded precision and patience in equal measure. I also modernized the operations ground infrastructure through VMware-based virtualization of mission control systems — an early lesson that organizational and technical improvements often go hand in hand. I contributed to the CIRCE initiative (EU FP7), a cross-agency effort to preserve and exploit ISS scientific data across the European research community.

Professional Affiliations

International Astronautical Federation (IAF)

Chair, Workforce Development / Young Professionals Programme Committee (2018–2023)

The IAF connects space agencies, industry, and academia across more than 70 countries. I’ve been part of that community since 2007. For my achievements in the IAF and the Space Industry as a whole, I was recognized as a Young Space Leader at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide. Over the following years I became chair of the Workforce Development / Young Professionals Programme Committee, holding that position for five years, working on global strategies for developing the next generation of space professionals and strengthening the pathways between academia, government, and industry. It remains one of the most rewarding parts of my professional life outside of the day job.

Project Management Institute (PMI)

Member · Director of Academic Outreach, North Alabama Chapter (2016–2018)

As Director of Academic Outreach for the PMI North Alabama Chapter, I worked to connect the regional PM community with the research and university ecosystem in Huntsville — one of the most concentrated aerospace and defense corridors in the United States. Building that bridge between practitioners and academics, across institutions with very different cultures, was its own kind of program management challenge.

Education

Space Systems Engineering (MSE)

TU Delft · Delft, The Netherlands Awarded September 2011

The SpaceTech Programme at TU Delft brought together engineers, managers, and policy thinkers from across the global space sector for an intensive, internationally-oriented curriculum — integrating systems engineering with project management and business. My capstone developed a business case for a novel Earth observation system (MOBEO), which meant learning early that technical elegance and commercial viability are different problems that need to be solved together. The programme gave me a systems-level lens I’ve never really put down.

Electrical Engineering — Diplom (FH) (equivalent to B.Sc.)

Hochschule Niederrhein · Krefeld, Germany Awarded February 2009

An engineering education is fundamentally about constraints — understanding what a system needs to do, what it can’t do, and how to close the gap. That discipline has stayed with me well beyond circuits and embedded systems, and shows up in how I approach program governance, organizational design, and the gap between what an enterprise framework promises and what a local team actually needs.

Professional Certifications

  • Project Management Professional (PMP) — PMI
  • PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) — PMI

Get In Touch

Interested in discussing program management, systems engineering, or organizational design challenges?

Last updated: March 2026