Catherine Staggs: Advancing Artemis Through Contracting Expertise
Fan of Lifetime Baseball, Catherine Staggs, participated in her family to visit the 30 baseball stadiums of major leagues across the United States. This love of the game finally led them to settle in Houston about eight years ago – a choice that helped the staggs in the NASA Johnson Space Center, where it is responsible for contracts for the commercial charge of the agency’s lunar charge (CLP). Thanks to CLPS, it helps to manage contracts with commercial companies offering science and technology to the moon. These efforts support the NASA Artemis campaign and launch the basics of the continuous human presence on the lunar surface.
She joined NASA as a civil servant in 2018, but Staggs’ career in the federal government returns to her college days. She finished an accounting cooperative with the Ministry of Defense as a student at Clemson University in Clemson, in South Carolina, and obtained a full -time accounting position from the agency after her diploma. She went to a business financial director supporting the Navy Corps projects while winning an MBA of the Citadel in Charleston, in South Carolina. “This position is the place where I started to walk in the contracts,” she said.
Staggs moved to Texas in 2014 to be closer to her boyfriend – now husband – who was parked in Fort Hood in Killeen. She has been hired as responsible for contract compliance for a small company based in Killeen specializing in government contracts, officially launching her career in contracts. When Staggs’ husband retired from the army, the couple decided to move to Houston because they liked to watch the Astros of Houston playing in the ball. Staggs has continued to work for the contracting company from its new house, but failed to meet new people and collaborate with colleagues in person.
“I applied for a job as a contract specialist with NASA to return to the office, and the rest belongs to history,” she said.
Its current role in Johnson is to manage the administrative contract functions for the 13 basic contracts that support CLPs, which are valued at 2.6 billion dollars. She is also responsible for contractors from Blue Ghost Mission-3 in Firefly and helps to train and develop specialists in emerging contracts. “I love to see the development that each contract specialist has on their careers,” she said. “My first pathway trainee is now working full time for NASA as a contract specialist, and they work to become a limited manager of mandate contracts.”
His training experience offers a precious perspective on new team members. “Everyone starts down, not knowing what he doesn’t know,” she said. “We all have a start, and we have to remember this because we welcome new employees.”
Staggs said that the navigation of change had sometimes been difficult in her career, but she strives to remain flexible and open to the adjustment of work and life to meet the needs of the mission. “My stay at NASA has helped develop my leadership skills thanks to self-confidence and my team,” she said.
She can’t wait to supervise the Artemis generation and share her contractual knowledge with new team members. She also plans to cross more baseball stadiums on her family’s list this summer.
