My History with the Mars Society
From founding member in 1998 to Executive Director — two decades of building technology infrastructure for the world's largest Mars advocacy organization.
I’ve spent my career bringing skills and technology from the private sector to help mission-driven organizations with worthwhile causes. That thread runs from my earliest volunteer work through my time at Microsoft and into the role I hold today.
After college I moved to Seattle to work at Microsoft. While building my career during the day, I continued volunteering on nights and weekends. Soon after arriving, I came across a new nonprofit called The Mars Society, which has since become the world’s largest space advocacy organization dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of Mars. Its members include Elon Musk, Buzz Aldrin, and leading experts across science, engineering, and human factors research. I joined as a founding member in 1998.
Building the Digital Infrastructure
At the 1999 annual convention, I presented a plan for how the organization could create a world-class web presence to advance its goals and support its technical projects. At that time, the Society was working to establish two analog research bases — the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic, and the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in the Utah desert near Hanksville. These stations serve as Mars surface analogs where crews live and work under simulated mission constraints, conducting field research in geology, biology, engineering, and human factors. Data from these missions directly informs NASA and ESA planning for eventual crewed Mars missions.
In the two decades that followed, I built and grew the organization’s web presence and drove the adoption of modern technologies across all of its projects and operations.
Technology Modernization
I architected a hybrid cloud infrastructure using Microsoft Azure, WordPress, and supporting services to host our websites and manage data pipelines for our research projects. I led the implementation of cloud-based SaaS platforms to modernize organizational functions. I digitized and rebuilt our membership database from the ground up, enabling the organization to grow its paid annual membership — a critical fundraising channel — from several hundred members to over ten thousand. I also established formal volunteer recruitment and onboarding processes, bringing on and training hundreds of volunteers to support our technical projects and annual events.
Today, the Mars Society’s web and social media presence routinely reaches tens of thousands of people globally, providing news, analysis, and commentary on developments that advance the possibility of sending humans to Mars.
These efforts resulted in three Outstanding Volunteer awards and being publicly recognized for modernizing the organization’s web infrastructure. In 2011, I was made a senior officer and given the title of Director of Information Technology.
MarsVR: Virtual Reality for Crew Training
In 2017, I initiated a project to integrate virtual reality with our physical Mars Desert Research Station. Using photogrammetry scanning techniques, we captured the physical terrain surrounding MDRS and the analog habitat facilities, then reconstructed them as a high-fidelity virtual environment in Unreal Engine. A successful Kickstarter campaign raised over $30,000 to fund development. The resulting application, MarsVR, is used for crew training — allowing future MDRS crews to familiarize themselves with the station layout, EVA routes, and operational procedures before arriving in Utah — as well as public outreach and education.
In 2018, after receiving my third Outstanding Volunteer award for the VR project and our online encyclopedia Marspedia.org, I was added to the Mars Society’s Steering Committee.
Virtual Conventions at Scale
In 2020, I designed and produced the technical infrastructure for the Mars Society’s first virtual convention. The event drew 10,000 registered attendees — a record — with speakers including Elon Musk and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, alongside current and former NASA scientists, academic researchers, and private sector leaders. I built a multi-track live streaming platform with integrated Q&A, virtual networking spaces, and on-demand replay. Over four consecutive years (2020–2023), these virtual conventions reached over 15,000 registered attendees and 100,000+ live stream viewers worldwide.
In 2021, we integrated a full VR networking environment where attendees could join sessions and ask speakers questions from within the virtual space — bridging the gap between virtual and in-person conference experiences.
Executive Director and Beyond
In December 2021, I took the role of full-time Executive Director of the Mars Society. In this capacity, I lead strategic planning and a systematic approach to fundraising aimed at enabling new programs, expeditions, and research capabilities for the organization.
[Update, 2023]: I commanded MDRS Crew 261 — the Transatlantic Mars Crew — a two-week analog Mars mission with a multinational team of researchers. We conducted 16 experiments spanning cardiovascular monitoring, plant biology, power systems, robotics, and VR, including successfully growing tomato seedlings in Mars regolith simulant using spirulina biostimulants — research that was subsequently published in Nature. The mission was featured on CBS Eye on Utah.
[Update, 2024]: I co-founded the Mars Technology Institute, a new initiative within the Mars Society focused on developing technologies needed for Mars exploration, raising $135,000 through community crowdfunding. I also co-founded Space Northwest to build the aerospace community in the Pacific Northwest.
When the first human being sets foot on Mars, I will feel a deep sense of having contributed to that moment through over two decades of work. The organization’s ability to advocate for Mars exploration on a global stage is something I have helped build, one system and one project at a time.
