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How Leadership, Ingenuity, and Perseverance Put a Rover on Mars
Only Adam Steltzner and his talented team at Jet Propulsion Lab could follow their “Curiosity” rover success with the stunning Mars 2020 mission to land the rover “Perseverance” on the red planet. The magnificent landing on Mars on February 18, 2021 was akin to hurling a dart from New York City to land in a 5-foot circle in Washington DC.
More than a technological achievement, the successful mission stands as an extraordinary leadership accomplishment in the midst of a global pandemic. In his exhilarating keynote, full of fascinating anecdotes and breathtaking images, Steltzner shares his own innovation challenges, leadership struggles, and flawless execution.
Most importantly, he shows how you can overcome daunting obstacles in times of uncertainty and change. The human spirit is boundless, and Steltzner leaves you unafraid to journey from your comfort zone to explore your own exciting future.
A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership and High Stakes Innovation
With a rich and varied background, Adam Steltzner had many of the needed skills to lead the landing team for the Curiosity rover. That said, his team would struggle for almost a decade with design challenges and set backs.
The challenges he and the team faced and the lessons learned from those struggles can help audiences understand how to better lead their high performing teams, manage innovation and drive towards excellence.
Curiosity has touched Adam Steltzner’s life in parallel arcs. In his personal life there is the transformation from wan-a-be rock star at 21 year of age to rocket scientist at 30, a transition started when he followed his curiosity.
In his professional life, he was responsible for landing the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars, an act that demanded he use his curiosity to help us follow ours. Curiosity and exploration, the spark and the fire that burns from it, are powerful disruptors of human existence.
Steltzner explores these topics and asserts that when we follow our own curiosity and explore what we might be, we are better for it.
An aspiring rock star turned Ph.D. rocket scientist, Adam Steltzner is praised as a cutting-edge innovator and a leader who literally brings out the very best in his teams. Adam serves as Chief Engineer of the current Mars 2020 Mission & Rover Perseverance that has the ultimate objective of determining if life has existed on Mars.
A mission ten years in the making, Mars 2020 was plunged into uncertainty at a crucial juncture by the global pandemic. Preparing a mission for Mars and not making any mistakes is immensely difficult under the best conditions. Suddenly, Steltzner and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team of 6,000+ was forced to operate remotely. The collaborative teams pressed on and remarkably maintained all of the original assembly and launch timetables. After a 6-month journey through space, history was made on February 18th when the Rover Perseverance spectacularly landed on the Martian surface, more than 200,000,000 miles from Earth.
Adam earlier led a breakthrough team that created the ingenious “sky crane” landing system for the Rover Curiosity that landed on Mars in 2012. The achievement prompted leadership guru Simon Sinek to state, “[Steltzner] shows us that doing what others think is impossible takes more than grit and courage. It takes the ability to inspire people . . . It takes leadership.” Steltzner was also honored with the “American Ingenuity” Award from Smithsonian Institute.
Adam is the author of The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership and High Stakes Innovation, that was named a “best leadership book of the year” by the Washington Post. CEO READ picked the book as “Editor’s Choice” for its unique strategies and perspectives.
Steltzner brings a rock-star’s presence and a storyteller’s gift to the stage with his keynote speeches. Adam has mastered the art of managing complex teams and the concept of “making ideas reality.” He knows first-hand how collaborative cultures foster innovation and how team-minded engagement fuels performance. And he inspires audiences to dare greatly – to embrace the power of curiosity, creativity, and courage to do what others say is impossible.
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