biography
Monica Lee is the Chief of Staff for the NASA Johnson Space Center. As a senior leader in the Agency, she is a technical integrator for human spaceflight programs and is currently applying her expertise to meet NASA’s bold mission of landing the first woman on the moon and the first humans on Mars.
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Monica has over two decades of low-Earth orbit human risk mitigation, operational and sustaining engineering experience. She has executed over 3,000 hours in the Mission Control Center-Houston as an International Space Station flight controller where she specialized in the Electrical Power Systems and was the first to earn three electrical power flight controller certifications.
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She brings an extensive mastery of negotiations and federal contracts as she served as the Contracting Officer Technical Representative managing Russian Space contracts valued at over $4.4 billion USD, the largest international contract in the NASA agency.
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She has applied her scientific and financial acuity to expand human exploration in commercial activities, innovation theory, and applied technology transfer. She was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Medal.
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Monica worked as a contract consultant with Ernst and Young in Montreal, Canada creating models to mitigate financial banking risks and establish corporate risk mitigation protocols.
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She has published research performed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on K-Shell energies and transition rates for the Auger and Radiative decays in carbon-like ions which is used internationally in atomic and nuclear studies.
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She is an avid STEM and STEAM advocate.
She is a public speaker and supports numerous non-profit organizations. She is also a mentor to youth and girls through various affiliations.
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By the age of 21, Foley earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Southern University and A&M College.
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She holds a Master’s in Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she was selected as a Sloan Leadership Fellow.
