NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY’S MATT WALLACE AND STEVE ALFERY ANNOUNCED AS WORLD CONGRESS KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Ashburn, VA
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May 28, 2021 08:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
NCMA announced that Matt Wallace, Mars 2020 Project Manager, and Steve Alfery, Section Manager, Project Acquisition and Critical Product Management with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL), open World Congress as keynote speakers.
For their keynote, Wallace and Alfery will share stories of NASA JPL missions, including the most complex and capable rover ever bound for Mars, the Perseverance, and the decades of contracting creativity it took to lift the rover out of an Earthly crisis to triumph on Mars.
“We are thrilled to share powerful stories of creativity and resilience through these keynote speakers! The public doesn’t realize that procurements like Perseverance and Ingenuityare products of intense, ongoing collaboration between industry and government. Space exploration would be impossible without the work of innovators like Mike and Steve,” said Kraig Conrad, NCMA Chief Executive Officer.
Wallace graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a B.S. in systems engineering and received an M.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech. After graduation, he served in the US Navy’s fast-attack submarine fleet. Perseverance is the fifth Mars rover on which Wallace has worked. He began as a power systems engineer on the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner vehicle, led the assembly and test team for the twin Spirit and Opportunity missions, which landed in 2004, and held the Flight System Manager position on the 2012 Curiosity mission. He has worked on other planetary missions at JPL, and as a program manager for Earth-observing satellites in the aerospace industry.
Alfery graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a B.A. in Business Economics. Steve’s career spans almost 36 years at JPL. Beginning as an entry-level buyer, his procurement experience covers a wide variety of products and services including IT, labor support services, facility construction, and flight hardware up to and including complete spacecraft systems. Alfery was the Mars 2020 Project Acquisition Manager and led all project acquisition activities on Mars 2020 since 2013. He also served as Project Acquisition Manager on all JPL Mars rover missions since Spirit and Opportunity (Mars Exploration Rovers) and is now leading acquisition management for the Mars Sample Return Program and Sample Retrieval Lander Project.
World Congress will be held at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, July 25-28, 2021. Visit ncmaworldcongress.org for more details to learn more about the conference.
The National Contract Management Association (NCMA), which was founded in 1959 and is the world’s leading association in the field of contract management. The organization, which has over 18,000 members, is dedicated to the professional growth and educational advancement of procurement and acquisition personnel worldwide. NCMA strives to serve and inform the profession and industry it represents and to offer opportunities for the open exchange of ideas in neutral forums. To find out more, please visit www.ncmahq.org.
Contact Details
Jennifer Knowlton
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