William Pomerantz is Vice President of Special Projects at Virgin Orbit. He was part of the team that created Virgin Orbit while working at Virgin Galactic. He is the co-founder of the

Brooke Owens Fellowship The Brooke Owens Fellowship is a non-profit program in the United States that provides paid internships and executive mentorship for undergraduate women seeking a career in aviation or space exploration. The fellowship was created to honor the mem ...

and a trustee of the United States Students for the Exploration and Development of Space organisation.

Early life and education

Pomerantz was born in 1980 in Buffalo, New York. His parents are Sandra Pomerantz, a social worker and lawyer, and James Pomerantz, a cognitive psychologist. His step-mother is Mary McIntire, Dean of Continuing Studies at Rice University. Pomerantz studied Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. During his undergraduate degree he studied at the NASA Academy. He completed a master's degree at the International Space University, working in the Information, Communication and Space Technology group at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Pomerantz co-founded the website SpaceAlumni with Nicholas Skytland in 2004, a social media platform for young space professionals, acting as chief editor until 2007. He worked at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

as a planetary scientist, identifying surface features on Mars.

Career

After graduate school Pomerantz joined Futron, an aerospace consultancy that eventually became acquired by Avascent. In 2005 Pomerantz joined X Prize Foundation, acting as Director of Space Prizes. He was promoted to Senior Director of Space Projects and helped to create both the Google Lunar X Prize and

Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NG-LLC) was a competition funded by NASA's Centennial Challenges program. The competition offered a series of prizes for teams that launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that achie ...

. In 2010, Pomerantz contributed a chapter to the textbook ''Space Commerce''. He joined Virgin Galactic in 2011 and was appointed vice president. He was determined to use the SpaceShipTwo to support educational and research payloads as well as space tourism. He spoke at the 2013 TEDxPCC at the ''Expanding Horizons of Understanding'' event, where he discussed why humans explore space. Pomerantz led the effort to launch the LauncherOne, which allows people to launch small satellites from an air-launched system. He was the first employee of Virgin Orbit, which will 3D print rockets and engines for satellite launches. His wife is the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer

Diana Trujillo Lady Diana Trujillo Pomerantz (born 1983) is a Colombian-American aerospace engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She currently leads the engineering team at JPL responsible for the robotic arm of the Perseverance rover. On February 1 ...

Public service and advocacy

He has advised the

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (also known as NASEM or the National Academies) are the collective scientific national academy of the United States. The name is used interchangeably in two senses: (1) as an umbrell ...

and Federal Aviation Administration. He was a judge at the inaugural

Mayor of Los Angeles The mayor of the City of Los Angeles is the official head and chief executive officer of Los Angeles. The officeholder is elected for a four-year term and is term limit, limited to serving no more than two terms. (Under the Constitution of Califo ...

Cup, an entrepreneurship challenge to improve Los Abgeles for citizens. He has written for '' HuffPost''. Pomerantz is the chair of the Board of Advisors for the American organisation Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and on the advisory board for the Waypaver Foundation. He is on the editorial board of ''Room'', the space journal. In 2016, Pomerantz established the

, a mentoring scheme which champions women in aerospace. The fellowships offer undergraduate women positions in the space sector and assigns them a personal mentor working in industry. He co-founded the fellowship with

Lori Garver Lori Beth Garver (born May 22, 1961, in Lansing, Michigan) is a former Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She was nominated on May 24, 2009, by President Barack Obama, along with Charles Bolden as ...

and

Cassie Kloberdanz Lee Cassie is a feminine given name and a short form of various other given names mostly used in English-speaking countries. It is more rarely a surname. People and fictional characters named Cassie include: People with the name Given name or nickna ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pomerantz, Will Harvard University alumni International Space University alumni Planetary scientists American aerospace engineers American aerospace businesspeople Year of birth missing (living people) Living people