Jill Marlowe is the agency’s Digital Transformation Officer, and leads the agency to conceive, architect, and accelerate enterprise digital solutions that transform NASA’s work, workforce and workplace to achieve bolder missions faster and more affordably than ever before. In this role, she defines and evolves NASA’s digital transformation vision, strategy, and policies to accelerate NASA’s transformation progress in four target areas: engineering, discovery, program/project management decision making, and business operations. She partners with internal/external organizations to synchronize digital plans and implementation activities exercising five high pay-off digital levers to accelerate progress: interoperable architectures, process transformation, maximizing data impact, common tools, and inclusive teaming.
Previously, Marlowe was the Associate Center Director, Technical, at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where she led strategy and transformation of the center’s technical capabilities to assure NASA’s future mission success. In this role, she focused on accelerating Langley’s internal and external collaborations as well as infusing digital technologies critical for a modern federal laboratory to thrive in a digitally-enabled, hyper-connected, fast-paced, and globally-competitive world.
In 2008, Marlowe was selected to the Senior Executive Service as the Deputy Director for Engineering at NASA Langley and went on to serve as the center’s Engineering Director and Research Director. With the increasing responsibility and scope of these roles, Marlowe has a broad range of leadership experiences that include: running large organizations of 500 – 1,000 people to deliver solutions to NASA’s science, human spaceflight, space technology and aeronautics missions; managing a diverse portfolio of technical capabilities spanning aerosciences, structures & materials, intelligent flight systems, space flight instruments, and entry descent & landing systems; assuring safe operation of over two-million square feet of laboratories and major facilities; architecting partnerships with universities, industry and other government agencies to leverage and advance NASA’s goals; managing technology development and flight test experiment projects; and throughout all of this, incentivizing innovation in very different organizational cultures spanning foundational research, technology invention, flight design and development engineering, and operations. She began her NASA career in 1990 as a structural analyst developing space flight instruments to characterize Earth’s atmosphere.
Marlowe’s formal education includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering from Virginia Tech, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Degree of Engineer in Civil and Environmental Engineering at George Washington University. She serves as a senior advisor for the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy’ Future Advanced Computing Ecosystem Subcommittee, Sandia National Laboratory’s Engineering Sciences Research Foundation, Virginia Tech’s Aerospace & Ocean Engineering Department, Virginia Tech’s Center for Research in Aero/Hydrodynamic Technologies, and the Federal Innovation Council sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service. Marlowe’s recognition includes AIAA Fellow, a Meritorious Presidential Rank Award, two NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals, election to the Virginia Tech Academy of Aerospace & Ocean Engineering Excellence and being voted the 2017 NASA Champion of Innovation. She lives in southeastern Virginia with her husband and the youngest of their three children and their energetic labradoodle.
