Congratulations to Sarasina for retiring from an incredible 21 years of public service! She's made enormous contributions to modernizing our transportation system, most recently working across 22 federal agencies to chart the path for the next wave of autonomous transportation.
Today is the first workday that my husband Mike Tuchen and I are starting a new chapter after our "day jobs". I wanted to thank everyone that has been on this journey with me. When I started in federal service 21 years ago, I had come from private industry and #NextGen was just forming. I worked on demonstrating and operationalizing some of the key systems like #SWIM to share data with industry. Over a decade ago, we had an opportunity to move back to Silicon Valley where we both went to Stanford University for grad school. My NASA Ames Research Center colleagues let me have a front row seat with them on the birth of new technologies that were set to change the overall transportation system in fundamental ways through electrification, autonomy, automation, and new propulsion technologies. When I spoke about multimodal integration as a key enabler to scale operations for the eVTOLs that were getting developed, I was in a small cohort of researchers and de-silofication was not popular. The public drum got louder, a new office called the Highly Automated Systems Safety Center of Excellence was formed and the AAM Coordination and Leadership Act was signed into law. My voice and work was amplified through both. Thank you #HASS COE and the #AAMIWG for making the last two years of my federal service the most enjoyable and memorable. My proudest moment was showing the AAM IWG the Central California community where my husband and I chose to live at this stage of our lives. We both chose to retire from our “day jobs” together in the #MontereyCounty community several years ago when it was a vacation place for us to get away from the busyness of Silicon Valley. It isn’t every day that I get to bring a cohort of subject matter experts and senior government officials from 22 federal agencies near my home to view AAM demonstration flights at underutilized GA airports and tour manufacturing facilities where agriculture workers were trained into living wage jobs. I am proud of my community for showing how Public-Private Partnerships are pivotal to help us create better jobs, grow transportation options for underserved rural communities, and usher in this transformation that will be safer, more equitable, and sustainable. It took an act of Congress to get us all to work together and engage with all the stakeholders. And my hope that this collaboration continues as this is a time where it takes all of government (state, local and federal) and industry to work together for the public good. Government is critical for insuring we have a robust, innovative RDT&E ecosystem that can help smaller and new businesses scale and manufacture these technologies in the United States. Thank you to those who continue to carry the torch to move this forward. There is still so much work to do. I thank the unsung heroes for their public service and those in industry ushering in this awesome transformation as I become a private citizen again.
Marcus E.
3d
Kudos!
Amazing. Congratulations to you both!
Well deserved!
Nadia McKay
3d
Congratulations Sarasina!
Congratulations Mike Tuchen and Sarasina! Enjoy retirement!
Congratulations!
Tom DeView
3d
Congratulations Sarasina!
AlignBiz | Business Consulting Services and Sales
1dCongratulations to the two of you rock stars!