Welcome to Iona Origin Stories, the space podcast where we look to bring you extraordinary leaders from within the sector and their fascinating stories of early life, career, and how they broke into the space industry. This is our first episode, and today's guest is an incredible example of a powerful, determined woman in business — one of the first women to ever lead a space business to go public, with the business listing in 2021. She was one of the first women to be able to fly combat in the US Navy before turning into a successful entrepreneur. This lady has a properly inspirational story. She's overcome every single hurdle and she managed to turn her circumstances into success. A truly unique story and an incredible woman. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Carol Craig.
So Carol, I guess to start things off, it'd be really good to understand where it all began for you. So tell us about your sort of first job out of college.
So my first job right out of college was actually writing COBOL code, which dates me — it's a little depressing. And it's also depressing because I had an engineering degree and I was kind of looking for engineering jobs, but I think ultimately I'm a little bit lazy. Maybe I'm not lazy, but maybe I like to be efficient in my actions. And so I pretty much interviewed with one company, got the job. It was making more money than my father made at the time, so I thought, okay, cool, I'm going to do it. So my first job, and my background is engineering — I have a computer science degree and at the time also an engineering degree, so it made sense to move into software development. So my first job was COBOL code working for a company, Cummins Engine Company. So I was writing code for engines, which was again nothing close to what I had ever envisioned that I would be doing. And that job lasted about six months before I decided to do something else.
So was that engines for trains, for cars? What sort of engines are we talking about?
Well, I'm from Central Illinois and it was in Indiana, so it was really more for farm type of equipment. But actually engines now, they're in all kinds of things — they're in boats and all over the place. But it wasn't a very sexy job, let's just put it that way.
All right, cool. And then what did you go to after that?
So actually where I went after that was what probably got me to where I am today. So again, I got bored with that job, it wasn't what I wanted to do, and I started looking around. And in Indianapolis, which was kind of where I was living, there was a facility called the Naval Air Warfare Center, and it was military, government kind of work. And I applied for a job up there, and I applied to do software for mission development. And I actually wasn't even sure what it was all about — it just seemed like it was going to be cool. It was a little more engineering, it was software related to Ada, which again I'm still dating myself, but it's better than COBOL. And so I applied for a job there, and what I ended up doing was designing and developing software systems and cockpit systems for naval aircraft — Naval and Marine Corps aircraft. And it kind of evolved into human factors, and working with the pilots to modify some of their aircraft. We were integrating GPS — again, everything I say is going to date me massively — but we were integrating GPS into the different systems, and it was cool. I kind of started becoming that whole Top Gun thing where you've got the pilots and then you've got Charlie, who was the woman who came in and talked to all the pilots and instructors. I sort of did that, where I would work on developing modifications to their software, come in and talk to them, and then tell them what we had done to modify their cockpits. Which of course their answer every time was, 'That's stupid, and why did you do that, and you don't know what you're talking about.' Because there's always — shouldn't say always, but there's a disconnect a lot of times between the engineers and the operators, especially in aviation. So that was my next job, and that was actually cool. And like I said, that sort of was a catalyst for what continued to come after that.
Yeah, nice. Okay, so what did come after that then, Carol?
What came after that was envy. So I was talking to all these pilots and I would do my brief in front of them, and I'm sitting there having to wear high heels and skirts and really uncomfortable clothes, and I'm looking out and they're all sitting there in what look like pajamas — they're wearing their flight suits. But I thought, wow, that looks cool, I wish I could do that, I wish I could wear a flight suit to work. And I really just started looking into maybe joining the Navy, seeing what it was all about. You know, my personality is that I want to do everything that everybody else is doing, especially guys. I don't like being told no. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to see if I can do something like that. And so I applied to the Navy and I got accepted, much to my surprise actually. And then I'm like, oh shoot, do I really want to do this? And what I got accepted to was AOCS, which is Aviation Officer Candidate School, which is like Officer and a Gentleman. And there weren't too many women that were going through that, and at the time women weren't even allowed to fly in combat. Which to me felt safe — I'm like, cool, all right, this is going to be easy, no worries. And then also I was applying to be a naval flight officer because I had bad eyes and I actually didn't really want to fly front seat. I just wanted to kind of sit in the back of the airplane and do my engineering and tell the guys or whoever where to go. So again, much to my surprise, I got accepted. Then I had to decide, am I going to give up this really well-paying job and join the Navy? And I decided to go ahead and do that. And then a couple other things happened right after that. This is kind of the series of surprises — at that time they decided to allow women to fly combat. So I was one of the first women who was eligible to fly combat in the Navy, and that meant we had to go to SERE school, which is like POW training. And then they also decided that naval flight officers should learn to fly front seat, which was another 'oh crap' kind of moment because I hadn't planned on flying front seat and I was actually afraid to fly. So it was one of those kind of moments of like, what was I thinking? But I was pretty much committed, and so I went ahead and accepted it and I went into AOCS and joined the Navy for a couple years.
So was that job based out at sea, or was it based on land?
So it was land, because it was P-3. Once I went through and got winged and got the aircraft that I was supposed to be flying in, it was a P-3 Orion, and those guys are definitely land-based. But there were some good places to be stationed, and one of them was Hawaii. And for some reason nobody ever wanted to go to Hawaii — I know, I was kind of like, I'll go to Hawaii because they give me extra pay to go out there. I don't know, maybe it's because I was single, others had kids and they didn't like the school system. So yeah, my first duty station was Barbers Point, Hawaii. So not a bad gig.
Nice, nice. And then so how long were you based out there for then?
I was only based out there for about a year and a half, and I was only in the Navy for three and a half years. Because during SERE school I actually hurt my knee, and I went ahead and thought, oh, I'll just get it fixed and get it corrected. So I had the Navy do surgery on it, and they pretty much screwed it up. I don't have a really positive opinion of Navy medicine, although it's changed over the years, but I've had some issues with it. But again, they did the surgery and I couldn't really run anymore. And if I wasn't going to fly in the Navy, I wasn't going to stay in the Navy. So I ended up getting out as a service-disabled veteran.
Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. I guess what's the point of being there if you can't do anything that you really want to do. And like you say, it must have been interesting because in terms of the male and female split then, so you were obviously there for quite a short period of time, but did you see much change there in that time, or did it still feel kind of very male-heavy?
It was very male-heavy, and it still is. And so if you go back — like I said, I was in engineering, that was very male-heavy. I think in my classes, I went to University of Illinois, and we had 300-some people in one of our engineering classes, and honestly there were like five women and I was one of them. And so throughout my career I've always kind of gravitated toward or been a part of male-dominated areas. And while I was going through flight school, there were really not too many women coming through. The one issue I did see is there was almost — I wouldn't say unfair advantage, but the military seemed so desperate to be diverse that they were pushing women through almost to the point that they weren't ready. So it was a little — it was even kind of dangerous maybe. And you can go back and read that one of the first women to fly jets actually had an accident off of a carrier, and it probably was related to the training and that pressure of getting their first. I know I had one incident where I was flying front seat and I made a mistake and I cycled the gear — I put the gear down too early. The instructor's like, 'Oh no, no, you shouldn't do that,' and I just slammed it right back up, which you're not supposed to do. So we had to go around and have them look at the gear, make sure it was down. It was all good when I landed. The instructor should have given me what's called a 'down,' which means, okay, you didn't pass that particular flight. But he didn't, and I'm still convinced to this day that it was because I was a woman and there's that pressure to make sure that women get through the program. Now, I didn't suck — I wasn't going to kill anybody, so that's good news, I guess. But it's still really not the way that it should be done. I think all of us want to succeed on our own merits, which eventually by the end of the program I think people were starting to get a little more comfortable. But it was all new, you know. And today even, I look at some of the statistics and it's crazy to me that there aren't more women that are flying in the military or that are at these higher positions. They're getting there, it's just taking time.
Yeah, I mean that's kind of the whole point of this as well, really — that we do need to start to affect change, especially in new space. When we run all the stats, there's really only a handful of roles and businesses which are at least 50% women. The vast, vast, vast majority is still mainly guys. And I think a lot of it is when it comes to university, I think it's just the perception of the courses. And the whole point of this is just to talk through people's stories to help people to understand actually there is a gap, there's also an opportunity, and ultimately to be an engineer now is becoming very cool. I think a few years back it wasn't considered a cool course, whereas now with Elon Musk etc., it's becoming very, very, very cool to be an engineer. So hopefully we should be able to affect change on that. So okay, because of the bad knee, the Navy — so what happened then? Was this roughly around the time when you set up your business?
Well yeah, it kind of — so what happened was by then I met my soon-to-be husband. I transferred back from Hawaii to the states, I got out, we got married, and started following him around. And I was having an issue finding a job because I have an engineering degree, as I've mentioned, and I wanted to do engineering because I had done the cool stuff with cockpit systems before. It just wasn't working real well because every time he'd get transferred I'd try to find a job and there wasn't much to choose from, and then he'd get transferred again. And so I had a friend who actually said I should just incorporate, just for the heck of it. He's like, 'You know what, just go do S-Corp and you never know, see what happens.' And sure enough, like within six months after me incorporating, my husband got transferred again because the base closed. So at that point I'm like, okay, I quit the job that I had — it was COBOL code again at the time — and I quit that job and just followed him up to Virginia Beach, Virginia, which is where he was stationed. And I just started looking around to see, okay, I've got this company, this S-Corporation, what can I do? And I'll just start consulting. And that's what I did. I just rolled into me selling myself, you know, 100, back then 150 bucks an hour or something like that, and it turned out to be a pretty good deal. So I just kind of started doing that as my own business.
Yeah, so that's really interesting. So there's a few things there — so you just thought why not, basically, or somebody else said why not to start up your own business. And I think a lot of people kind of get to that crossroads but maybe feel nervous or maybe feel like there's a big jump, you know, it's this huge thing to run your own business. So what was that experience like then?
Yeah, and people do, they get afraid of it. And believe it or not, I'm not a huge risk-taker. Although if you look back at my career, I jump from one thing to the next, but that's because I get bored. But when it came to the company and incorporating and doing the consulting, I kind of realized that I could have this on the side if I wanted, I could make it my primary, I could still have a job. So what I ended up doing in Virginia Beach, besides incorporating and starting the side consulting business, I ended up working for the Naval Weapons Center that was there that trained a lot of the pilots in some of the — I won't say Top Gun, but it was more some of the weapons types of things. And so I started teaching mission planning for the pilots there, but I could do that at the same time as building my consulting company. And so I kind of straddled that jump for quite some time. So you can do things like that, right? There is a point where you are putting it all on the line for a business, but if you can also take your time — in my case too, I had a husband that had benefits, so I didn't have to worry about starting my own company and then not being covered for health care and things like that. I mean, those are other things that go through people's minds. And then if you're a woman and you're trying to start your own business and you've got kids, that's hard. Again, I was lucky, I had a really great husband to support me. So again, it's those little things that when I talk to people about starting their own business, it doesn't have to be the all-or-nothing model. Or even changing careers — it's not necessarily an all-or-nothing. If you kind of think of it as all I'm doing is just building on this overall — I'm the final product and I'm building on it by adding to it. And as long as you're packaging that and messaging that in the right way, there's no reason you can't do all these different things.
So back on the engineering, I wanted to kind of talk about that. I think the reason that engineering is kind of looking a little bit better and having a better light is because I've seen a lot of companies and universities and other programs out there that are starting to combine the soft and the hard side of engineering. So you see a lot of programs that have the business side of it, or they'll call it even like industrial engineering was a little bit of a softer systems engineering, but they're combining these programs that make you use your left brain and your right brain at the same time. And that's something I did when I went to Knox College, which is a liberal arts school — that was right out of high school — and I did a 3-2 engineering program. So three years there and then I went to University of Illinois for two years. So I kind of already had that left brain, right brain program in that 3-2 engineering. But now you're seeing more and more universities and colleges that are developing those types of programs. So I think that's the reason that engineering is getting maybe a better wrap, because you're getting people thinking differently, you're getting people who weren't the best when it came to math or whatever doing engineering. There's no reason they can't do that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's really interesting. The main thing — so whenever we speak to universities and the students say to us, 'Look, how do I get a job in new space?' — the first thing that we say is, look, you're obviously very good at the engineering side, that's what you're doing for your degree, but it's all about how many tasks have you owned yourself, what are your soft skills like, what's your initiative like. Initiative isn't something that you can train, but you can certainly search for ways to try to improve those skills. And like you say, it's the skills outside of actually doing the task that really make people stand apart at the moment. And this is one of the big issues, especially in new space as well, that we found — is that without that initiative in a startup-type fast-paced environment, people will get left behind. And it's pretty much the same for us, you know, we're a recruiting firm, but just being a startup, without that initiative it's difficult. And it's funny that kind of setting up your business there, I guess initiative was quite a big part of it. But did you have a clear strategy, or was it a case of just, you know what, I'm just going to use my skills and just kind of see what happens?
Yeah, no — I probably shouldn't say no, I did not have a clear strategy. I had MTDYAG, which is 'make the stuff up as you go,' although I use the word 'stuff.' Yeah, it really was. I think I knew I could learn just about anything. So I didn't have any business degrees — I was engineering, computer science, I had a minor in accounting which I barely passed, and so I had a little knowledge on the financial stuff. But I just started reading, I just started Googling or going to Barnes & Noble or whatever it was to educate myself. And I think that's also something that people can do. So even if you go to the other side — let's say you aren't an engineer, you've got these great skills, whether it's people, maybe your HR degree, or maybe you've got finance — if you still want to get into new space, it just becomes educating yourself and it becomes understanding and showing that you can learn. Like you said, it's those soft skills. The sense of urgency — you call it initiative, I call it a sense of urgency — that is something I think that absolutely will set people apart. Especially since in new space you see so many entrepreneurs like myself, and when we've got everything on the line, we feel a sense of urgency. Like if I don't make this work, I'm losing my house, I'm losing my family, I'm losing my whatever. That sense of urgency, maybe to the point of being annoying, like, why can't you get this done yesterday? But it is — being proactive and having a sense of urgency. Because honestly, you can teach smart people anything, you know. Engineering is just problem solving. So if you're already a good problem solver, you don't even necessarily need that formal engineering degree. We had a gentleman who was my director of engineering — he didn't have an engineering degree. Nobody even realized it. He had some experience, obviously, he'd been doing it for a long time, but he was one of the best engineers or non-engineers that we could have had in that position. So you know, educating the people that want to go into those positions, but then it also is educating companies like ourselves to say it's not as it was in the old days. You don't have to have a college degree — you'd like to if you want to advance and you want to compete against others, sure, but to get in the door, not necessarily. Just have those other key attributes like we're talking about.
Yeah, absolutely. So what would you say have been, I guess, the best sort of resources or courses or programs that helped you get to where you are?
So like I said, I educated myself. Luckily I had the internet and Barnes & Noble. But also I asked a lot of questions, and I was able to have some good relationships with other entrepreneurs or anybody that was in the business. So when I started my company, I started focusing on government contracting, so it wasn't even related to space at all, it was more Department of Defense, because that's where I came from. And so as I would start interacting with some of these companies, it was fun — there was a lot of old white guys. And I have a gentleman who works for me and he actually came in and said, 'I want to be your OWG.' 'You want to be my old white guy?' I'm like, okay, as long as you don't get mad when I call you my old white guy. But there were a lot of those old white guys, and instead of being intimidated, I was kind of like — and I was younger at the time — I'm like, you know what, these are just like having your dad or your grandpa or something. They're going to help me. So I was never afraid to ask questions. I would say maybe, 'Okay, this might be a stupid question' — of course, when you say that, everyone goes, 'There's no stupid question.' So always lead with that, because they have to say that. And I would just ask them, and then I retained that. And being receptive to suggestions — we all have a little bit of an ego, some have enormous egos — but if you can kind of check the ego at the door and just soak it all in, and I'm still doing that today as I move forward with some of these things I've never done before, I think that's yet another way to succeed. And that helps me immensely, just surrounding myself with those types of people and asking questions.
Yeah, I think you've touched on some amazing points there. Just kind of circling back to what you were saying before, that really is the future of hiring, I think. It's looking beyond the resume. And this is going to sound fairly unusual, but when we're interviewing people for us, I'll be honest with you, I never even read the resume. I don't want to be swayed. I like to just talk to the person and just understand them. Obviously we're not recruiting for engineers, so it's not necessarily the same, but I think just understanding the person, understanding their capability rather than what school they went to, what degree they have, what they did in their last job, is a really good way to do it. We're even hearing about some businesses now that don't even write specs for jobs, because they don't want to pigeonhole — they'd rather speak to people and look at them holistically over the business. And what you touched on after that as well, about just surrounding yourself with good people, I think that's absolutely key as well, isn't it? To be around people where you can ask questions and look to really improve yourself, and like you say, not have that ego, which is just so, so, so important, especially in the space sector. I'm not sure about you, but there doesn't seem to be that many people with huge egos compared to most sectors. It seems a fairly encouraging place to work.
Yeah, it might be those two billionaires that have the egos — they sucked up the egos for everybody. But with good reason, I get it. Successful people like that, they can't help it. But I would say that's accurate. Everyone's so excited about this sector and excited to be a part of it that there almost isn't time to have an ego and think you're better or smarter than anybody else. But it's all leadership too, right? It's tone at the top. So a company has to make sure that that's their culture within the company, and when people come in, they're comfortable, they feel like they can ask those types of questions. So it still comes back to the firms, the company, the entrepreneurs, to make sure that we have that kind of a culture and that change. I think it's really important. Like you said, the personalities — I actually do the same kind of thing where I might have a resume and I'll go through it real quick and go, 'Okay, yeah, they've got those things,' but then it's the conversation, which is why I'm involved in a lot of the interviews if I can. Because I know what my culture is, I have a different personality compared to maybe some engineers and entrepreneurs, and so I want that feel and I want to make sure that everyone feels like they're a family. Not that everyone can always get along, but you certainly can tell a lot about a person simply with a conversation. And I think that's what you guys know and that's how you interview, which is great. I mean, that's a testament to why you guys are so successful.
