Ready to Lead: Carol Craig on Risk, Resilience and Making Your Own Path

Yeah, so that was accidental. And all that was was just a timing issue. So, my background's engineering, and I've always been a fan of, I'd say, space-like robotics. The books I read growing up were Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, I, Robot, all that kind of stuff. And I was always fascinated. Got an engineering degree, a computer science degree, and was kind of following a path, and I ended up working at the Naval Air Warfare Center, which was in Indianapolis, and I was kind of doing Charlie. If everyone remembers, you know, I know they do, Top Gun, but I was Charlie coming in and briefing all the pilots on how they should be using their stuff and whatever. And that's when I kind of started thinking about, well, maybe I want to do the naval aviation thing. And I had always been interested in the military, but the more I was getting involved with the engineering, and I always joked that they were wearing their pajamas to work, and I'm like, I'm ultimately I'm lazy. I'm like, you know, if I could just wear that, you know, zip up the flight suit, and you go to work, sounds like it's super cool. So, I ended up applying for the Navy, and I got in. And the combat thing just happened. And also, I had not planned on being a pilot. I was going to be a naval flight officer in non-combat aircraft. That's just how it was. I was going to be that engineer in the back that just kind of, you know, did calculations and told them where to go. And once I got accepted, they had changed they just changed the rules that women were allowed to fly in combat aircraft. And that'd be backseaters, frontseaters, even some of the intel, I think. And so there were a whole bunch of things that were changing at the time, including women had to go through SERE school, which is POW training.

But prior to that, they were also making a change where backseaters had to learn to fly front seat. And I was afraid to fly. I'm still kind of afraid to fly, I'll admit it. I try to be real, you know, strong and like, oh, I'll be just fine, but it still makes me nervous. But I was afraid to fly, but I'm like, all right, I'm not saying no, I agreed to this, I'm going to do it. And that's why I ended up learning to fly front seat. And I didn't kill myself, so that worked out okay. And then I went to the backseat and again, because of opening up for combat, I went through SERE school and then joined my squadron in Hawaii. One of the first female aviators. I was the first female aviator at my squadron. Pilots, NFOs, they had had like a maintenance officer who was female, but they had no women in the aviation areas until I showed up.

Yeah. Well, it and it wasn't my choice, right? So, it was it just so happened that women were now doing these things. Just so happened backseaters had to learn to fly front seat. So, it was a change that was decided for me. And so I think that helped. And then I also had some issues with my son later on in life, first born, born and some medical challenges, and I think all of these things being decided for you kind of forced me to recognize that, you know, you either roll with it, you know, or there aren't any other options, I guess. And so if I think about that as I go forward, nothing's ever going the way you plan it to, and including in the space industry. I mean, we a lot of us when we first started doing this, we thought that it was going to be one thing and next thing you know, it's another, and it just everything that's out of your control, you know, happens. And I think I've gotten now used to rolling with the punches, dealing with those things in some respect. There are some areas where I still get a throat punch from something that I did not expect and I don't really, you know, I don't know that I deal as well with it, but I think it's that. I think it's recognizing that there's so many variables that are changing every day for us and for me in particular it happened early early on. And that has helped me kind of look at, you know, my path forward and recognize that I don't dig my heels in, say I'm going to do this one thing and this is what I'm going to do. Instead I'm just going to do whatever's presented, I'm going to do it well and I can persevere and that's the biggest thing. I think if no matter what gets thrown at you, you have to persevere, you have to give it 100%. I'm sure everyone agrees. There's no this isn't new, right?

Yeah, and some people personalities like I do like change. Now, do I like change because I had all that change forced on me or did I do that successfully because I already like change? But that is one thing my daughter is the opposite of me and I don't know if I've traumatized her but she hates change. And so that is much more difficult for her but me I'm like, okay, what's next, you know, and this is okay and this is a challenge and so again, is it a personality that helps you do that? Is it learned? Who knows? I think it definitely can be learned. I think with the right support system of people who've done it before and they're done that, got that t-shirt. I think that we can all, you know, we can all succeed in that kind of an environment.

Because I had to. So, there were I did see a gap, which is how when I realized, okay, I might as well do this business thing, then I was able to go, oh, here's where I see a gap or I see something that and based on my experience that I can apply, you know, as a as kind of the business case or look forward to from business perspective. But again, I wasn't planning on it. I ended up injuring my knee in SEAL school. I didn't really injure it. I went to the Navy doctors afterwards saying, "Hey, my knee's bothering me," and they decided they could do surgery. They screwed it up. Now I'm out of the Navy. Right. So, 3 and 1/2 years, 4 years, I'm done. I'd met my husband by then who was F-18, F-14 Top Gun kind of guy. He was still in. So, I'm kind of like, okay, I'm going to follow him. What should I do? Couldn't find engineering jobs. So, I had somebody tell me I should just incorporate just for the heck of it. I did that and within like a month or two, he got transferred again and I followed him and I'm like, okay, well, I might as well try this business thing. So, why not? Consulting. At that point though, I was like, all right, what am I going to do with this? I have background in engineering, computer science, and I kind of looked at with my background having been an aviator, I could see the disconnect between the users and the engineering side, right? And even like your manufacturability when it comes to engineering. I could see that there was there is always I would say I'll say always a disconnect between those two. And I felt like maybe I can do programs or systems that can help bridge that. You know, even myself having been an operator with the aviation side, but having done the software and development for cuz that's what I did at the Naval Air Warfare Center aviation programs, I started to understand that that gap exists. Hadn't quite figured out where to apply that knowledge or what makes the best sense, but that at least was the gap I initially was looking to kind of close.

Yes. Yes, I think so. And what I've done on the space side, and there's all kinds of stories on how I even got to Sidus and took it public, but I think the one thing I can do is I can be comfortable with change. I can be comfortable with the fact that this was the original plan, this was the business case, and now it's changed. And so that fit for me with Sidus, it was called C-TAS before, Craig Technologies Aerospace Solutions. We were building hardware for everybody else. Every other space program, you name it, we were supporting them, traditional, non-traditional, whatever that might be. But we were doing it for everybody else. And as I saw commercial space starting to kind of grow and take off, and as I was getting tired of, you know, not controlling my own destiny, we said, "Why can't we build satellites for ourselves? Why are we building parts for others? Why can't we do and there are some things like 3D printed and others and why can't we do it ourselves?" So that kind of goes to that, you know, we can change. We can pivot. We can adapt, maybe that's an even better word, as to adapt based on, you know, things that happen that are out of our control. So yes, I think that it fits well for this space industry and for what is, you know, where we are now, but of course where we're going, which it's such an unknown. And a lot of people will say, "Oh, here's what it's going to be in 10 years." Nobody knows. There's, you know, there's no way. I mean, you can project. You can think, you can assume. You can make some smart assumptions. But what we see today and what we think's going to be in 10 years, there's no way. So we've just got to be prepared to adapt and change.

And you and you get it and you yeah, you're right. It's very different because of the stakeholders, because the investors. They aren't the employees and customers who kind of already have the inside knowledge and the understanding of the risks of space and all those things that you just talked about. And then as a CEO, you're not just being a CEO and leading a company, especially as a startup, you know, trying to, you know, make things work and realize, you know, all your vision, now you have to deal with shareholders. First you got to deal with the investors, raise money, tell your story, we know that, right? And then it's the shareholders. So, it's the constant care and giving, which is we understand. I mean, that's part of the deal, but like you said, it's the how do you communicate that? And I'm pretty transparent. I don't know if that's a good or bad, but my favorite line is one of my favorite lines is get all the liars in the room. You know, I just like tell the real story. You know, it's too much work to make stuff up, right? And so, from a public company perspective, it probably suits me okay because I want to share the story. I want to be up front. I want to be transparent. And I think that's what you have to do with investors when you're public, but you also have to speak their language. And that's something I've learned over the last 5 years is the language. And meaning, what do they really care about? Some investors when you're doing calls, they want to hear all about the tech. They want to know what's going on in the space. Others, you know, are just kind of at the high level, you know, you can as long as you tell them and you share, you know, that there is a schedule slide, here is why, and here's the benefit that's coming out of it. Cuz most of the time, we're all smart. And if our schedule slides, even if it was due to some anomaly or something that happens, I think we all end up finding positive and good that comes out of that schedule slide. Cuz now we're going to add on. And simply as simple as additional testing or something as simple as I just captured a few more customers for this particular product. And I think that's the thing to do is to make sure that you're continuing to be transparent, open, and honest as much as you can, non-material, you know, whatever you know, you can't you got to make sure that you're balancing that. And that's a whole 'nother, you know, ballgame of really understanding public companies and what you can and can't do. It helps to be a government contractor with a TS, you know, when you've got top secret clearances and things like that, it's your nature to not say things you shouldn't say. That's the same thing with public, but that doesn't mean you don't share anything. So, yeah, that's kind of the balance. It's for me though, the CEO balance is also that big challenge cuz you know, where does my focus go? I've been struggling when I IPO, I mentioned that, to raise money the hard way over the last and I say the hard way meaning I didn't know at the time what I was doing. I connected with some smaller boutique, you know, banks, investment banks, and that's different than the larger when I IPO via SPAC, but it took a while to finally understand and get the cadence and finally raise enough significant money that I can now go, "Oh, now I can focus on being a CEO and not always worrying about where the next dollar is coming from." And it doesn't stop you from growing. It didn't stop our team from building and launching and doing these things, but man, it changes things when you can, you know, take a breath and actually really be a CEO.

Yeah. No, I think that's great. Collectively we should do it. You know, cuz I know we all have that same problem where we have to educate as we're building our companies and as we're growing our tech and all that, we're educating the rest of the world, different generations on what space can provide for them, what the benefit is, where we're going to be. And so that's hard cuz you So we you can't do it alone. So if we were all able to kind of collectively come together with that messaging or learn from each other, I don't know what the answer is. You know, I call it many of us like competimates because in some ways we're competing, but most of us have something that's completely different than the others, but we really should be, you know, collaborating and not looking each other as competition. And sometimes that's hard cuz it's opening up, you know, showing your underwear, whatever. It's like, "Oh, hey, here's what we're doing. Here's my challenges. Whatever." So yeah, so I think getting that message out. But it's also a balance, I think, between enough tech because people are interested in space. So they want to know the details, but do they really want to know the details? You know, I mean, start to glaze over when we as engineers, and I'm not even, you know, that much of an engineer these days, when we start talking about stuff, it's just like they might start to glaze over. So what is the right balance and how do you help them connect the dots to their everyday. And this is just for those to understand what we do. And then you've got to help them connect the dots to the future value. Cuz I don't think any of us have real good fundamentals at this point as public companies, right? I mean, we're all we have our losses. We've got revenues, but we've got losses. We're building tech. So it's not a fundamental story. It's a, you know, asymmetric. What's the upside that's coming and coming soon.

I navigated on my own. Now when I say that I didn't I asked a lot of questions. I always ask questions. Ask too many questions. But I asked a lot of questions. I sought out people. But did I ever have really a one, you know, core mentor or even a couple of them? No. And again, I've been doing it for a while now, right? More runway behind me than in front of me. I keep saying that all the time, too. But so back then there wasn't anyone. Who do you trust? So I have mentors from different areas. I would say one of the mentors because I'll just say as a woman, there is that, you know, can I do this in this male-dominated world and everything I've done has been kind of male-dominated. Yeah, having a mentor, having somebody that can reinforce that this will be okay, keep doing it, you know, get your seat at the table. That was my mother. And cuz she was a real strong woman especially for age, what she did was amazing. So I would say I had I at least had that foundation. But then the other mentoring, maybe it's the 30 boards that I was on, right? And running into people I'm seeing and I'm learning from them and so I almost had to pull it all together and from a public company perspective, I had no mentors. I had no one and I trusted wrong people. And when I say that, meaning they weren't helpful. They weren't there to help me succeed. They were there to make money. You know, they would push the envelope trying to get me to do things that were not ethical and I would say no and then they'd be off and gone. And you know, cuz it I just I didn't have the right village around me at the time, so I had to rely on myself. And I'm sure a lot of people have to do that. You get that and eventually, hopefully, it changes, but

Well, I agree with you what you're saying. I mean, 20 years later and it's like I still walk into a room and I'm like, all right, sausage fest. I'm the only girl. You know, once again, it's a whole bunch of dudes, right? And I still This is where I want to see change, where I don't notice things. Like I still go on when I'm looking at a new company and I go look at the board of directors and it's all men. Or I look at the C-suite and it's all men. Now, I still have a good portion of men on my C-suite, but it's like that across the board. So, we're not where we need to be. How do we get there? I'm going to tell one thing that I've seen happen, and this is what makes me sad. I've been stabbed in the back by other women. And that is a little discouraging. I, you know, like even whether it's a board member or it's someone at whatever it's been, those are things that blindside me. You know, is to have is to not And maybe I've had it's been a little bit I mean truly been stabbed at but even just not having support. You know, not having women want to stand up for you or you know, wherever that might be. That's one area that I think And maybe you guys haven't had that experience. But we got to make sure that we are supporting each other. And it's not a, you know, burn our bras, you know, girl power thing. I mean it's just going, "Hey, we are in it we deal with a different landscape." And there are some male personalities that are not out there to see us succeed. And they're right in front of us and they're in our boardrooms and they're in our management and they're in our competitor whatever. So, I don't know.

I think I'm just a poor judge of character these days. I don't know what it is. You know, I've hired like thousands of employees. I was always involved in that stuff. So, maybe I started thinking that I can, you know, I know people's personality. I can pick whatever. I think I'm just What I do think though is that I tend to rush into things sometimes. And in some of these cases or people that I open up to or that I trust, I think I need to come in slower. Because I mentioned I'm transparent. It's too much work to not be for me, you know, maybe I'm lazy and that's it, right? It's just a whole lot easier just to be who you are and assume that everyone else is going to be that way as well and it's not. So, I think in my case it's slow down, don't rush in, whether it's, you know, conversations with people, it's, you know, selecting people to support you in different areas, but, you know, just be a little more calculated. And I think it's I'm recognizing it more as I get older because in the early days I was just trying to survive. And any like going through flight school, I'm just like, oh my gosh, am I going to actually, you know, not kill myself like I said going through this. So, I'm just focused on that. I wasn't even focused on really too much of the men and, you know, or even women other women kind of thing. But now, you know, it's becoming a little more aware. I'm becoming a little more aware of what's happening around me.

Yeah. So, that confidence thing is interesting. I think I've got confidence or my confidence has grown because of everything that has happened to me over the years. And even my son, I have a son with a rare genetic disorder. He's doing amazing, but he was misdiagnosed, was told he wasn't going to live. Turns out, you know, it was the hospital's mistake. He just had a rare genetic disorder. And I really focused on, okay, how can I now make him really successful in that area? And so, I had, you know, all these things where in the beginning I that lesson alone, and I keep saying I always say this the wrong way, you know, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. That was the right way to say it. But, I think that initial experience in my life started to build my confidence cuz I was beginning to realize I have to control my own destiny. Nobody else is going to help me do that besides God. I'm going to be the one. I have that control. I can control how much I work, how hard I work, how honest I am, the decisions I make, and despite still the comments or the lack of support externally, which is to that point of you're ready to lead, yet no one's giving you this opportunity. You know, what do you do? Do you put yourself out there? Do you just sit there and be ready for it? Have the confidence. So, it's almost, you know, confidence and then having that ability to actually go to that next Maybe it's two different things. So, I don't know. It's a tough one. I'm going to admit it.

I mean, I have this confidence, but still, I mentioned it. I get throat punched. I cannot expect something from somebody and I'm like, how am I still, how is my skin still so thin that I get knocked back by certain, you know, comments or ways I'm treated when I've come this far. So that's not my, this is a circular answer and not really answering your question at all. But I think it's just if we can... Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you've got some insights more into, I mean, we're ready to leave. We ought to leave. What are we afraid of? Right?

Start your own company. There you go. All right? Maybe that's why I... All right? Like, you know, could I actually work for anybody else at this point? I mean, I work for a board and, you know, those have their own challenges as it is, but yeah. But maybe it is kind of that. It's not start your own company, but it's find the place where you can lead because maybe what you're looking at, you're ready to lead, but it's not present. Maybe there's another avenue, there's somewhere else. Just kind of look to see where it might be and it may be another company, it may be in that company in another area. But it goes back to that whole change in the path is maybe not what you thought it was going to be.

Right, right. So it's both, right? Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's challenging. I do have the benefit of being the CEO, of being the founder. So, you know, it's different if you're working for somebody and they're putting pressure on you to not take time off or not do, you know, I mean, that could be a different dynamic. In my case, especially with being a CEO or being a founder, I pretty quickly recognized that there was a benefit. I could actually be more present for my kids, especially my son with the issues that he had because I could work from home. I had a nanny. I've been very blessed, thank goodness, because I'm also not a girly girl, if you haven't figured out. My daughter is a girly girl, thank goodness, because I had a nanny who could actually braid her hair. But I, you know, I had support, but I also had that option. Now, there are even some CEOs, male or female, given the option, they would rather choose work. They would rather choose that I'm going to focus all on this. I didn't do that. I didn't want to do that. So I kind of, like I said, I had a different lens that said, I have this amazing opportunity being a CEO, being a founder, owning my own company to be able to be present.

Now, on the other side, so I was at almost every game. I was there for all the field trips, doctor's appointments for my son all the time. And I have an amazing husband, and he's also, I've had that support too. So that's another add-on. But my daughter to this day will still be like, 'Oh, you were gone. You're always traveling,' or whatever, which I wasn't, but, you know, it's like there is a cartoon, Angela something, where the woman had the cell phone in her ear all the time, and she's always like saying, 'That was you.' So, and I say that because there is this piece of even if you are present, your kids are still going to see that work side, you know? And you just want to make sure that you're addressing that they know that they are still the priority, if that makes sense. I mean, you have to verbalize it even if you're there. Like you're there all the time, that I choose you ultimately over everything else. So I try to.

And why is that? And like I said, it's when you're CEO, it's a little bit easier, I think, because you can control your destiny a little, but maybe not, because then that means I'm canceling meetings with a potential customer even as I was growing. I took my whole family with me. I never, I leave my daughter's side for like, I think like six years after what I'd gone through with my son. So I take the whole family. So maybe I missed opportunity. Maybe my company would be a lot bigger. Maybe I'd actually have some money in the bank. Maybe I wouldn't be, you know, still not sleeping at night if I'd done that. But I also think that, you know, it's a decision that I don't think I'll ever regret. So we should be having that conversation. There should be nothing... People always do that. You know, how do you, the work-life balance? There's no balance. You know, it's like, it's not balance. You know, it's like just go with it. Just the balls you drop, make sure that they're ones that bounce, one professor told me, you know. So let's just talk about it. And I also, this goes back to other women, this goes back to female leaders. Like, I don't look at my team, especially women, and say, 'You should not take your child to practice. You should be in here from 8:00 to 5:00 and do...' I mean, because that would be hypocritical. Instead, I try to do the opposite. I say, 'I get it. You know, you might have grown to do something else higher up in my company, but you've chosen you want to do this because you want to balance that work and I'm going to support you on that.' And the worst thing we could do as women, especially women leaders, is to again do like what your boss did to you, is to downplay us in any way, whether it's with our families or who we are.

Right. Right. I agree.

Again, I think I just, even a blind squirrel finds a nut. I don't know. I just kept like, it just, I just ended up there. It was life changes pushing me in a certain direction and I am a lifelong learner. I will say that. I just got my MBA in May. Well, because my daughter was finishing up her fifth year because she was in athletics and she had some extra time and she said, should I get an MBA? And I said, if you get your MBA, I'll get mine. So we got our MBA together. And so I like to learn, you know, I'm a life learner. Anyways, I have to say it was easier because I've obviously been a CEO for a while, so you could have professors completely enamored with you and you get an A. But anyway, so I'm a life learner and I think that is also what took me from that consulting to the satellites. It's what else is there? You know, how does this all fit together? And I think it does fit because, you know, the individual consulting is what I did initially, one-on-one. Government contract or that rolled into government contracting. Then it's about a services company. So government contracting is hiring people, obviously, everyone, I think everyone's familiar with that. And you're managing people and they're supporting different types of projects. And then with their projects, and then that evolved into building our own, which is still services because it's my people building things. And then it's satellite. So in my mind, I think I look at it, it's all the same. That it is just people. Whether it's consulting all the way through to building satellites, and you just have to learn the other stuff to fill in the gaps in the things that you don't know or you're not comfortable with, right? Because you want to hire the people that know how to do it. I don't have to be the expert, right? But I have to be comfortable with the direction we're going and what we're doing so that I can communicate that to the team.

So, strategic markers in people?