Kursten O’Neill is a hands-on technical executive who has held a variety of leadership roles throughout her career at start-up to heritage companies in aeronautics, aerospace and green technology; including SpaceX, ispace US, Sierra Space, and AquaHydrex. 

Most notably, she led the NASA & USAF Certification of the first private launch vehicle, Falcon 9, and later, the new product introduction of the NASA Crew & USAF-capable Falcon 9 Block 5 vehicle. In 2020, Kursten took on a new challenge as the program director and engineering manager at ispace technologies U.S. leading the design and development of a medium class lunar lander in support of commercial NASA missions. At the end of 2021, Kursten started at Sierra Space, a newly formed subsidiary of Sierra Nevada Corporation, as the Vice President of the Dream Chaser Crew program responsible for the creation and execution of the commercial crew strategic roadmap. She then transitioned into green technology development in spring of 2023 as the Vice President of Engineering and Program Management at AquaHydrex. 

Most recently, Kursten is the Founder of O’Neill Consulting, LLC providing executive consulting in corporate strategy, operations planning, systems engineering and program execution. Her top strengths are rooted in transparency, communication, performance driven culture, empowerment of employees and end to end technology development. Her team building strategy centers around skill recruitment, training and growth that enables larger business goals to be achieved with minimal bureaucracy and maximum output.  

With over a decade of experience, Kursten is a proven leader on achieving business goals at the program level down to the growth and success of individual contributors. She has led multiple programs of varying complexity and budget size as well as developed corporate level processes to enable commercial operations. In her spare time, Kursten enjoys yoga, skiing, traveling and getting lost in a great book.