MARAIA TANNER

Chairwoman, Board of Directors and CEO

Maraia Tanner has served as the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of STAR HARBOR™ since its inception. She personally secured financing to begin start-up activities and recruited nearly all of the current staff, who share a common vision to make a positive impact on and off-planet.

Maraia has an academic background as an astrophysicist, with courses of study at UC Berkeley and an Astrophysics degree from UC Irvine. Her career includes systems engineering at TRW and later Northrop Grumman Space Technology, working on large commercial and defense payloads such as Astrolink, IntelSat, and Airborne Laser (ABL), in addition to many NASA/JPL projects such as James Webb Telescope, EOS, and Terrestrial Planet Finder. 

Maraia was a lead Conceptual Systems Engineer for the Mars Sample Return and Space Interferometry Missions, where she co-authored Structural Design Challenges for a Shuttle-launched Space Interferometry Mission. She has experience bidding on major contracts and estimating $200M+ budget proposals for both non-profit and for-profit solicitations.

Maraia was Mission Engineer for Sensoria I, the first all-woman analog crew in the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI–SEAS) habitat, aimed at replicating the daily operations and activities on Mars a future crew is expected to experience.

She was also part of the first FAA-certified flight attendant class for Zero Gravity Corporation (Zero-G) and served as a Flight Coach for nine years, accumulating hundreds of parabolas. Additionally, she has experience as a previous founder, owner, and president of a marketing consulting firm.

Maraia is passionate about helping to generate radical solutions for climate change and sustainability and increasing access to Space and improving diversity in the STEAM fields.

Maraia is an outdoor enthusiast looking forward to finishing her fixed wing and rotor aircraft pilot licenses before retirement. A California native, she now lives in Evergreen, Colorado and is immensely proud of her two children.