Each year, Metis CEO Joy Colucci recognizes employees who have delivered exceptional service and solutions to our customers with the Metis Titan Awards. The newly-created Helios Award celebrates employees emerging as leaders in their field of expertise. This year’s recipients are:
Titan of Leadership: Rodney Weatherspoon As the Manager of the Atlas, Delta, and Vulcan Pad Safety Section, Mr. Weatherspoon has led his Pad Safety team in ensuring success of the recent United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket launch at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. He demonstrated exceptional leadership in setting up a training plan two years before this launch ensuring his team was ready to support any issue that came up during the launch campaign of this new rocket. Mr. Weatherspoon used his knowledge, experience and lessons learned with the Atlas and Delta launch programs to develop new procedures and safety checklists, and served as the Operations Safety Manager for the historic first Vulcan launch.
Titan of Innovation: John Mason Mr. Mason’s innovation working on the DSN contract were critical to improving DSN Operations. He recognized a significant improvement opportunity that led to his proposing a change to the Prime contractor for a New Asset Implementation process that would update all relevant information ensuring assets could be used as soon as they are operational. Peraton, the prime contractor approved him to design, develop and deploy his new process. Mr. Mason’s experience and motivated diligence to improve the DSN operations had immediate impact and will provide improved operations for years to come.
Titan of Quality: Mike Day Mr. Day leads a large and diverse team of software engineers providing expertise to the NASA Ames SimLabs contract. The numerous projects his team support include applications and platforms related to state-of-the-art Advanced Air Mobility and Air Traffic Management concepts. Mr. Day is also a key contributor to the Metis Quality Management System, and has been instrumental in the company’s ability to acquire and maintain certification to the AS9100, ISO 9001:2015, CMMI:SVC L3 and CMMI:DEV L3 standards.
Helios Award: Ted Hendrick Mr. Hendrick’s innovative and creative software development projects supports NASA mission design now and for many years to come. He developed an orbit propagator that performs necessary functions that are not available in all commercial products that includes specific requirements used in the design of complex NASA Missions. Mr. Henrick continued to set his sights on innovation by developing a software product for small-sat specific, partial ground operations in Flight Dynamics, called Flite. This product filled a critical gap in NASA capabilities and will continue to grow in usage and functionality.
“It is my honor to celebrate the employees who are at the core of Metis’s success,” said Metis CEO Dr. Joy Colucci. “The recipients of this year’s awards have made significant contributions to the NASA and DoD missions they support, and I could not be more proud of the exceptional work they and all Metis employees do every day.”