格温·肖特维尔：一个能Hold住马斯克的关键女人！（附视频&解说稿）
人们对“火箭科学家”Gwynne Shotwell所知甚少。
当然，作为SpaceX的总裁，她拥有西北大学机械工程学位和应用数学硕士学位，但当她穿着公司的T恤和运动鞋，或是黑色紧身牛仔裤和超高高跟鞋，神情愉快地谈论着她喜欢的Chardonnay（译者注：霞多丽葡萄酿造的一种名酒），不是谁都会把这个开着一辆亮红色的特斯拉Model S（特斯拉和SpaceX一样都属于马斯克所有）的女人，和那个每天都在把巨大的金属零件送入太空的SpaceX总裁联系在一起。
在社交网络上以及媒体报道中，很少有信息显示，埃隆·马斯克被SpaceX的事搞得焦头烂额，心力交瘁。这背后有一位女士的功劳，她就是SpaceX的总裁兼COO（首席运营官）格温·肖特维尔(Gwynne Shotwell)。今天就来花6分钟了解一下这位“火箭科学家”总裁。
- To say that SpaceX wouldn't exist today without Gwynn Shotwell is an understatement. While there are a lot of other people to thank for SpaceX's success, Shotwell has been the steady hand on the wheel steering the company to prosperity, as well as reigning-in the high stakes gambles of her boss, Elon Musk, and it hasn't been easy. Starting a private space company is not a new idea, but making one grow and be profitable is another story.
Shotwell has the unique skillset of being a fierce business woman as well as an aerospace engineer. She is the peacekeeper at SpaceX. When Musk rubs outsiders the wrong way with a random Tweet or statement, Shotwell's there to hop on the phone with clients, to smooth things over with them and reassure them that everything is under control, that she is in control.
Shotwell was born in Chicago, she's the child of an artist and a brain surgeon and the self-admitted hands-on kid of the family. Per her mother, she wanted her to become an engineer, but Shotwell thought those people just drove trains, so in order to help her daughter understand what they do, her mother took her to a society of women engineers' event. For the first time, she met women engineers and decided she wanted to become a mechanical engineer. So, she later went to Northwestern to study mechanical engineering with the minor in economics, as well as a master's degree in applied mathematics.
- And plus you're a woman.
- What?
- No, I just mean we would absolutely love to have a strong woman working here.
- I'm not a woman engineer, I'm an engineer.
- Shotwell originally planned to work in the automotive industry and started working for Chrysler Corporation in engine research, but became frustrated with the multiple levels of approvals and rules which limited productivity and innovation. She then moved to Aerospace Corp for 10 years to learn the business of Defense Contractors, where she was a thermal engineer and project manager.
She wasn't getting the hands-on experience she wanted, she felt like she was just writing papers. In an effort to get more hands-on experience building and designing rockets, she moved to Microcosm, a small space start-up whose mission was to design and build low-cost rockets and parts.
This is the place where she learned possibly the most important lessons that would benefit her later at SpaceX. On the fly, she learned how to lead a team of people, but possibly most important, she's learned how to sell Aerospace products to the government and to large companies. This is also known as business development.
Using her straight talk, smarts and confidence, she developed a reputation as a strong sales woman. Parallel to this, Elon Musk was in the early stages developing a revolutionary company soon to be known as Space Exploration Technologies. In order to drum up cash for his new start-up, he seriously needed a business development talent who knew what they were doing as an engineer.
Early SpaceX employee, Hans Koenigsmann, knew his former colleague, Gwynn Shotwell, wanted to work for a company that would actually do something to revolutionize a space launch industry. He saw it as a match made in heaven. So, he set up a meeting between the two innovators.
She soon became employee number seven at SpaceX as the head of business development and was immediately tasked with going to sell some rockets. Even though those rockets did not exist, had not flown before and now she had a new boss who constantly made promises and predictions that would be impossible to achieve, so Gwynn only had the potential of SpaceX to sell, which proved to be tricky.
In any event, she began to pull some old strings, and began meeting with the U.S. government agencies and satellite companies to begin to persuade them to book launches on their still unflown Falcon 1 rocket. After getting several nos, she was able to convince the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, and a Malaysian satellite start-up, to invest in their early Falcon 1 development flights. They were eager to see if this tiny rocket company could deliver on their price promise.
On top of those deals, she was able to get NASA to award SpaceX a $278 million contract to start developing a larger vehicle that would ferry supplies to the ISS. She also booked around a dozen Falcon 1 flights to other clients, all this happened prior to it every reaching orbit. The first three launches of Falcon 1 weren't great. But, every launch saw progress and Shotwell continued to provide encouraging communication with her new clients that SpaceX was so close.
Shotwell was quickly becoming Musk's closest confidant as she was generating extensive revenue and was taking on more of a leadership role in the company. She was keeping the company alive. So, Musk promoted her to president and chief operating officer at the company. In 2008, the fourth launch of the Falcon 1 was a success, and a huge boost in confidence for SpaceX.
So much in fact that NASA awarded them one of the commercial crew contracts that paid SpaceX $1.6 billion to develop a crew rated vehicle to dock with the Space Station, along with a dozen resupply missions. This was the shot in the arm SpaceX needed to allow them to invest in their own technology, that eventually standardized the idea of re-usability in the space industry.
Shotwell has been at the helm of SpaceX for over 10 years, being the bridge between Musk and his staff, all while earning the reputation as the person who can translate Musk's ambitious goals into reality. She makes the tough day-to-day decisions that dictate the future of the company. As the field general for SpaceX, she gets the troops where they need to be, when they need to be there, efficiently.
The now vice president of Mission Assurance, Hans Koenigsmann, once stated, "Elon says let's go to Mars, and she says, "okay, what do we need to do to actually get to Mars?" SpaceX has seen their greatest achievements under her steady hand, and this is only the beginning.
Thanks a lot for watching. I hope you guys learned something about the badass secret weapon at SpaceX, Gwynn Shotwell.
关注公众号之后
点击右上方“●●●”，选择“设为星标”
英文演讲视频，第一时间观看
One Speech A Day
Can Change Your Life
言值提升，从点“在看”开始…