Jessica Rousset was COO of a healthcare tech company, head of innovation at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and now serves as the Executive Director of the Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State University. Sounds like science fiction, but it’s not.
“Every company should have a space strategy,” said Rousset. “Many of the innovations and the luxuries that we take for granted on Earth come from our investment in space. There’s a 7:1 ROI in terms of investment in space and economic benefit on Earth.”
On this episode of Talk PR, Rousset dives into what we could learn from space.
TRANSCRIPT:
Tracy Williams: Jessica Rousset has been a COO of a healthcare tech company, head of innovation at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and she’s now director of interplanetary initiatives at Arizona State University. That sounds like science fiction, but I know it’s not. Can you give us an earthly explanation or translation.
Jessica Rousset: This is a ambitious, radical experiment led and sort of devised by the president of ASU, in fact, President Michael Crow, who’s a visionary to really rethink the role of a large public university as a steward of humanity in the design of, you know, the societies of the future on and off planet. So, what really intrigued me with this opportunity was an all of society approach to thinking about what it means to be human, as we are very much on the verge of existing off Earth, right? So it is looking at not just the technological challenges, but also the cultural and social dimensions, the economic issues, the political drivers, the environmental considerations, all of those systems, how do they come together, to build what we think of a society, but space is just this incredible, inspirational canvas that I think is one of those rare topics that do unite us all in our inspiration and hope, right? And it’s an opportunity to set, sort of hit the reset button, and think about, if we were to start over as a civilization, what are the good things that we would keep, and what are the things that we would change? And how would we do this together? Because space, you know, from space there’s, there are no borders, right? There are no national borders. So it is, anything we do in space affects everyone. And so, you know, our motto or tagline is, humanity will be interplanetary, and our success will depend on who we choose to become along the way. And so, you know, how are we all preparing for this trillion-dollar economy that’s upon us, and maybe 10 years, who gets to participate? How will we cooperate? Just all these really big questions. And so that’s what we’re attempting to address at ASU and the interplanetary initiative, which has been sort of figuring this out over the past eight years, and I joined about four years ago to contribute to answering all those big questions.
Tracy Williams: I mean, but you were trained as a biochemist, but you’ve been in business. So that’s business on Earth, as we’ve added, which is pretty unscientific, sometimes. It’s about customers and inventory and running a business. What can we learn from space?
Jessica Rousset: Well, our motto is also that every company should have a space strategy. We use space in our everyday life, financial transaction, GPS, many of the innovations and the luxuries that we take for granted on earth come from our investment in space. You know, there’s like a seven to one ROI in terms of investment in space and technology and economic benefit on Earth, right? So that is something that is sometimes not as appreciated as it should be. So, there is a PR element to how do we make sure that every, you know, voter, every citizen, really understands what those funds and the returns on those investments in space are to our everyday life. But they are significant. They’re material, they’re meaningful. And if those were to go away, life on Earth would look very, very different.
So I was actually just reading an article just around, the insurance industry and being able to use satellite data, which is more and more sophisticated, to be able to see environmental emissions and actually see what’s happening on the ground and the risks with human behavior, to inform that segment of the industry, the insurance market. So there are so many ways in which space data, that’s sort of the low hanging fruit, can be used to inform business better business decisions. And then there is, of course, the technology that we can develop in low Earth orbit. So in microgravity, more and more companies are understanding that they can develop new, drugs, culture cells, test even consumer products, in ways that will give you better insights into the physical properties or biological properties of a system that you can then intervene on and innovate around to provie a competitive event advantage on Earth. And in fact, we launched an accelerator program called Space edge. That’s for, you know, space adjacent industries, so terrestrial markets and the search terrestrial markets to think about, what can space do for your business? How can it provide you a competitive edge in terms of R&D and manufacturing, or how can you serve that market as more and more people are going to have to spend time and space, stay healthy, eat, do the things that humans do, right? And that is going to just increase. So how are we across all kinds of interest industries, how are we getting ready for that? Is this a short-term opportunity? Medium term, long term, either way, you should know how and when to insert yourself in this economy as it takes off.
Tracy Williams: Well, tell me about interdisciplinary. It always sounds good, right? But can tech companies pull it off? It means more than just a board of directors. How do you make it interdisciplinary?
Jessica Rousset: This is really sort of the foundational tenant for the interplanetary initiative, and how we approach research. So, we seed fund research projects that address big positive space futures, sort of topics and questions. And the way we go about funding our projects is we require a deeply interdisciplinary group of individuals, because these questions are so big you need not just the scientists or the engineers you need, the economists you need, the historians you need, the artists. You need all kinds of different thinkers that represent sort of all of society that is going to be affected by these big questions to contribute intellectually to the solutions. We funded dozens of projects in this way and produced all kinds of outputs and outcomes. For example, you know, one of the questions was little bit to your point about human health. How do we sustain human, healthy human communities in space? That was one question. And the team of social scientists, and there was a theater person, and all kinds of folks came together. These are, by the way, usually groups that grow very large team, sometimes dozens. They came up with a video game called port of Mars, where you cosplay a politician, or you’re a scientist or and you collect data. It’s research. But by playing the game, you can understand how human behaviors will lead to a, you know, a settlement that succeeds or that or that fails, or things in between, right? So that’s one example. We have a project called, “How can lessons from the past inform our decisions for a better space future,” and we’re creating a documentary in interviewing, you know, dozens of thought leaders, the naysayers, the optimists, everything in between, to really think about how we can learn from our experiences. You know, discovering, colonizing new territory on Earth and what do we take with us when we go and explore other you know, celestial bodies.
Tracy Williams: How does the program prepare the undergraduate. So, I assume there’s undergraduates for the technological leadership of the more current future, and how will that be different from today? What are the new ways of building teams?
Jessica Rousset: I joined four years ago. We grew from one degree program, we have about 12 sort of educational learning programs, from K 12, undergraduate student engagement, broadly, continuing professional education. So it’s really the whole gamut. The common thread in how we think about training the next generation is going back to this idea that it’s going to require all society. So, it’s not just going to be the aerospace engineers and the space scientists, the planetary scientists, the astrophysicists, etc. We need on-ramps for all kinds of talents, for marketers, for economists, for you know, artists, to find how they can contribute to our future in space, in the space economy. So, that’s the general sort of philosophy that we have. All of our degree programs, as well as our various educational programs, provide opportunities for students across all majors to do research on the lot. You just have some examples I just shared with you. As you can tell from the nature of these questions and projects, we need all kinds of talents, and so these interdisciplinary, and I think we counted, we have so far across our portfolio, about 99 disciplines represented over the last several years. And they are very collaborative. So, we don’t just stay within the university. We work with outside organizations all the time, private sector and government. And we also did a quick tally, and I think we have about 130 different organizations that have been involved in our various programs along the way, and that, you know, continues to grow.
Tracy Williams: This is so fascinating, because, you know, you’re really not bound to this earth with this, with the whole universe and your site, how do you pick projects?
Jessica Rousset: We’ve been cultivating a group that we’re calling, maybe call our brain trust, a group of thought leaders in industry, academia, government, that we bring together every year here in Arizona to for workshops, to essentially ask, what are the biggest questions as a sector that we need to answer, and what are tangible things we can do year to year together to start moving towards these big questions that presumably can take lifetimes really to answer. And that’s okay, it’s all about thinking big, but having the agency to take a first step. That’s also one of the philosophies that we have across all of our programs. Let’s be bold. Let’s not be afraid of the big challenges, the big questions, but let’s empower each other to take a first step. So that’s how we’ve been essentially funding a lot of our projects, is basically, relying on the thought leaders who come together collaboratively and say, here are the prior the questions that we think are the most important.
We’re going to continue to work with this group to guide our investments. I think there’s an opportunity for us to go a step further and articulate sort of common space development goals, like the UN SDGs, right? What are the big things that year to year, as a community, we think we can move the needle towards by taking collective action. And I think collective action is a little bit in the ethos, you know, in the air right now. And I think there’s a lot of uncertainty happening at the moment. It is a force of connection for and I think communities that have built trust, that have shared values, and we’ve been nurturing this community for many years. When adversity happens, challenges happen. That’s when the dividends pay off, right? That’s when you turn challenges into opportunity. You come together as a community, and I will say the space community is incredibly optimistic.
Tracy Williams: That’s actually my next question, which is, you hate to say it, but the interplanetary initiative sounds like an area of inquiry that would be most under fire right now in the current United States that we live in. I understand you’ve built this, you’ve created this, but there must be funding involved and threats to this growth and expansion, when you’ve got part of the country talking about, going back to mining coal, right? What’s happening for you realistically with the next few years?
Jessica Rousset: I think it. You know, all universities are under pressure, under fire, and across the board. There’s much work that needs to be done, right? So many big questions. The answer is, you adapt, and you don’t change your values. That’s number one. You keep your eye on the big picture and the purpose. Because administrations come and go. And, you know, we have the long view. We take the long view in this. And so you find the paths that have support, you know, space and AI, huge topic, you know, hugely relevant. Tons of opportunity, lots of talents, lots of ideas. You know, there are a lot of things that we can prioritize. It’s a matter of reprioritizing and also leaning on your community for thinking more creatively around resources.
Tracy Williams: It’s all great out of the box thinking Jessica, which is another way of saying what you’re doing just sounds really cool. We’re lucky to hear from you. Thanks so much.
Jessica Rousset: Thank you so much. Tracy, I love talking about this. It really is fun.
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