In 2020, my friend Chris Fu and I co-founded SpaceInterns.org, a website with a database of opportunities and resources for young professionals in the aerospace industry, with the goal of making aerospace careers more accessible to a diverse public. Since its start, we have had tens of thousands of pageviews, and received an Opportunity Grant from the NASA New York Space Grant in summer 2021. The article below describes our origin story. You can also read the article on Medium.
By Caroline Juang
Today, October 20, 2020, we are publicly launching SpaceInterns.org, a U.S.-based site dedicated to increasing access to internship, scholarship, fellowship, and grant opportunities across the space industry.
What is SpaceInterns?
SpaceInterns is a site for students and young professionals to find opportunities in the aerospace industry, with a focus on the U.S. space industry, encompassing the breadth of fields of study and backgrounds. SpaceInterns was designed with diversity in mind: There are many opportunities spreadsheets out there, but we wanted to make this one fully searchable to make sure every single person can find the right funding sources tailored to their background and experiences. SpaceInterns has become the only dedicated platform for recurring space opportunities—internship and fellowship programs, scholarships, and grants—that serves to complement other great industry databases for jobs and internships.
The SpaceInterns Story
My own space industry story began when I was accepted to the Brooke Owens Fellowship, an internship and mentorship for women and other gender minorities in space, in summer 2017. The Fellowship empowered me with my first commercial aerospace internship, and then opened many doors to an amazing network of likeminded people who love space, grants, conferences, and speaking opportunities.
Reflecting on my incredible experience as a Brooke Owens Fellow one summer after volunteering for the next class’s Brooke Owens Summit in 2018, I sought to create the a website of space opportunities to increase the diversity of the future space workforce.
Reflecting on my incredible experience as a Brooke Owens Fellow one summer after the 2018 Brooke Owens Summit, I sought to create the a website of space opportunities to increase the diversity of the future space workforce. I shared my idea with my high school friend, Chris Fu (medical student and former software engineer), who joined me with his expertise in programming and his shared passion in helping the community.
I pitched the idea to two great minds active in diversity & inclusion in STEM and space, Therese Jones (Senior Director of Policy at SIA) and L. Miché Aaron (PhD student at Johns Hopkins University). Both excitedly joined my team, and we incorporated Therese and Miché's list of resources for People of Color in STEM, using it as the base for creating a massive list of space-related opportunities for all majors. We added Therese's comprehensive Guide to the Space Life, and Therese helped review the expanding database and website to ensure all major opportunities were included.
Over the next year, Chris and I exchanged voice calls and messages where he designed the website, I updated the database and gave feedback, and we created the logo and fixed the user interface. In the meantime, I started my PhD at Columbia University and became part of the Executive Team for the Brooke Owens Fellowship. Reflecting on my journey into space, I wouldn't be where I am today without knowing some of the opportunities that I have included in the SpaceInterns database, giving me a final push over this past summer 2020 in the middle of the pandemic to finalize the project and get it out to help other young people access their space dreams.
After two years from ideation to website and database creation, our 4-person team is excited to launch the website. We hope that you will find it useful, share it widely, and support our work in any way that you can. Share your stories and feedback with us through this form.
Support SpaceInterns
SpaceInterns is a personal project of ours, and it's been done completely on our volunteer time aside from our normal day-to-day work. We've already dedicated numerous hours to importing the opportunities, creating the website from scratch, and interfacing with community members and our team to make sure the site is valuable and usable. If you are financially able, we would be happy to receive donations through ko-fi.