In the United States, space industry group moves away from tracking demographic diversity by percentages
Executive director says shift began before Trump administration
The dozens of space companies participating in a three-year-old workforce diversification effort have shifted away from the portion of their strategy that involved tracking and sharing employee demographics, but their fundamental mission remains the same: to carry out a broadly targeted outreach effort to students from kindergarten though high school and a continuation of post-secondary and collegiate internship programs, the group’s director told me.
Founding participants in the Space Workforce for Tomorrow initiative, previously known as Space Workforce 2030, include such luminaries as the Aerospace Corp., the NASA-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Executives and leaders from these and 21 other founding organizations had signed a four-point pledge that included a promise to “significantly increase” the number of women and people from “underrepresented groups” in their collective technical workforce and leadership, and to sponsor student programs to reach 5 million “underrepresented” students a year. Participants agreed to share workforce data each year for an annual report showing the percentages of women and “people of color” in their collective workforce.
SWFT’s executive director, Melanie Stricklan, said the move away from the pledge does not represent a shift away from the group’s fundamental mission. “One thing we know for certain is that we need all types of people” in the space industry, said Stricklan, a former CEO of the space surveillance company Slingshot Aerospace who last year became the head of SWFT.
A “strategic initiative” started by the Aerospace Corp. and the Colorado-based Space Foundation, SWFT operates under a fiscal sponsorship agreement with the Space Foundation. The participating organizations now number 33.
SWFT’s “North Star” remains closing the “technical STEM talent gap,” Stricklan added, referring to the need to attract more talented people in general — not just underrepresented groups — to technical fields.
SWFT removed the original pledge from its website in February, but Stricklan said the removal reflected an ongoing shift that began with her hiring early last year. When asked about an op-ed under her byline that appeared in SpaceNews in September, Stricklan said the piece was part of the shift. The piece referred to an “urgent need for a diverse and skilled workorce” and called for inspiring young people, “particularly from underrepresented communities,” but it did not refer to the pledge or sharing of demographic data.
Among the diversity-related executive orders signed by President Donald Trump is one titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs was instructed to “immediately cease” a list of actions that included “Allowing or encouraging Federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin.” Attorney General Pam Bondi followed up with a memo saying that the Department of Justice will “investigate, eliminate, and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities in the private sector and in educational institutions that receive federal funds.” The term DEIA adds “accessibility” to diversity, equity and inclusion.
The SWFT website continues to show the logos of founding and member companies, including SpaceX. In January, Musk posted on X that “DEI is just another word for racism,” and in an interview clip posted to the platform in January 2024, he called DEI programs “fundamentally racist and sexist.”
Stricklan said that SWFT remains determined to reach millions of K-12 students every year, ensuring that “every corner of this country knows how to be part of this industry,” she said. A forthcoming annual report is planned with more details.
