Mary Ellen Weber

Mary Ellen Weber is an American executive, scientist, aviator, speaker, and a former NASA astronaut.

Dr. Mary Ellen Weber is founder of Stellar Strategies, LLC, consulting in strategic communications and in strategies for high-stakes operations. She also serves on the NASA Advisory Council Committee on Technology and Innovation, the board that advises NASA on its future technologies; on the Board of Trustees for Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital; on the Board of Directors for Stellar Generation, Inc., a startup company focused on producing ultraclean affordable fuel; on the Board of Directors and as Vice President for the Association of Space Explorers, the only professional society of flown Astronauts, and on the Board of Advisors for Uplift Education, a high-performing charter school system. In addition, she is an accomplished keynote speaker with over twenty years experience.

Ms. Weber was a NASA Astronaut for ten years and a veteran of two spaceflights. She flew in 1995 aboard Discovery to launch a communications satellite and again in 2000 aboard Atlantis to construct the Space Station. She was among the youngest to fly in space and she logged over 450 hours. She also held key positions in space operations and at NASA Headquarters in commercialization, communications, and program oversight, and she received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. She resigned from NASA in December 2002.

More recently, Ms. Weber was vice president for nine years at UT Southwestern Medical Center—a $1.6 billion internationally renowned research center, hospital complex, and medical school in Dallas—responsible for strategies that successfully increased annual state and federal appropriations from $100 million to $170 million.

Ms. Weber received her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Berkeley, an M.B.A. from SMU, and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Purdue. In aviation, she is an active skydiver—with 5,000 jumps, seventeen National Championship medals and a world record—and is an instrument-rated pilot.