Ellen Ochoa (NASA) - Leadership Lessons from Space

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Business, Life Lessons, Creativity, Startups, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Education, Stanford University, Leadership, Challenges, Journey, Culture, Etl, Innovation, Founders, Stanford, Entrepreneurship

4.5 • 740 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ellen Ochoa is the first Hispanic woman astronaut to go into space, serving on four space shuttle missions. She served from 2013 to 2018 as the first Hispanic director and the second female director of Johnson Space Center. She earned her MS in electrical engineering and her PhD in electrical engineering with a focus in optical information processing from Stanford. In this conversation with Adjunct Lecturer Emily Ma, Ochoa shares insights she learned in space and on Earth about exploration, resilience, purpose, and teamwork.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at the Stanford School of Engineering, and published on eCorner by STVP. STVP empowers aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series,
0:03.0	brought to you by Stanford E-Corner and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
0:07.0	Hello everyone, my name is Emily Ma and I am an adjunct lecturer for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program
0:13.0	and welcome back to the Entrepreneurals Thought Leaders series, which is hosted by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and Basis,
0:20.0	the Business Association
0:21.2	for Stanford Entrepreneurial Students.
0:23.8	Today I could not be more thrilled to welcome back Ellen Achoa to campus.
0:29.3	It is such a pleasure and such an honor.
0:31.1	Thank you.
0:32.1	I will share a quick bio for her and she brings so much specialness from her time at NASA that will dive
0:41.8	right in. Okay, so quick intro. Ellen Ochoa is the first Hispanic woman astronaut to go into
0:48.2	space, flying on two missions aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, STS 66, and STS 110 as a mission specialist,
0:56.0	payload commander, robotic arm operator, and scientist.
1:00.0	She then served as the first Hispanic director and second female director of Johnson Space Center from 2013 to 2018.
1:07.0	Dr. Choa has her BS in physics from San Diego State University, her MS in electrical engineering
1:13.3	from Stanford University, and her PhD in electrical engineering in optical information processing,
1:19.1	also from Stanford.
1:20.4	She holds three patents for optical systems inventions.
1:23.9	And as I said in our first class, she is a classical floutist, and she was not only the first astronaut to play a musical instrument in space, but she was the first one to play a flute in low Earth orbit. How fun. Welcome, Ellen. Thank you. I know you're going to start with a video, so I'm going to queue it up for you. And then you wanted to talk through the video.
1:47.0	Yeah, well, let me give a little bit of introduction first.
1:50.0	First, very glad to be here and see all of you.
1:52.0	Hope you'll have an opportunity to ask some questions.
	...

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