Maddie was born and raised in Brevard County, Florida, about 30 minutes from Kennedy Space Center. From a young age Maddie remembers visiting the space center with her grandfather, who was a Radio Frequency Engineer for General Electric in the 1960s on the Saturn V program.

Though exposed to it from a young age, Maddie was not initially interested in aerospace. She attended Edgewood Jr/Sr High School in Merritt Island, Florida, where she developed a strong passion for the arts and was avid participant in theatre, choir, and drawing/painting.

Though her passions were centralized around the arts, Maddie always had an affinity for math and science. After high school, she enrolled as a Civil Engineering student at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida as a means to merge her artistic creativity with her passion for STEM.

Maddie’s introduction into the aerospace industry came with her first internship in Civil Engineering, where she was hired as a Civil Engineering Intern at RS&H, a national architecture and engineering firm with a vast range of engineering contracts supporting many different industries. Maddie worked at RS&H’s aerospace and defense office in Merritt Island, where she worked on a wide variety of projects across Kennedy Space Center, including designs supporting NASA’s SLS Rocket. It was through this internship that Maddie discovered a deep passion for all things space.

In her junior year of college, Maddie was hired as a Civil Engineering Intern once again, but this time working for United Launch Alliance’s Engineering & Infrastructure team at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. In this role, she worked on projects supporting the maintenance of facility infrastructure for Atlas and Delta rockets, while also supporting the development of new site infrastructure to support the new Vulcan rocket.

Maddie adored working in the launch environment and was able to expand her launch site knowledge with a second United Launch Alliance internship at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California the following year. Similar to her previous internship, she supported the Engineering & Infrastructure team in development of new site infrastructure for the Vulcan Program.

Maddie graduated from the University of South Florida in December of 2021 with her bachelor’s in civil engineering, and in January of 2022 began work as a Structural Engineer for ULA’s Engineering & Infrastructure team in Cape Canaveral. She spent two and a half years gaining valuable, hands-on experience in analysis and design engineering continuing to develop and maintain launch pads and integration facilities on both coasts in support of the Atlas, Delta, and Vulcan programs.

In March of this year, Maddie decided to take her United Launch Alliance career in a new direction when she accepted a new role as a Strength Analyst Engineer here in Denver working exclusively on analysis for the future upgrades to the Vulcan rocket.

Today on the Career Conversation Podcast, we are joined by Bre Johnson, the Regional Sales Leader for Cisco. Cisco, a tech giant in cybersecurity, networking, cloud, and collaboration, is where Bre has carved out her remarkable career path, one pivot at a time.

From her active high school years in Colorado, balancing sports, social life, and restaurant jobs, Bre learned early on the art of rolling with the punches. Her initial plans in applied kinesiology at CU Boulder shifted gears dramatically towards a double major in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology after an inspiring encounter with the world of social sciences.

Adversity struck in college with the sudden passing of her mother. This brought Bre back home to Fort Collins, where she continued her education at Colorado State University. Here, she thrived academically and personally, despite the unexpected turns, from leading an honor society to conducting impactful research on Hurricane Katrina, to studying abroad in Sydney.

The real world presented its own challenges, with Bre facing the 2008 recession head-on, transforming obstacles into opportunities. Networking and perseverance led her from serving tables post-graduation to breaking into the corporate world. She quickly rose through the ranks in tech sales, from Lexmark to the high-stakes environment of medical sales, and back into tech with Cisco, where she's now a leader in the public sector.

Bre’s story is a testament to the power of pivoting, networking, and embracing change. She's become an integral part of her community, mentoring the next generation of tech enthusiasts, and serving on boards that merge education, technology, and business.

www.cisco.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco

Girls Who Code | Home

Home - Girls in Tech | Women are the future in tech

Currently serving as Commander of the 367th Recruiting Squadron in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Lt. Col. Somann is responsible for managing the recruiting activities of ten flights and 82 personnel, spanning a vast 450,000 square mile area over eight states in the western United States. The squadron's mission is to inspire, engage, and recruit future airmen to deliver airpower for America.

Lt. Col Somann boasts an impressive career in the Air Force, having held diverse leadership roles in Air Force Acquisitions, instruction, and recruitment. He has contributed his expertise as a staff officer at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, and as an instructor and recruiter at both the U.S. Air Force Academy and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Notably, he has overseen the operations of a team of approximately 600 personnel as the Director of Operations for the Air Force Research Laboratory's most substantial division, responsible for Human Factors research and development.

With a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology and a Doctorate of Philosophy in electrical engineering from Purdue University, specializing in biomedical research, Lt. Col. Somann possesses an unmatched level of engineering expertise. In his previous role as the Deputy , Head of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U.S. Air Force Academy, he oversaw the education of 1,400 students annually.