Speaker

Mindy Howard

Mindy Howard is a speaker and astronaut in training who helps organisations perform under pressure when goals are ambitious and uncertain. With her experience in NASA selection and international leadership roles, she knows what mental resilience requires. She creates sharper focus, perseverance and ownership. With her energetic and personal style, she makes extreme performance directly applicable to the workplace.

Rate indication: Price on request
Available for booking as: Speaker
Languages: Dutch English

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About Mindy Howard

The ambition to become an astronaut has been a common thread throughout Mindy Howard’s life. She obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering, specialising in Human Factors Engineering, in the United States and earned her PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology. Out of thousands of candidates, she was selected by NASA as one of the final 200 and received the status “Highly Qualified Astronaut Candidate.” The final selection did not follow, but her dream never left her. With a rare combination of technical knowledge, leadership experience and mental resilience, she decided to create her own path to space and open the door for others.

Mindy Howard as a Speaker

Mindy Howard knows how to move her audience with her personal story about perseverance, courage and taking new paths. As a speaker, she connects complex themes such as space travel and mental preparation with universal insights about leadership, collaboration and ambition. She speaks with both authority and accessibility about training your brain under extreme pressure, female role models in science and the importance of inclusion within innovation. Through her open, expert and passionate way of speaking, she offers her audience not only new knowledge, but also motivation and perspective. She has previously appeared on Discovery Channel and TEDx and is a highly sought after commentator and guest lecturer.

Career

Mindy began her career at Royal Dutch Shell, where she held various roles as a human factors engineer, HSE manager, sustainability manager, strategy leader and D&I expert. She worked in more than 35 countries, often in extreme conditions, and developed a deep respect for diversity in people and environments. These experiences gave her a strong foundation in leadership and culture change.

After her time in the oil industry, she made a radical change of direction. Mindy underwent commercial astronaut training and founded Inner Space Training: the world’s first mental preparation programme for commercial astronauts. She became Director at Blue Abyss Ltd., the first commercial training centre for space travellers, and will make her first orbital flight with Titans Space Industries in 2029. In 2030, she will travel to the Titans Space Station.

She also founded the Cosmic Girls Foundation, through which she inspires and trains young girls around the world for a future in space travel. Through initiatives such as “6 Girls, 6 Continents”, she helps new talent make the leap upwards, sometimes literally.

Dr Mindy Howard is the author of Blast Off! Train Like an Astronaut for Success on Earth and lives her mission every day: helping others push boundaries, on Earth and beyond.

Themes

Sessions

In times of a pandemic, many people are forced to work remotely. The ultimate experts in this field are astronauts, because that is what they do. Mindy Howard is a future commercial astronaut and has already completed many psychological training programmes for this.

Due to the coronavirus crisis, the majority of the population finds itself in a new “atmosphere”. Mindy Howard knows better than anyone how to deal with a new reality. The lessons she learned from her space training can be translated into new insights and inspiration that are applicable to everyone. We cannot immediately change the situation we are in now, but we can ease the pain if we become more mentally resilient.

Mindy Howard speaks about following her dream of becoming an astronaut. For years, she followed the path that others advised her to take in order to become an astronaut. She thought rationally and did everything she could to achieve success, unfortunately without results. The moment Mindy Howard decided to listen more to her heart, doors started to open for her.

She was asked to become an astronaut trainer for a competition and was invited to go into space. In 2023, her dream will come true.

Howard’s message is about using both our rational and intuitive sides to achieve success, because both are necessary. And learning what it means to go within, become still and listen to what your own inner wisdom is telling you.

Discover together with Mindy Howard how to achieve success by listening to your emotional side in combination with your rational ability.