Jeff Krukin’s space career began with boyhood evenings in the back yard gazing at the Moon. He has been an IBM Systems Engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Executive Director of the Space Frontier Foundation, Chairman of ProSpace and award-winning Director of its annual March Storm Congressional lobbying event, and now an aerospace consultant.
He provides leadership, marketing & communications, strategic planning, and business and economic development services. Clients have included Caterpillar, Blue Force Technologies, Strategy Analytics, North Carolina State University, SpaceWorks Engineering, the North Carolina Aerospace Alliance, Presence Displays, and the State of North Carolina.
He has been a frequent conference speaker in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and has been interviewed for newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.
Jeff is a published author since 1979, and most recently wrote the second edition of his industry primer, NewSpace Nation: America’s Emerging Entrepreneurial Space Industry. He was the lead author of The Aero/Space Economy in North Carolina: A Preliminary Assessment of Current Performance and Future Prospects, and a key contributor to North Carolina’s Strategic Plan for Workforce Development in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries. He has written numerous articles, Op-Eds, and white papers, as well as book chapters.
NASA and NOAA’s Office of Space Commercialization have requested his participation in their strategic planning efforts. Current organizational involvement includes the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Commercial Space Group, and the Suborbital Transportation Working Group of the US Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC).
He created The Human-Space Connection®concept to re-frame the conversation about space exploration within a human-centric context. was Executive Director of the Space Frontier Foundation (SFF), from January 2005 to December 2007. Jeff became an SFF board member in 1995. In 1997, he became a ProSpace Board Member and Director of the 1998 March Storm lobbying event, for which he received the 1998 ProSpace Activist of the Year Award. In 1999 he became Vice President and continued as Director of March Storm. He became Chairman in 2002 and served until 2004.
In 2012, Jeff was nominated and accepted for membership in the prestigious Explorers Club.