How It Began, How It’s Going: Johnson Space Center Edition – NASA

If you ask Johnson Space Center employees why they work for NASA, many will tell you that it’s always been their dream. For others, landing a job at NASA was an unexpected stop on their career path. Here’s a look at where five members of the Johnson team worked before at NASA and how they’re helping advance the agency’s mission today.

Michelle Wood

Wood worked as an American Sign Language interpreter before joining NASA about seven years ago. Today, he is an operational support officer flight controller and instructor at the Mission Control Center.

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Warnick Miller

Miller has been an attorney in Johnson’s Office of General Counsel for 12 years. Previously, he served as an administrative law judge for Social Security and adjudicated disability cases.

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Celeste Budot Hunter

Budwit-Hunter was a technical writer in the oil and gas industry before earning a master’s degree in family therapy. She worked for the Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (now the Council on Recovery) and then as a private school counselor for students with learning disabilities. She returned to technical writing, starting a private family therapy practice. After years of treatment and recovery following a cancer diagnosis, Budwit-Hunter applied to become an editor in the flight operations director’s procedures group. She is now the group’s lead editor and is training to become a book manager.

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Don Walker

Walker worked as a freelancer in television production before joining the Johnson team 38 years ago. Today, Walker is an engineering technician in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, the master control function for the center’s television operations. does

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Donna Coyle

Coyle earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations before switching gears to work as an expediter in the oil and gas industry. The role involves working with cross-functional teams to ensure smooth and timely delivery of equipment and materials to job sites. After visiting the sites and seeing how equipment, piping and steel are made, she was inspired to go back to school to become an engineer. Coyle’s grandfather worked at NASA during the Apollo missions, and he decided to follow in his footsteps. She joined the Johnson team in 2021 as a crew-time engineer, analyzing astronaut time as a resource to aid decision-making before and during International Space Station missions.

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