Denise Thaller

Denise Thaller is the acting assistant administrator for NASA’s Office of Strategic Infrastructure (OSI). She provides leadership related to the management and operations of the OSI enterprise. OSI includes the Environmental Management Division (EMD), the Facilities and Real Estate Division (FRED), the Logistics Management Division (LMD), and the Space Environment Testing Management Office (SETMO).  

As part of the Mission Support Directorate, OSI extends across NASA’s centers to effectively manage the agency’s broad portfolio of infrastructure, assets, and capabilities. The office works to make sure NASA can effectively meet mission requirements while maintaining affordability, efficiency, and sustainability. Thaller supports the assistant administrator for OSI and NASA’s key priorities. Under Thaller’s leadership, OSI has streamlined its enterprise acquisition process and built program health dashboards to provide objective evidence of how OSI’s programs are operating at the enterprise level. 

Thaller joined OSI in October 2021. She previously served as the director of EMD providing leadership and guidance on environmental issues at NASA. She provided oversight and management of EMD’s work to advance environmental stewardship and sustainability, the development of policies for environmental planning, and resource preservation.  

Thaller has over 35 years of experience at NASA. She joined KSC in 1988 as a pyrotechnic systems engineer, and later, a launch accessories system engineer in the Shuttle Mechanical Systems Division. In 1996, she transferred to the Environmental Branch as an air program engineer and became the lead of the Permitting and Compliance group in 1999. In 2008, Thaller became the chief of the KSC Environmental Management Branch and was promoted to chief of the Medical and Environmental Management Division in 2012.

Thaller has a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas and a Master of Business Administration from the Florida Institute of Technology.