Josephine Santiago-Bond

Josephine Santiago-Bond serves as the Commercial Crew Office Chief for Safety and Mission Assurance at John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where she manages a multi-center workforce responsible for ensuring crew and vehicle safety for human spaceflight missions. Under her leadership, SMA support of crewed mission certification, launch readiness, and ongoing mission assurance improvements has contributed to NASA’s SpaceX Crew‑7 through Crew‑12 rotation and NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test missions.

Experience

An accomplished systems engineering expert with nearly two decades of NASA experience, Santiago-Bond held several senior leadership roles at NASA Kennedy from 2016 to 2023, including chief of the Institutional Division, Advanced Engineering Development Branch, and Flight Systems Engineering Branch. In these roles, she established new engineering branches, guided large multidisciplinary teams, implemented spaceport safety initiatives, and helped shape NASA Kennedy’s modern hybrid workforce model.

Santiago-Bond was selected in 2022 to serve as Acting Deputy Director of SMA, providing executive leadership for mission assurance activities across NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems, Launch Services, Commercial Crew, International Space Station, and Gateway Programs, as well as Kennedy’s Exploration Research & Technology directorate. In her role, she represented NASA Kennedy in senior reviews, strategic planning efforts, and agencywide technical authority forums.

Arriving at NASA Kennedy in 2004 as a graduate cooperative intern supporting electronics testing, Santiago-Bond went on to serve as a systems engineer on lunar projects such as the LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and the Resource Prospector payload at NASA Kennedy. Before that, she contributed to new technologies, ground systems design, and operations for the Space Shuttle Program and Ares I‑X rocket.

Awards

Santiago-Bond’s accomplishments have been recognized by NASA and NASA Kennedy through numerous honors, including Distinguished Performance Awards, Spaceflight Awareness Team Awards, multiple Kennedy and NASA Honor Awards, and several Space Act Awards. She is a graduate of NASA’s Systems Engineering Leadership and the KSC Senior Leadership Development Programs, the Foundations of Influence, Relationships, Success, and Teamwork Program, and the Executive Leadership Impact Group’s Women’s Leadership Laboratory.

Education

Santiago-Bond earned her Bachelor of Science in electronics and communications engineering from the University of the Philippines, Quezon City, and her Master of Science in electrical engineering from South Dakota State University in Brookings, where she served as a teaching and research assistant and graduated with honors. She also holds a graduate certificate in space systems engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, which she completed with honors.

Personal

Born in the United States and raised in the Philippines, Santiago‑Bond is a sought‑after speaker for national, international, and social media events, as well as a published research author and volunteer editor of a book on diversity. With support from her husband, parents, mentors, and coaches, she devotes her time to education and outreach, driven by a personal mission to inspire girls to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math careers and to broaden minority representation across NASA. She prioritizes a healthy work‑life balance and cherishes time with her family, including her 12‑year‑old son.

Biography last updated March 2026