Lara E. Kearney

Lara E. Kearney serves as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC).  She is responsible for ensuring the overall financial health of JSC, managing the center resources and processes necessary to achieve the Agency’s goals and objectives. Ms. Kearney oversees the center’s financial operations, including budgeting, finance, accounting, business systems, financial audits and internal controls, and cost-estimating activities. She provides oversight of JSC’s $5 billion annual budget, leading the civil servant and contractor business personnel that enable the effective management, control, and reporting of the government’s assets.

Ms. Kearney has over thirty-three years of experience building and operating human spaceflight hardware.  She has hands-on experience and management expertise in every phase of flight, from hardware proof of concept and preliminary design through testing, certification, production, and flight operations.  Prior to her CFO duties, Ms. Kearney served as the Manager of the EVA and Human Surface Mobility Program, where she was responsible for the daily management of NASA, contractor, private industry, and international partner contributions to spacesuits, lunar rovers and lunar surface integration.  Prior to that, she served as the Deputy Manager for the Gateway Program, where she was responsible for the technical and programmatic performance of the Gateway Elements.  She has also served as the Orion Crew and Service Module Manager and the Constellation EVA Systems Project Manager, where she managed the entire range of technical, business, and administrative activities of those organizations.  In addition, Ms. Kearney has served in JSC’s Human Health and Performance and Engineering Directorates. 

Ms. Kearney has a B.S. and an M.E., both in Biomedical Engineering, from Texas A&M University, and an Executive MBA from the Naval Postgraduate School.  She is a Federal Acquisition Certified Program and Project Manager (FAC-P/PM) and a former Project Management Professional (PMP)®.  She is the recipient of the NASA’s Spaceflight Awareness Leadership Award, Silver Snoopy Award and Outstanding Leadership Medal, as well as the Presidential Rank Award and the 2022 NASA Federal Engineer of the Year Award.