Let me start by acknowledging how vague this post is on details. I am putting fingers to keyboard anyway. I want others, particularly young(ish) women and other misrepresented groups in academia, to hear this: don’t stay half a leader.
The past year has been a major shift in my career. To those on the outside it probably doesn’t look that way, I’m still at the same college after all – but the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, where I invested almost three years, closed in May and I’m slowly drawing out of my operational involvement in the Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications law program (my research and other facets of my work remain there!) My passion for technology and my expertise in space issues and space law remains in my research, scholarly work, and in my own career but my programmatic and administrative focus is shifting. The Program will live on past me, with a long line up of classes and world class expertise.
There is a part of me that is sad – bone deep – about starting this slow transition from having a leadership role there. Being a program administrator and a figurehead for the program with our students and alumni is something I’m good at. I’m also relieved. I’m excited for what’s next.
I still really love and care about this subject matter. And I, personally, have the full support of my broader institution. What’s the problem then? I hit a ceiling. No level of scholarship, international engagement, or funding was going to allow me full autonomous control of my work and decision making in the present structure.
I was, I am, tired of being half a leader. You reach a point where the idea of failing isn’t as scary as the idea of forever being second-in-command.
I might go down with the boat, but it’ll be my boat.
It’s never lost on me how fortunate I am to be in a field where I get the opportunity to travel and explore. I’ve been all over the US, including many NASA Centers and military bases, England, Australia, and beyond. In September 2022 I spent a week in Paris – and a whirlwind 24 hours in Luxembourg. I was so proud to be a part of the IAA History of Astronautics Symposium, a part of the larger International Astronautical Congress. I presented my paper “Science and Strength: The History of the Relationship Between Civil and Military Space Organizations in the United States.” This was my first history paper and was absolutely made better and benefited from the work of my amazing research assistant, Grant Jones, and his hard work. Nebraska LLM alum and friend Nate Johnson presented in the same symposium! It was great to see friendly faces far from home.
This was my third International Astronautical Congress, but only the second in person (virtual 2020). It’s always a wild ride. I went to so many other incredibly fascinating discussions and have been really interested to see the continued focus on low earth orbit, commercial space stations, and fears about congestion and sustainability.
My program, the Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law program, was a proud sponsor of the International Institute of Space Law Manfred Lachs Moot Court Finals and our (I am also an institute member) annual awards banquet. This international and space law competition is unique in the world, and our finals are argued to justices from the International Court of Justice. A truly great, if not intense, educational experience for these students.
I spent a fast day in Luxembourg! I am part of a US State Department Leaders program that works to send US subject matter experts out into the world to meet with groups through our embassies and brings amazing international guests likewise to American institutions. I visited the Science and Technology Center at the University of Luxembourg and then on the The Luxembourg Science Center. Two of their science communicators showed us many of their very interactive and multi generational exhibits and public showcases on things ranging from statistics to astronomy to the science of cooking. To be quite frank I found myself remarkably jealous of their jobs and asking if I could apply! Finally we met with the Luxembourg Digital Learning Hub and Women in Digital Empowerment group, who are doing amazing work to broaden tech education on the tech jobs actor – and reminded me so much I’ll be awesome work happening at Nebraska Tech Collborative. I can’t wait to continue these connections and I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have met with these groups.
The hub is located in a very cool gigantic bright red building owned by the royal Canadian bank. Outside are still these huge furnaces and this beautiful marble exterior library. It celebrates the industrial history of the area and is also a beautiful architectural feature. I didn’t grab a picture but from the top of the building you get to see Germany, Luxembourg, and France all at the same time!
In the evening I strolled from new town to old town which was essentially a large hill/cliff side. The second slide is a shot from the glass elevator that is free, public, and runs till 1 AM to help move people back-and-forth!
I did find some time for tourism, including a visit to the unreal Paris Catacombs💀 I went in with the first timed group of the day – they definitely space folks out so that it never actually felt busy in the tomb, which I’m sure is also for the safety of the remains. It was fascinating how everyone was chatty and talkative going down the tiny winding circular staircase to go underground (around 130 steps), but once everyone reached the tomb, it was immediate hushed reverence. I paid for the audio guide which is extremely helpful, but otherwise there was no official tour guide or anyone telling us to be quiet, but every person on the tour just automatically was moved, being surrounded by the remains of millions of individuals. Children aren’t allowed on the tours nor could anyone bring strollers, wheelchairs, or walkers and backpacks had to be worn on your front. It was not as claustrophobic as I feared, but then we were in the publicly open tunnels that I believe are probably the largest and the safest.
The experience was a lot more unnerving and moving than I expected it to be. It only took about 40 minutes and was one of the coolest things I did on the trip.
I also made time for a run/walk by Notre Dame and the The Louvre. The Louvre, I’m sure, is a remarkable experience and I’m glad I got to run outside it and see the pyramid, but my trip (mostly working) did not give me enough time to wait in those lines and explore that gigantic museum. Instead I hit up the smaller Rodin Museum and gardens. Magic. The Thinker, The Kiss, The Gates of Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy. I would highly recommend it as a faster, but still beautiful, art experience in Paris.
Finally, I also went on a conference sponsored tour of the River Seine. Just, well, chef’s kiss.
The Dean announced it so I guess it’s true – after almost three years growing and launching the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, I’ll be transitioning out of the Center to lead the creation and development of the University of NebraskaCollegeof Law’s first externship program! I will take the helm as ‘Director of Externships’ at the end of August, 2022. An externship is a practical learning tool where a student earns academic credit while working.
This position will leverage student and faculty experiences with our former ad hoc approach to externships to build a new program, a new curriculum, and new relationships with companies, firms, agencies, and organizations across the U.S. and the world. I can not wait to get working!
Connecting students with opportunities has always been my favorite work. This is a chance to devote 100% of my time to that; a chance to utilize my skills as a connector and networker directly in service to our students.
I will retain some strategic oversight of the Nebraska Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program, working along side its other leaders and our new Associate Director. My current grants and research responsibilities will also be a part of my ongoing work for and with the space program (satellites, you are my first love).
Launching a research center in the middle of a pandemic was an unreal experience that tested me. I look forward to the creative projects I know will flow from the Center and hope I’m leaving behind a structure and culture where the staff can flourish and thrive.
I present a series of selfies I took a few weeks back on the eve of a big professional goal…. that didn’t happen.
Friends, I fail. I fail a lot.
I want to remember that failing and resilience is part of the journey. It’s been my experience that many of my woman identifying peers are perfectionists. We’re doers, we’re achievers, we’re hustlers. But here’s the thing: that’s impossible to maintain. Failing hard and failing often means you’re doing something.
My career and volunteer service has increasingly demanded that I continue to develop management skills. I am not alone in this, particularly as people guide their work through the pandemic and the (maybe, kinda, sorta?) post-pandemic world. There are two ways to approach this. As usual, the first is to do nothing and rely solely on instincts. In my estimation, this has a low probability of success. Even if it finds success, it has a low probability for fostering loyalty from a team or organizational growth. Few people, or at least myself, have baked in instincts for our managing the work of others and scaling organizations.
These are not the sorts of things our ancestors prepared us for. Knowing I should run from an attack? Baked in. Finding cover during cold and wet weather? Baked in. Investigating things that make us curious? Even that, baked in. Knowing how to position our donor portfolio to attract more foundations? Needs to be taught.
So then, we’re left with ‘doing the work.’ During the pandemic I took on managing a bigger team, continued to supervise a large group of graduate students, and attempted to develop a new center almost entirely on Zoom. I turned to leaders I admire for guidance – including Molly Brummond’s New.Now.Next. women’s leadership cohorts. In these sessions we did a few things, but one of the most notable exercises helped me develop tools to fall back on when things are tough.
It’s easy to lead when everyone is performing excellently, things are on a roll, and growth is thriving. Sadly, those sweet spots rarely pop up on their own and rarely live long – not because people aren’t loyal and talented – but because life is life. As in, life happens.
Molly challenged our group to develop our own leadership statements and walked us through that process. This statement is my guiding light during decision-making and going into awkward or difficult conversations:
Am I being true to these ideals?
These are my values, am I following them?
This is how I think about leadership, and is the kind of leader I can be at my best.
I started with the values I developed working through Brene Brown’s work on leadership. These are the core parts of who we are and what we rely on. For me, these are:
Creativity
Initiative
Dreaming and doing, baybee.
From there, Molly walked us through a series of questions pushing us to think about our core beliefs about success. In the end, I got to this, which I (such a nerd) made into this desktop image:
I believe everyone has something to contribute.
My attitude will be nimble and I will be adaptable. My words will be reliable and clear, but gentle.
I will lead by celebrating our differences, initiating opportunity, and seeking creative ideas.
I believe my enthusiasm for new and different opportunities is my best resource.
I expect myself to stay calm, kind, and collaborative in situations where it is easy to let frustration, judgement, apathy, or fear lead my actions.
A message (and reminder to self) to all my mid-career friends in similar situations:
When I was early on in my career I did many free speaking gigs and projects that were additional to the requirements of my job. This was good! I was new, I was building up my credentials and expertise, and my reputation. For certain causes and groups I still work for free and of course certain events are within of my regular salary and work.
More broadly though, the most important thing that I’ve taken out of the last 2 to 3 years, and a phrase I want us all to practice saying is “I can’t do this unless there is compensation for the additional hours.”
The letter being shared in our Program’s 2019-2020 Annual Report and with our alumni this September.
As our team put together this report and reviewed the full gamut of events and activities we completed this fall, I felt a new wave of loss over all the great plans we had for spring 2020 that were, of course, cancelled. When the world stopped this March and all the “out of an abundance of caution” cancellation emails started rolling in, academic programs everywhere were suddenly forced to change course. Of all the losses and pain that COVID-19 has caused globally cancelled conferences and academic events are, with out doubt, some of the least important. Acknowledging that, it was still hard to cancel work we had put our hearts and souls into. There was so much I looked forward to sharing with you here that is missing – and that hurts.
Even more seriously, the rug was pulled out from under students everywhere. I am proud of how Nebraska Law responded and we did our best to support students and employees who suddenly found themselves learning and working from home. From “old school” efforts like student phone trees, to more modern efforts in helping students navigating Zoom classrooms, we took efforts to the next level to retain our community.
Did we do it perfectly? No. Spring 2020 was an unprecedented time, and it continues to be so as I write this. There is no blueprint to help us establish best practices for building community when our community can’t be together in person. The past six months have taught us a lot of lessons – and while I hope we don’t have another occasion to apply them in the same context, opportunities to learn always provide opportunities for gratitude.
That feeling is the one I want to leave you with: gratitude. I could outline our response plans, discuss how our online program made us uniquely suited to make the switch, tell you what it felt like to watch our students graduate and move away without being able to hug them, but instead I want to thank our community for rising up to meet the challenges we faced this year.
When all the networking mixers, airport connections, conferences, and “hustle” is stripped away, what is left is the heart of the mission, the research, and the community. This has been a year for introspection, creativity, empathy, and making space for new ideas. While this isn’t the year I would’ve wished for, there is space for gratitude for what this year has been.
To our alumni, friends, and loved ones who have been impacted by COVID-19, our hearts and thoughts are with you.
Elsbeth Magilton Executive Director of Technology, Security, and Space Law Initiatives Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program Nebraska Governance and Technology Center
Are you a working parent of young children passionate about your career? Sucks, huh?
I kid, but I get questions about career balance relatively often and I have funneled my advice into three key realities I try to live by. Because this is the internet, I’m going to preface this post by saying I’m not comparing outside-of-the-home working parents to working-from-home or stay-at-home parents. I wouldn’t dare enter that corner of internet comments. Rather just the self-derived advice I’ve come to live by that I’ve articulated primarily while on panels or speaking to recently graduated alumni (or panicked pregnant people).
(1) Guilt is not a merit badge. You don’t have to wear it. Do not pretend you don’t love travel or your job to ensure people know you also love your kid(s). It is OK to simultaneously love your job and your kid(s).
(2) You don’t have to say yes to everything to feel successful – professionally or with parent groups, sport teams, and schools. Edit ruthlessly for meaning and purpose to your life.
Stop equating “exhausted” with “successful” (I’m working on this one big time).
(3) Frame all professional decisions with the understanding that no matter how indispensable you are at work, if you get hit by a bus they will ultimately replace you.
Your family and friends can’t.
Finally, most of these are true whether you have kids or not. Balance is not something achieved and then archived. It’s a widely flailing place we rarely hit consistently. The best we can do is keep our feet firmly planted on the ground, stop trying to “keep up” with those around you, and do the best quality work you can do: at your office and in your home.
2018 was a year of going, building, hustling, and learning. From speaking at the Museum of Flight in Seattle in January to launching our NASA project in DC this fall, exploring my own state, trusting my expertise and my scholarly pursuits, my first sprint triathlon, my fourth official half marathon, and high rising ropes courses. The bed rock to all of this was a growing and deepening relationship with my husband and our children, who spent a lot of time camping in a tent this year.
In 2019 I want to do more staying. Not necessarily literally “staying,” as I still have to travel some (but hopefully less) but focusing on quality over quantity and understanding that “more” doesn’t always have to be the goal. Last year I hustled for my career, this year I want to be strategic and mindful. I want to sit and be present with my husband and my kids more often.
I want to focus less on “impressive” and more on impact.
I want to continue to spend lots of time outside and sleeping in the tent.
Love and light to all if you! Make 2019 a good one and honor whatever experiences 2018 laid at your feet.
My husband and children take in the Mt. Cutler hiking trail during a recent visit to Colorado Springs – I was there for business, but built in some family vacation before and after.
My phone is pretty old, in modern terms anyway. I’m multiple iphone generations behind. The new OS’s take more space and I have to comb through and dump or delete things to keep storage free. This constant review of my “data” as it were brings something into focus… beyond just, “I should probably upgrade my phone.”
In combing through my gallery tonight to make storage space, I realized that one month ago today I was leaving Austin to head into San Antonio. A week prior to that I was at NASA headquarters and then helping to run one of the largest space law specific conferences in the country – where we announced that we’d been awarded a NASA pilot program grant. Since then I’ve driven rural highways in Kansas, worked with students and attended the American Ballet Theater in New York City, and enjoyed the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. I took my kids trick or treating this week. Tonight I read them 7 books and I rocked my baby girl while I sang to her. This month I’ll be in my place, showing students rural Nebraska and showcasing the critical telecom and broadband infrastructure that keep modern agriculture alive. In December I’m back to DC. In January I’m speaking in front of colleagues from law schools around the country in New Orleans. And so on. I’m always in motion. I visit Universities and military bases all over the U.S., and soon abroad.
I don’t “have it all.” That’s a cliche proverb by now, but I’m “having all of it.” Every last bit. Lately, when someone casually says “how is it going?” I’ve been responding, “I’m exhausted.” It is true, but it’s not complete. I’m taking a moment now to reflect on my infinite gratitude. My position has taken me all over this country in the past six years, but my thankfulness extends beyond travel. I’m having my life. I’m in the driver’s seat.
While in the Chicago airport I received an email that several of my co-workers at the law college had nominated me for an internal award for those who show dedicated service to building our institution; for dedication to our students and our mission. Our Dean, a leader who I respect and invests in his team, selected me from these nominations. Sitting in a dirty airport terminal on a Friday night, away from my kids, cleaning discarded gum off my bags (ugh), I had tears streaming down my face. They believe in me – because I believe in Nebraska.
The prairie is in my bones. I love where I am from, though I didn’t always. When I was 18 if you’d told me I’d be buying a house and raising my family just one zip code over from where I grew up I’d have been horrified. Foolish girl, bless her. She was impulsive, focused on fun and attention, and well, didn’t get into many schools. Nebraska held her. I found my undergraduate education at a small local liberal arts school. I could have left for law school, I got into several schools, but we didn’t. I had reasons, talking points, but I really couldn’t tell you why my husband (then fiance/boyfriend) and I didn’t take that opportunity to move. Educated here, living here, raising my kids here, the open horizon is just a part of who I am. My children are having a picturesque life, and I’m more than a little obsessed with their awesomeness.
I have a career that is growing and changing and taking me to places and opportunities I never anticipated. I’m sometimes restless, being human and all, and around that time some unusual and surprising thing comes along that keeps me engaged and growing where I’m planted.
Life isn’t perfect. I’m tired. I gained all my weight back from my last weight loss (shrug). I forget to do things. Emails sometimes go unanswered. I put my foot in my mouth almost daily. I drink too much cheap wine (see also; weight gain). I sacrifice things I don’t want to – I’m not the best friend, sister, daughter, wife, co-worker, or mother I know I could be if I could any one of things the attention it deserves. I absolutely miss events and important moments in my children’s life because I’m working (that one is the real knife in the gut).
But here it is – I’m having it all of it.
All of life. The excitement of professional growth. The deep bonds of building a family with a partner I cherish. The fulfillment of raising children… the patience and tolerance built from raising children. The ups the downs, the joy.
All of this, one zip code over from where I started. That, right now, is something I’m in awe of.
Elsbeth Magilton 
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