Maddie was born and raised in Brevard County, Florida, about 30 minutes from Kennedy Space Center. From a young age Maddie remembers visiting the space center with her grandfather, who was a Radio Frequency Engineer for General Electric in the 1960s on the Saturn V program. 

Though exposed to it from a young age, Maddie was not initially interested in aerospace. She attended Edgewood Jr/Sr High School in Merritt Island, Florida, where she developed a strong passion for the arts and was avid participant in theatre, choir, and drawing/painting.

Though her passions were centralized around the arts, Maddie always had an affinity for math and science. After high school, she enrolled as a Civil Engineering student at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida as a means to merge her artistic creativity with her passion for STEM.

Maddie’s introduction into the aerospace industry came with her first internship in Civil Engineering, where she was hired as a Civil Engineering Intern at RS&H, a national architecture and engineering firm with a vast range of engineering contracts supporting many different industries. Maddie worked at RS&H’s aerospace and defense office in Merritt Island, where she worked on a wide variety of projects across Kennedy Space Center, including designs supporting NASA’s SLS Rocket. It was through this internship that Maddie discovered a deep passion for all things space.

In her junior year of college, Maddie was hired as a Civil Engineering Intern once again, but this time working for United Launch Alliance’s Engineering & Infrastructure team at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. In this role, she worked on projects supporting the maintenance of facility infrastructure for Atlas and Delta rockets, while also supporting the development of new site infrastructure to support the new Vulcan rocket.

Maddie adored working in the launch environment and was able to expand her launch site knowledge with a second United Launch Alliance internship at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California the following year. Similar to her previous internship, she supported the Engineering & Infrastructure team in development of new site infrastructure for the Vulcan Program.

Maddie graduated from the University of South Florida in December of 2021 with her bachelor’s in civil engineering, and in January of 2022 began work as a Structural Engineer for ULA’s Engineering & Infrastructure team in Cape Canaveral. She spent two and a half years gaining valuable, hands-on experience in analysis and design engineering continuing to develop and maintain launch pads and integration facilities on both coasts in support of the Atlas, Delta, and Vulcan programs.

In March of this year, Maddie decided to take her United Launch Alliance career in a new direction when she accepted a new role as a Strength Analyst Engineer here in Denver working exclusively on analysis for the future upgrades to the Vulcan rocket.