Manager, Applications Client Support Office, NASA
Mrs. Jennifer Scott Williams was born in Oklahoma City. As an Air Force dependent, she moved around often, which contributed to her ability to adapt to new environments quickly. Jennifer attended Spelman College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she received dual bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering via the Atlanta University Center Dual Degree Engineering Program in 2001.
Upon graduation, Jennifer moved to Houston to work for NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) Mission Operations as a space shuttle flight controller in the Instrumentation and Communications Group (INCO). While there, she obtained eight certifications and supported 24 Shuttle flights, three as lead INCO. Concurrently, she earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Houston.
Thereafter, Jennifer took on a rotational opportunity in the JSC Office of Education as the minority university research and education program manager, where she managed eight Johnson Space Center programs and a team of four people for the benefit of providing research opportunities to minority students in higher education.
Upon returning to Flight Operations, she was selected as the communications operations lead for the Boeing Commercial Crew Mission Operations Team. She served as the ops focal for all communications and tracking, operational flight instrumentation, commanding and telemetry development activities. She also assisted Boeing engineers with display development, design, fault detection, testing, and operations concept development for Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner spacecraft.
In 2015, she accepted a position with the International Space Station (ISS) Program as a research portfolio manager (RPM). She managed the Life Sciences portfolio at Ames Research Center, which covered mission integration and operation of several NASA-sponsored research projects.
In 2020, Jennifer was selected as branch chief of the application’s client support office. In this role, she manages a team of RPM’s responsible for enabling technology demonstrations, STEM projects, commercial payloads, and external payloads for launch and operation aboard and returning from the ISS.