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Lifestyle

Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom: Space entrepreneur


Inspirations is a new Lifestyle series on GMA News Online that features accomplished Filipinos who are successfully pursuing their passions and living their dreams. As the series title suggests, these video profiles hope to spark ideas among readers who are looking for new directions in life and wondering how they will they get there. It is fitting that the pilot episode, on the occasion of International Women's Day, tells the story of a gutsy Pinay who wants to become the first Filipino in space. Based in Mountain View, California, Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom recently returned to the Philippines to attend her sister's wedding. GMA News Online caught up with Emeline before she went back to the US. It was a risky move but she knew she had to make a choice. Could she give up a career teaching Physics to pursue her dream of going to outer space? Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom looks back to that crucial turning point in her life, almost two decades later, and is grateful that she said yes. It was 1989, she had just graduated from the University of the Philippines with a Physics degree, and had landed a teaching job in her alma mater. She was about to begin her second year of teaching when she got a scholarship for the summer program at the International Space University (ISU) in France. "I already got a friend to teach those months that I would be gone and I was asking for a leave of absence with no pay. However, the dean at that time basically told me 'This is not physics. It's not gonna further your career.' I said 'This is space, this is what I really love.' I resigned and left for the program," she said. Emeline wasn't sure if she would have a job to go back to when the summer program was over. But if there was one thing she knew for sure: she was going to live her life doing what she loves. And once she made the decision to pursue her dream, the Universe conspired for her to get it. When she finished the ISU summer program, she got hired as a computer programmer for Data Technology Systems in Geneva, Switzerland. After that, she worked as a research assistant for York University in Canada. A year later, she returned to ISU as Academic Coordinator and Deputy Program Director for the summer space program. Her big break came in 1999 when she was hired as Program Director for Space Adventures, the world's first private company to send paying tourists to space. Through the Russian Space Agency, Emeline helped develop the first private orbital space flight program and organized the year-long cosmonaut trainings for the first three private space tourists.
Emeline with Martha Stewart and Space Adventures colleague Akane McCarthy prior to ZeroG flight in Florida, USA.
She is the first Filipina to go on a zero gravity flight training. And although she hasn't gone into outer space just yet, Emeline was promised a suborbital flight when she left Space Adventures in 2007. At 44, Emeline can say she has been living the dream, all because she had the courage to take the right risk at the beginning of her career. "If I had not done that, like all the way down to that one decision, if I had said like 'Should I go or not go?' then I wouldn't be here," she said. Here is her current post as Vice President of Programs and Curriculum at Singularity University, located inside the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research center in Silicon Valley, where courses like artificial intelligence and nanotechnology are taught. She is also a consultant for a family-owned space partnership company and manager for Moon Express, one of 20 teams worldwide competing for the $30 million Google Lunar XPrize which will allow a private company to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon.
Realizing another dream, Emeline's first book about space travel will be released in June 2011.
Looking back at her career, Emeline says one of the keys to her success was her persistence to keep moving forward to reach her goal. "Don't be afraid of taking risks. You can't go anywhere by standing still. There's a lot of opportunities out there. You need to know when to take the right opportunity," she said. And surprising as it may seem, Emeline thinks living the dream doesn't always mean you need to have a lot of money. "You don't really need money but you do need the connections. You need to work hard to get the connections. And also to work really hard so that you get that reputation that you don't even have to look for the job, they actually look for you," she says. "Honestly, I've never really interviewed for any of my jobs. I've always been referred by somebody who knew me working for another job before and just referred me because they think I'm the person that could do the job well," she says. On June 2011, Emeline fulfills another dream as she launches her book Realizing Tomorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight, co-authored with Chris Dubbs. The book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of the pioneers of private space flight who want to make space travel available to everyone. - YA, GMA News Photo credit: Public domain photos of galaxy, shuttle launch and man on the moon from NASA and European Space Agency
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