Andrea Seastrand

The Honorable Andrea Seastrand serves as Executive Director of the California Space Authority (CSA), a statewide non-profit corporation. She brings extensive knowledge of both the federal and state legislative processes as well as the vision and drive to ensure California's success as a leader in the highly competitive, international enterprise space marketplace. Mrs. Seastrand was a leader in the inception of The California Space and Technology Alliance (CSTA), serving as its first and only Executive Director from February 1997 until April 2001. Through her visionary leadership, CSTA grew into the current CSA, an organization focused on all three domains of California's diverse space enterprise community: commercial, civil and national security. By providing vision, voice and edge for California's space enterprise, CSA has been designated by the State of California as California's official spaceport authority since April 2001. Recognizing the value of collaborative strategic visioning, in 1998 Mrs. Seastrand oversaw the development of the country's first, true, statewide, strategic space enterprise plan. That plan was updated in 2004 with the California Space Enterprise Strategic Plan and CSA is playing a major role in its implementation. As a former US Congresswoman, Mrs. Seastrand led space support efforts at the federal level with the introduction of the National Spaceport Act of 1995. While in Congress, she served on the Committee on Science and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mrs. Seastrand served as a Member of the California State Assembly from 1990 to 1994. She successfully authored legislation that created the California Spaceport Authority, created sales tax exemptions on launches, and created CORTA - a central coast effort to support space and technology efforts that ultimately evolved into today's CSA. With experience in the 1995 Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) process, Mrs. Seastrand has focused CSA on the importance of protecting military installations that host key space assets in California. She has been very vocal throughout the state concerning BRAC preparedness and has worked with local communities and the State to develop a strong, unified voice. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Mrs. Seastrand in 2004 to serve as one of 20 members on the Governor's statewide Council on Base Support and Retention. The Council worked closely with the Governor's Office of Military and Aerospace Support on Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) strategy, recommending actions to optimize the retention and realignment of military installations, missions and commands in California. The final votes of the Base Closure Commission confirmed the merits of the council's strategy and the value of the collaborative efforts of the state. In mid-summer 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger created an "A Team" devoted to attraction of the shuttle follow-on program, called the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), to the State of California. CSA, under the leadership of Seastrand, was selected to serve as the lead partner of the "A Team" and is now engaged with the CEV industry teams. The effort is being led within State government by Secretary Sunne McPeak, Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, and Secretary Victoria Bradshaw, Labor and Workforce Development Agency. In recognition of the value of CSA's role, Congress encouraged CSA to establish a conference focusing on highlighting California's international leadership as a space faring state. In response, CSA built on its first annual 2004 SpotBeam Awards Dinner with a two-day conference and awards dinner focused on highlighting the state's space assets through the innovation, infrastructure, and intellectual capital of the space enterprise community. The 2005 Transforming Space Conference and SpotBeam Awards Dinner took place December 1 and 2 in Los Angeles. Early in 2006, under Mrs. Seastrand's direction, CSA was successful in developing a competitive and cutting edge proposal in response to the Department of Labor (DoL) Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) Initiative. The WIRED Initiative is a major component of President George Bush's competitiveness agenda, unveiled during the 2006 State of the Union Address. The Initiative selection process began at the statewide level of competition with nationwide governors selecting proposals to carry forward to the DoL. CSA's proposal was selected by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and went on to become one of thirteen $15M winners at the national level. CSA's project is to lead a 13 county economic region comprising the "California Innovation Corridor" in a 68 member partnership effort. That effort consists of increasing entrepreneurship, supporting manufacturing value chain and supplier competitiveness, and fostering accelerated development of an innovation-oriented technical workforce. Mrs. Seastrand is presently an alternate California delegate to the Aerospace States Association (ASA) and a member in Women In Aerospace (WIA), the Air Force Association (AFA), and the Navy League. She recently was invited by Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, to join his newly formed Civic Leaders Group. Mrs. Seastrand was born and raised in Chicago and graduated from DePaul University. She raised two children on California's Central Coast with her late husband, Eric Seastrand, who was a Member of the California State Assembly from 1982 through 1990. Mrs. Seastrand currently resides in Grover Beach, California.