Keep learning. Keep building. Keep sharing.

When people look at a career from the outside, they usually see the highlights.

They see a helicopter flying on Mars. They see rocket engines, awards, interviews, or a new company being built. What they don’t always see are the years between those moments: the long days, the mistakes, the uncertainty, the projects that did not work the first time, and the people who helped along the way.

When I look back at my own career, I don’t see a perfectly planned path.

I see curiosity.

I see opportunities I was not always sure I was ready for.

I see difficult problems that forced me to learn quickly. I see people who took the time to teach me, trusted me with responsibility, challenged me, and sometimes believed in me before I fully believed in myself.

My journey has taken me through electric vehicles, wind energy, drones, power electronics, the Mars Helicopter, rocket engines, and intelligent machines.

My mission is to use engineering to do more with less—and make life on Earth better for everyone.

Keep learning

I have never wanted to stop learning.

Not because learning is always comfortable. In fact, real learning is often uncomfortable. It begins when you realize that you do not have the answer.

Engineering will humble you quickly. You can spend days thinking you understand a problem, only for a test to show you that you missed something. Then you go back, look at the data, ask more questions, and try again.

Over time, I learned not to be afraid of saying, “I don’t know.”

That sentence does not mean the conversation is over. It means the work is beginning.

Some of the most valuable lessons in my career did not come from a textbook. They came from a failure during testing, a conversation with a more experienced engineer, a question from someone who saw the problem differently, or a moment when I had to admit that my original idea was not good enough.

I have also learned that knowledge travels.

Something you learn while working on a car may help you solve a problem on an aircraft. A lesson from an aircraft may later influence a spacecraft. An engineering decision made for an extreme environment can inspire a better way to build technology here on Earth.

You rarely know when a lesson will become important. You only know that you must remain curious enough to keep collecting them.

Keep building

I love ideas, but I am most fulfilled when they become something real: a circuit that works, a system that survives its test, or a machine that performs the task it was designed to perform.

Building is where confidence meets reality. Hardware does not care how convincing a presentation or explanation sounds; it either works, or it shows you what still needs to change.

That honesty can be frustrating. Things fail, schedules change, and a small problem can consume days of work. Sometimes progress feels invisible—until the system finally works.

Watching Ingenuity fly on Mars was one of those moments for me.

I knew how much effort lived behind that flight. I knew it was not the work of one person. It took an extraordinary team, years of engineering, testing, debate, persistence, and countless decisions that the public would never see.

My contribution was one small part of a much larger mission, but the experience changed me.

It reminded me that something can sound almost impossible and still become real when people are willing to break the problem into pieces, do the work, learn from one another, and refuse to stop at the first failure.

Later, working on rocket-engine systems brought different challenges, but the lesson remained. Ambitious technology is not created in a single moment of inspiration. It is built patiently, decision by decision, test by test.

That purpose has carried me across disciplines, from energy systems to flight and intelligent machines.

I am drawn to difficult technical problems where better use of energy can unlock better performance—whether in a car, an energy system, an aircraft, a spacecraft, or an intelligent machine. The work demands imagination, discipline, and patience, and there is seldom a complete map at the beginning.

Some days bring visible progress. Other days are spent solving problems no one will ever hear about.

I keep building because I believe intelligent machines, including AI-enabled systems, can help us use energy and resources more wisely. They can become more capable, adaptive, and collaborative—and can operate where people or traditional systems cannot easily go.

The technology matters to me, but so does the reason behind it: to create useful systems that do more with less, solve difficult problems, and help make Earth better for everyone.

Keep sharing

For a long time, I thought doing good work was enough.

I still believe the work must come first. But I have also come to understand the importance of sharing the journey behind it.

I did not reach any meaningful point in my career by myself.

People answered my questions. They explained things I did not understand. They gave me opportunities. They corrected me when I was wrong. They offered encouragement during moments when the next step was not clear.

Some of those people may not realize how much their words affected me.

That is why I feel a responsibility to share what I have learned.

Not because I have everything figured out. I don’t.

I share because someone else may be standing where I once stood: curious, uncertain, ambitious, and trying to understand what step to take next.

Sometimes a single honest conversation can make a difference.

It can help a student choose engineering. It can encourage someone to apply for an opportunity they think is beyond their reach. It can remind a young engineer that struggling with a problem does not mean they do not belong. It can show someone that an unusual path can still lead somewhere meaningful.

I know what it feels like to listen to another person’s story and find a piece of courage inside it.

If something from my experience can give someone else clarity or courage, it is worth sharing. And sharing these lessons reminds me that my own learning is far from finished.

Still learning

I am proud of the work I have been part of, but I do not see my career as a finished story.

I am still learning, still making mistakes, and still encountering problems that make me question what I know.

I am also still excited by the possibility of building something that has never existed before.

The more experience I gain, the more I appreciate the people, failures, unexpected turns, and quiet moments of persistence that made the visible accomplishments possible.

So this is the principle I want to carry with me into whatever comes next:

Stay curious enough to keep learning.

Stay determined enough to keep building.

And stay generous enough to keep sharing.

You may not know who needs to hear your experience, or what it might help them believe is possible.

Share it anyway.