Shana Dale Joins FAA Commercial Space Office as Deputy AA

Shana Dale will become Deputy Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as of November 3, 2014.   She succeeds George Zamka who left AST this summer to join Bigelow Aerospace.

Dale has served in a number of positions on Capitol Hill and in the George W. Bush Administration.  She is perhaps best known in space policy circles as the first woman to serve as Deputy Administrator of NASA from 2005-2009 while Mike Griffin was Administrator.

Shana Dale.  Photo Credit:  NASA

She joined NASA after serving in several positions, including Chief of Staff, at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  Before and after her Executive Branch assignments she worked on Capitol Hill serving as Staff Director for the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science Committee (now the House Science, Space and Technology Committee) in the late 1990s and more recently as principal policy advisor to that committee from 2012-2013 while Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) was chairman.   In between leaving NASA in 2009 and returning to the House committee in 2012 she was Sector Leader for Science, Engineering and Technologies Services at Dell, Inc. 

Dale is a lawyer by training, with a J.D. from California Western School of Law and a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Tulsa.