Lee Steinke

Lee Steinke is the Chief Operating Officer at CisLunar Industries and a Partner at aerospace and defense consultancy Elara Nova. Lee also served as Interim COO of Orbit Fab. She has performed in executive roles on contracts with NASA, Space Force, DARPA, DIU, AFRl, CASIS/ISS National Lab, and commercial customers. As a partner to US Space Force and NewSpace Nexus, she led the Space Futures Workshop with Industry to explore commercial views on the future of space and document the implications of those views for US national security. 

Prior to working in aerospace and defense, Lee was an executive and licensed professional scientist in the energy industry, working for publicly traded and private-equity backed companies like Texaco, Williams, WPX Energy, and Discovery Natural Resources. She led teams that drilled thousands of unconventional wells during the Shale Revolution that caused the US to succeed at producing more oil than it uses. 

Lee serves on Advisory and Review Boards, including for Canopy Aerospace, Hyperspace Challenge, NewSpace Nexus, and the State of Colorado. She is well published on technical topics and has been featured on the TEDx stage. She holds a BA in Geology and Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MS in Geology and Geophysics from Yale University, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a proud National Security Seminar alumna and industry-day lecturer at the U.S. Army War College.