Haley Esparza

Haley Esparza has built her career around the belief that technical excellence and emotional intelligence are equally essential to success in human spaceflight. She designs and implements systems, processes, and support structures that enable safe and successful missions, with a particular focus on astronaut readiness, training, and family support in high-stakes environments. She approaches human spaceflight with a dual focus: ensuring mission success through rigorous operations while also caring deeply for the people — and families — behind every mission.

Over the past eight years, she has worked directly with more than 75 astronauts from 20 countries, ensuring their safe and successful missions to Low Earth Orbit. From mission assignment through return to Earth, she serves as the primary point of accountability for the crew experience. She is known for integrating rigorous operational requirements with genuine empathy and cultural understanding — an approach she refers to as “emotional engineering.” By building trust across professional and national boundaries, she helps crews maintain resilience while ensuring their families feel supported on the ground.

Haley believes that international collaboration is essential to progress both on and off the planet, and that exposure to different cultures and worldviews strengthens leadership and innovation.

Outside her professional work, Haley is an avid equestrian who has ridden throughout Europe and Africa, including a 300-kilometer expedition across the Namibian desert. She credits these experiences with reinforcing the value of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable — a mindset she applies both personally and in her leadership.