What if the biggest challenge in digital transformation isn’t technology—but people? In this insightful fireside reflection from Prodacity 2025, Aine Nakai, former Space Force leader and acquisitions expert, shares her experience reforming talent management, improving career pathways, and fighting bureaucracy to create a more agile, innovative workforce.

From standing up the Space Force to introducing succession planning, onboarding improvements, and skills-based hiring, Nakai dives into why government talent strategy must evolve to keep pace with mission needs—and how to build career paths that retain top performers.

🔹 Key Topics Covered:

• How Space Force modernized talent management & acquisitions workforce
• The challenges of hiring, onboarding & retaining top tech talent
• Why government agencies must prioritize career development for digital roles
• How succession planning & leadership development impact mission success
• The importance of permeability between government & industry
• How behavioral psychology is changing leadership selection in Space Force

🕒 Key Highlights & Timestamps:
[00:04] - Introduction: Aine Nakai’s journey from contracting officer to Space Force leader
[02:43] - How Space Force prioritized talent development for acquisitions & finance
[05:16] - The challenge of onboarding thousands of new Guardians
[07:19] - How Super Coders built internal tools to solve bureaucracy bottlenecks
[09:22] - Why user adoption is key to successful government digital transformation
[11:55] - How to navigate bureaucratic resistance & push for better workforce policies
[13:55] - The behavioral psychology approach to leadership vetting
[15:44] - The impact of private sector experience on government innovation
[17:37] - If Nakai had a magic wand—what would she change in Space Force?
[19:39] - How to work with contracting officers to move faster & innovate acquisitions
[21:46] - Final thoughts: Trusting your people, breaking barriers & leading with empathy

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Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rise8/

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Aine Nakai (00:04):

And so I was always interested in doing service and my dad was in the Army and said, join the Air Force. They have air conditioned tents. And so next thing you know, I find myself going to Officer Training School and they told me I was going to be a contracting officer, so Riya and I both were in contracting. So thanks to J Mo for walking us through the FAR, I think I had PTSD over that, but it's going to be okay. Oh yeah, that's way better. And then I deployed to Afghanistan. My son was six months old. He didn't know who I was when I came home. I missed his first birthday. So I made the hard choice of being a contractor like a lot of us here too, and supported Max Real, who I saw earlier yesterday, and Dave Williams who just spoke yesterday.

(00:55):

So such a small community to be a part of and I'm just honored to be here. I then helped stand up the Space Force and in doing so, I had that kid in mind that I left behind and made sure that people after me could stay home for at least a year with their babies. And I met Congressman Lieu and said, Hey, in exchange for the Space Force in the NDAA, can we also ask for maternity and paternity leave for our DOD federal employees? And he said, we don't have that. His mouth dropped. It was so fun. We made it happen and it was effective October, 2020. So we have that benefit now for the DOD, and we actually put together this very aspirational document called The Guardian Ideal. That's not in favor right now. It was way too aspirational apparently, but we're still living by those tenants of courage and really challenging the status quo and leadership.

(01:56):

When I was a lieutenant, I couldn't imagine challenging a four star or three star, but I personally witnessed a Lieutenant challenge, then General Crider who was here yesterday as well. And she took it with Grace and encouraged it. And I just couldn't be more thankful for this culture. We're establishing in the Space Force where every voice counts and every perspective is welcomed. So I am very proud to have helped establish the Space Force and where it is today. I helped stand up the Enterprise Talent Management office and that was a challenge we'll talk about later. And I actually came back to Space Systems Command in LA where I kind of started to help give back to the community that I served. And I'm just thankful to be here with you.

Riya Patel (02:43):

Yes. And so one of the things, I mean, you mentioned some of the amazing things you were able to accomplish for guardians and as well as just service members at large. I would love to hear a little bit more about some of the initiatives that you stood up, especially when you put on the hat of talent management to particularly help grow and invest in the acquisitions and financial, what some people call supporting functions. I don't know about you. I never really loved supporting functions because it felt a little bit supporting the mission, but not necessarily directive to the mission. So I would love you spent a lot of time in investing in that workforce and making sure they were growing along with the other areas that we were investing in. So would love to hear a little bit more about those initiatives.

Aine Nakai (03:31):

Absolutely. As you know, space acquisitions and a lot of our warfighting folks in AFMC and a ACC spend money on capability, but we don't spend enough time developing our workforce and the capability to help them do their job and help develop them and spend time in this space with you guys developing software to do just that. We don't spend enough of our money and our dollars to invest in our people, which make the mission happen, which is very odd for me when I think about that. So I partnered with a lot of caring generals when I went to ETMO and I asked them for money. I knew they had it. So then General Purdy was in launch, Colonel Shaba, now General Sejba in MILSATCOM. I asked them, Hey, I'm trying to do these really cool thing for our guardians. Can you give me a couple million?

(04:21):

And they trusted me to do it. So having that empowerment from senior leaders and trust to do good things helped do a couple things for our Guardians. One of which is, I don't know if you knew this, but when we transferred a thousand people a year into the Space Force from the Army, Navy and Marines, do you know they did that through DOD safes? That was impossible. I mean, I'm really sad to share that. Sorry if anyone didn't want me to share, but hey, there it is. About three people are downloading DOD safe applications, trying to collect the data to create a talent management board and visualize this data, and it was nearly impossible. So guess what? We got a super coder to go in my vector and build an application. He did it so easily and effortlessly and it made the next stages of this inner service transfer process a lot smoother just because of our own organic support.

(05:16):

He was an army cyber guy who made it happen and made a difference in the Space Force by creating this capability. We also did this whole onboarding tool. I don't know about you if any of you have had the worst onboarding experience during the government, but I had one of those and thought we could do a little bit better job of creating a profile with all your data on there like your social that can just pre-populate a 28 75 to get your computer equipment, to get all the stuff that you need to start your day job. So we worked really closely with Deloitte in ServiceNow to create that capability, give you step-by-step on how to hire a civilian because that's a big mystery. So just making that something that is known by every manager and actually communicating with prospective employees before they come and creating what industry does well, a total compensation package, rather than saying, congratulations, you're only making $60,000 as your tentative offer.

(06:17):

Well guess what? I found out a one didn't approve the use of ServiceNow and we have to use Salesforce now. So we're back at the drawing board so that a TO process is real. Thank God for Rise8, creating continuous ATO. But man, I could have used some more advice from y'all to how to navigate this process because it's been surreal. But creating those tools to help our workforce has been really helpful to make a better experience. So we've done some other solutions like working with Trello and even homegrown folks that do coding to create other ways to welcome our Guardians. Another thing that actually we're working on is succession planning, and that's a career counseling. We have never gone line by line through all our PMs, our cyber, our engineering workforce, which is the backbone of the Space Force, and give them advice on their career or even ask them what they want.

(07:19):

I just find that bizarre. We just welcome you here and say good luck. And so I made every, well not made, I kindly asked every deputy PEO, every leader across SSC to come together for three days, lock 'em in a room, we go line by line through every civilian in our workforce and talk about what's best for their career and how we give that feedback. Because none of that matters unless you give feedback. So we had to create this tool and power apps to get that data and visualize it, which was such an easy thing to do that didn't require that much money or investment. So I've been super excited to dedicate most of my time in service to people and helping them with their career and helping their experience be better so that we can retain them. And lastly, I just want a little negotiation with the A FPC to pay our cyber interns at the highest level that I could to begin their career so that we can be competitive with industry and every six months give them a promotion.

(08:20):

And that's over the course of two to three years depending on their degree. So our cyber professionals are getting compensated and we're trying to take better care of them to keep that workforce in the government. And lastly, permeability. It's okay for you to leave and go to industry and come back. We actually like that industry perspective and I'm creating an iwi program with GD for three months for people to get that experience that I see JR Mullis in the audience. He helped me try to do with defense ventures, but unfortunately at first didn't renew that contract. I wish I could help there, but I'm glad that we're pursuing things still through gd and I'm hoping to have a proof of concept there to expand that even further and maybe partner with folks in the audience here that might be interested in helping develop guardians and help solve some problems for the government by exposing them to your skills and talents and look forward to partnering in the future.

Riya Patel (09:22):

Aine, every time I hear you talk about all the things you've done for space Force, for talent management, for creating an institution around talent management in the government, I am blown away. And one of the things that you did not talk about so much, but I'm sure you have done, I've seen you do it behind the scenes, is changing hearts and minds, changing culture, changing mindsets and leadership. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about some of the challenges that you've had and instilling the right mindset to even have an organization that is able to do some of the things we heard you need to do in order to do agile software delivery and also just make the space force a better place to work for our guardians.

Aine Nakai (10:03):

Absolutely. There's two groups of people in the government that I have the hardest time working with, but I don't let that stop me. And that's human capital and security. I hear no a lot. So trying to create a culture of how do we get to, yes, tell me in whatever publication or a AFI says, we can't do this, and if you can't show me that, why not? And so when I was creating some of those tools I was telling you about, I got a lot of pushback from our HR community that they didn't want to do it because it was foreign territory and they didn't want to take their time to invest in process mapping because they were the SMEs, right? I needed them to help with that process mapping. So I finally got them on board. It took a little while, but I was happy to do that.

(10:49):

And our security folks, helping them be more of a helpful hand to future candidates because a lot of times they make the SF 86 process so scary, especially for brand new grads out of college. It's like they're taking their blood and it shouldn't be that hard. It's just part of the process to get a security clearance and let's talk and have a little more friendly approach to how to walk people through all of those daunting tasks that you have to do when you join the government to get that clearance. So changing a lot of that user adoption too has been difficult when you're trying to create a tool for them that they have to adopt. Man, that has been a tough, but I've been championing it with the community and finally have some trust across some senior leaders and junior, because that's important too, all across the gamut to make sure that people believe in what we're doing because half the battle, if you don't believe in what we're producing and don't want to accept it and make it as pleasant and as experienced as we can, it's not going to work. So user adoption is key.

Riya Patel (11:55):

I love that around user adoption. I also think leadership adoption is something that we've been hearing over the past couple of days, and I would love to hear a little bit more about how you have brought some really interesting practices and ideas in order to better vet and shape the next leaders of the Space Force. So can you talk a little bit more about some of the things you guys have been doing there? Sure. I love

Aine Nakai (12:22):

To ask people if they can do one thing, and that's just care and kind and empower people because honestly, at the end of the day, a lot of leaders think they have to be very militant and have these clear deliverables that you have to have in your objectives of your appraisals or OPR that don't allow you to be more innovative. I've highly encouraged a lot of our leadership to just trust the sme unless they give you reason not to go in the opposite. I think it stovepipes us and it doesn't allow for that innovation to happen. So trusting your people, being kind, providing top cover, being brave and providing that top cover, I see a lot of leaders just say, yes, yes, sir, without even trying to challenge their leadership in believing in what your people have been proposing to you. So just having your people's back will go a long way, and that's the number one thing, just to be kind and trust your people.

Riya Patel (13:25):

I love that. I've heard you talk about this before, which is why I'm going to make you talk about it now, but you have brought up hiring some really interesting people on your team to better assess leadership and some of those softer skills that maybe it's harder to kind of glean from a resume or from just where they've been in command before. So can you talk a little bit about maybe some of your non-traditional approaches to vetting that in the process of promotions in particular?

Aine Nakai (13:55):

Absolutely. There's a lady, and I don't know if she'll get word of this, but I love her. Her name is Emily Anderson. She's a behavioral psychologist that we hired in enterprise talent management to assess the ability of commanders to lead and to ensure they don't have toxicity in their personality, which is really unique. I don't think any other force really takes the time to check someone's personality out as they're looking at their resume and all the checklists that we have to ensure that they're a good boss, a good leader. And so we've done that really well on the military side now, but what I'm finding is we need it on the civilian side as well, and that's something that I need to pursue to make sure that our senior civilians, our SCSs, our dicey, also go through that process. Unfortunately, I've personally experienced not a good boss, and that's hard for me. I like to protect my people. I want to keep moving forward, but if you're wasting your time shielding your folks and not moving forward as fast as you want because you don't have a supportive boss, that takes away from the mission. So that behavioral psychologist, I just asked her, do you have another person we can hire to help with civilians? We need it now. So they're working on that.

Riya Patel (15:12):

I love that. So kind of in a similar vein of not the right boss, and we've heard this a couple of times, and I think we had a lot of people actually on the stage who admitted that they had a degree in something and they ended up in a totally different career field than what they studied for. How have you seen improvements in the way Space Force matches talent to actual job opportunities and kind of talent management and talent retention across the force?

Aine Nakai (15:44):

Absolutely. There's this organization called DIU. I wonder if there's anyone here from there. I'd love to talk to you if you are, but I've worked about two years ago on a program called GigEagle. I don't know if you've heard of that. It's with eightfold. But essentially what it does, it matches your skills to a job. Guess what? That doesn't mean you're an engineer. You're going to be a chief engineer. It actually means what do you enjoy to do? What are your hobbies? What are some unique skill sets that you wouldn't know based on your career series or your SFSC or AFSC? So recently I, about a year ago, I was able to hire someone to help me fill HQE positions. Have you guys heard of those highly qualified experts? And guess what his day job is when he is not a reservist, a CEO headhunter.

(16:34):

So I was able to get that amazing talent through that GigEagle process because we were able to match that. He finds talent in the industry, and I can use those skills to help me find some talent to join the government. I regret this and I will find him and we'll make this happen in the future. But Will Roper actually was somebody I had recruited and was interested in being in HQE and someday we'll get him, because that would be amazing to have someone of his caliber help us innovate. He just was a little too controversial, so it didn't work out that year. But hey, I have hope for the future.

Riya Patel (17:17):

I love that. So speaking of hope for the future, I'm going to pull from a Carlo Viray classic playbook. If you had a magic wand, what is one way that you would love to transform the Space Force or one thing you'd really love to see happen in the next three to five years?

Aine Nakai (17:37):

Oh my gosh. I've met so many people that separated, including a lot of folks that stood up this company because there was no career path for the unique stuff that you guys did. And that's across all the innovation spaces, across our software factories, across all the different pockets of goodness in the Space Force. And I don't want people to separate because they don't see a forward path for them to elevate their skills and get promoted within the Space Force. So you have Carlo, I see Oscar, I see Gunner. I shouldn't call out everybody, sorry, that's embarrassing. But there's so many amazing people that left because we didn't take care of what does that path look like for a non-traditional program manager and acquisitions. You don't necessarily have to be that guy building a satellite or a rocket. It's all the software layers. It's all the cool stuff that we've been trying to innovate with these business processes we just discussed. We could probably stand up our own version of best spend for space or somewhere in between with all the business processes in between those systems. And I'd love if we can create that pathway for people that come to these type of conferences in the government. And they haven't done it yet, but I'm looking forward to figuring it out.

Riya Patel (18:57):

Well, I look forward to seeing that happen in the next three to five years. So Aine, I would be remiss not to ask you this question because probably one of the first people on the stage that has come with a contracting officer background and then moved on to do things at a bigger scale and touching operators, touching developers, et cetera. So for the audience, there are three pieces of advice that you would give them for working with contracting officers and helping to instill the mentality that contracting officers might need in order to be supportive of their efforts. Help them speak ko,

Aine Nakai (19:39):

I would actually ask them, who can I get guidance and advice from? Someone just asked me that earlier about a lieutenant in contracting an sz that was unable to get a contract action done on time. He didn't know how and he was too scared to ask his own leadership. So that even appeals to the youth of our contracting organization. And I know even when I talk to those young contract buyers, I often tell them, you're going to be working with a lot. So I do the opposite. You're going to be working with a lot of program managers and someday they might be your boss. So that three star will come back and you had just told him 10 years ago that his tech evaluation sucked. He'll probably remember that. So there's a way you can communicate without offending somebody. And same goes both ways. You can figure out a way to have an outward mindset.

(20:34):

I don't know if anyone's heard an Arbinger Institute, but one thing they do well is teach you how to take a breath and then consider another way to ask a question without offending somebody. So highly recommend you check out some of the stuff they're doing, but bottom line front, if you just work with them and ask for their expertise and advice, they're going to like that. You're trying to pick their brain, so to speak, to help you with the acquisition strategy that you're going through. I know Rachel from LSX, she's over here. She just did that and they were able to give her a strategy no, and SSC has done before just because she was open to a new way of doing things. And so sharing that and inspiring the contracting community that you're open to doing cool things like maybe OTAs or we just heard about BAAs or new approaches to get contracts done quickly, you'll be surprised what you'll hear back from them.

Riya Patel (21:25):

I love that. Well, Aine is a wealth of knowledge on all topics that touch everything we've talked about in the past two days. So I highly encourage you all. I'm going to signing you up to chat a whole host in the next coffee break, but I highly encourage you all to chat with her and learn a little bit more about some of the amazing work that she's done with the Space Force. But Aine, thank you so much for coming and joining us on this reflection chat.

Aine Nakai (21:46):

Thank you, Riya. You're amazing. I love her.

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