Brooke Owens Fellowship Appoints Pau Pineda Bosque to Chair as Maddie Kothe Steps Down
The Brooke Owens Fellowship – the award-winning, non-profit program that provides paid internships and executive mentorship to exceptional undergraduate women and gender minorities in aerospace – announced a change to its alumni leadership team as Maddie Kothe will be stepping down and replaced by Pau Pineda Bosque.
Kothe served on the Board since 2023. During her tenure, she created and led the Alumni Leadership Team (ALT), an alumni-led volunteer group that leads the day-to-day operations and execution of the Fellowship. She also helped oversee the selection of three classes of new fellows to the program. She first joined the Fellowship as a member of the 2018 class. Outside of the Fellowship, she works as Recovery Director at SpaceX.
“The past three years serving on the Board has been both an honor and a privilege," said Kothe. “I was first selected to become a Brookie in the very early days of the Fellowship, so I have seen first-hand how the program has grown. It means so much to me to have gotten to be one small contributor to that.”
Pau Pineda Bosque will step into the position of ALT Chair. She formerly served as Vice Chair: Selection – a role she will continue to support. She joined the Fellowship’s in its first ever class of Brookies in 2017 and has held numerous leadership and mentorship positions ever since. Outside of the Fellowship, she works as a Technical Program Manager at Zipline.
“I’m honored to be stepping into a role focused on building on the Fellowship’s impact and helping ensure that its work continues to shape the future of the aerospace industry,” said Pineda Bosque. “I’m grateful to Maddie for laying the foundation within the Alumni Leadership Team and look forward to what comes next.”
The Brooke Owens Fellowship was founded in 2016 and continues to grow and expand, through an evolving leadership team, amazing alumni, generous grants, and donations. The Brooke Owens Fellowship will open applications for the Class of 2027 on September 1st. The continued evolution of the Brooke Owens Fellowship Alumni Leadership Team, with Pineda Bosque as Chair, will drive the program’s commitment to inspiring, recruiting, including, and uplifting underrepresented communities in aerospace.
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ABOUT THE BROOKE OWENS FELLOWSHIP
Created to honor the legacy of a beloved space industry pioneer and accomplished pilot, Dawn Brooke Owens (1980 – 2016), The Brooke Owens Fellowship was established to help address a historic gender imbalance in the aerospace field. The organization provides programming and mentoring designed to serve as an inspiration and career boost for exceptional undergraduates who, like Brooke, aspire to advance the aerospace industry through service. As a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, the fellowship is dedicated to providing career opportunities and both personal and professional growth for women and gender-minority college and university students in the aerospace industry. The program offers access to real-world opportunities at the nation’s leading aerospace institutions; executive-level mentorship from astronauts, CEOs, and more. As the program’s success expanded, it served as a foundational model for additional aerospace internship programs including the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, Prospero Fellowship, Zed Factor Fellowship, Zenith Fellowship, Sally Ride Fellowship, and Solastra Fellowship. The Brooke Owens Fellowship is the recipient of the 2017 American Astronautical Society’s Patti Grace Smith Award, the 2018 Space Frontier Foundation’s Stakeholder Expansion Award, and both the Readers’ Choice and the Editors’ Choice for the Unsung Hero of the Year Award from the 2019 SpaceNews Awards for Excellence & Innovation.