![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/jsc2022e063664.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>Pace is chief of the Exploration Development Integration Division within the Exploration Architecture, Integration, and Science Directorate<\/a> at Johnson. In that role, she leads a team of roughly 120 civil servants and contractors in providing mission-level system engineering and integration services that bring different architecture elements together to achieve the agency\u2019s goals. Today that team supports Artemis missions, NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative and other areas as needed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe Artemis missions come together through multiple programs and projects,\u201d Pace explained. \u201cWe stitch them together to ensure the end-to-end mission meets its intended requirements. That includes verifying those requirements before flight and ensuring agreements between programs are honored and conflicts resolved.\u201d The division also manages mission-level review and flight readiness processes from planning through execution, up to the final certification of flight readiness.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Leading the division through the planning, launch, and landing of Artemis I was a career highlight for Pace, though she feels fortunate to have worked on many great projects during her time with NASA. \u201cMy coolest and most rewarding project involved designing and deploying an orbital debris tracking telescope on Ascension Island about 10 years ago,\u201d she said. \u201cThe engineers, scientists, and military personnel I got to work and travel with on that beautiful island is tough to top!\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Pace says luck and great timing led her to NASA. Engineering jobs were plentiful when she graduated from Virginia Tech in 2000, and she quickly received an offer from Lockheed Martin to become a facility engineer in Johnson\u2019s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, or ARES. \u201cI thought working in the building where they keep the Moon rocks would be cool \u2013 and it was! Twenty-five years later, I\u2019m still here,\u201d Pace said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n During that time, she has learned a lot about problem-solving and team building. \u201cI often find that when we disagree over the \u2018right\u2019 way to do something, there is no one right answer \u2013 it just depends on your perspective,\u201d she said. \u201cI take the time to listen to people, understand their side, and build relationships to find common ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/a><\/figure>