National Aeronautics and Space Administration

TESS Team Member Biography

Matt Ritsko
TESS Deputy Project Manager for Resources
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Matthew Ritsko came to NASA in 2005 after graduating from the Pennsylvania State University with a B.S. in Economics. He is currently the Deputy Project Manager for Resources on the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Project; an astrophysics exoplanet discovery mission. On TESS, Matt is the lead for all business activities and advises management, technical leads, and scientists. His responsibilities are to provide overall resources management for the Project. This includes financial, workforce, logistics, scheduling, configuration management, contract management, and project support.

Matt has worked on numerous flight projects over the years, gaining varied (in house and out of house) flight project experiences and increased responsibilities. Prior to TESS, Matt also has worked within the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) project and the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX (GEMS) project. He has also served in a series of rotations including details within the OCFO, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project, and on staff to the Flight Projects Directorate office. Matt's career history includes experience supporting a Source Evaluation Board (SEB) and leading the business portion of a proposal development effort.

In his time at Goddard, Matt has been involved with several leadership programs and Center activities. He has served as a college recruiter for NASA, is a former President of the Goddard Employee Welfare Association (GEWA), and was a Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) Team Captain. Matt has completed the NASA's Foundations of Influence, Relationships, Success and Teamwork (FIRST) Program, Goddard's Leadership Development and Excellence in Management (LDEM) Program, and is a recent Project Management Development Emprise (PMDE) graduate.

Matt has a B.S. degree in Economics from the Pennsylvania State University and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Maryland.

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