CEO, VIRGIN GALACTIC, TUSTIN
Longtime Orange County business and tourism exec, who from 2013 to 2018 headed operations of Disneyland, long OC’s largest employer. Now CEO at local space travel firm—currently ramping up its tech-heavy local operations via an aggressive employment push— that aims to send people from around the world on an out-of-this-world trip.
THEN: Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE), founded in 2004 and which went public in 2019, bills itself as the “world’s first commercial spaceline.” Has its operational base called Gateway to Space at Spaceport America, a 25-mile spot in New Mexico, where the company will handle future astronaut launches.
NOW: Colglazier, named to the CEO role in 2020, earlier this year moved company’s HQ designation to the Flight office campus at the Tustin Legacy development, near the intersection of Barranca Parkway and Red Hill Avenue. Spot holds a new engineering and design division that will serve as “our primary hub for R&D and the design of our new vehicles,” Colglazier told analysts earlier this year.
FUTURE: Hiring push underway for OC hub. Tustin is “an excellent location for innovation and collaboration, and we continue to ramp up engineering and support team talent to this location,” Colglazier said in a February call. Company says it will be ready to begin commercial service with suborbital space flights sometime in the first quarter of 2023.
IN THEIR WORDS: “We’re going to be building up a really large engineering staff here in OC that will play a significant role in defining the next generation of space travel.”
