Lee Anderson, M.S., EMGM
Lee Anderson, M.S., EMGM is Chief of Staff at TerraSpace and Strategic Advisor providing senior operator support for pre-seed to Series A founders in space, manufacturing, and hardtech. She is also a Startup Mentor at the xFoundry Alliance, the University of Maryland-anchored innovation ecosystem cofounded by Ansari XPRIZE cofounder Amir Ansari that channels student-led ventures toward NASA’s space exploration goals.
Lee is a strategy and business leadership professional with more than fifteen years of experience spanning cofounding, fractional operating, and corporate innovation, including a decade focused on the space economy.
Earlier in 2026, Lee concluded nearly five years at KPMG US, where she most recently served as Market Leader of KPMG Ignition Chicago, the firm’s largest innovation and client-focused space, bringing together design thinking, data and analytics, AI, strategy, and technology capabilities. She was also the operational and strategic lead for KPMG’s US space sector practice, focusing on go-to-market strategy, partnership development, and thought leadership across commercial and dual-use space.
She helped shape KPMG’s Infinite Horizons cross-industry series, which examines how space-derived technologies are reshaping consumer products, telecommunications, energy, healthcare, banking, insurance, manufacturing, life sciences, sustainability, automotive, and private equity. She joined KPMG Ignition Chicago in 2021 as part of the Lab Delivery team and was promoted to Manager of Ignition Lab Delivery in 2022 before stepping into the Market Leader role in 2025.
Read her LinkedIn Pulse article Cyber Security in the Space Sector: It Starts with the Supply Chain and the related KPMG paper Cybersecurity in the space sector: It starts with the supply chain.
Lee has presented at major space-industry venues including NEXPLORE 2040, AIAA’s ASCEND, and the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), and is a 2026 featured speaker at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in McLean, Virginia, hosted by the National Space Society. Her current focus areas span the space sector, US manufacturing, infrastructure, Digital Twin, IoT, and AI and robotics for manufacturing.
Earlier in her career, Lee built a parallel track as an educator and design strategist. From 2018 to 2022, she served as Adjunct Faculty in the School of Design Strategies BBA Program at Parsons School of Design – The New School, teaching courses in Design of Business, Research and Development Methods, Strategic Management, Prototyping Luxury, and Senior Capstone. From 2020 to 2022, she also served as Adjunct Faculty at Columbia College Chicago, co-teaching a year-long entrepreneurial senior course in which product development and merchandising students worked together on new product, launch, and sales strategies for local brand partners.
Between 2014 and 2021, Lee operated Lee Anderson Design, LLC, serving as fractional operator and strategic partner to founders across technology, consumer, and service companies, including one engagement as co-CEO with full ownership of operations, financials, partner relationships, and product development.
Between 2018 and 2021, Lee founded and led FAAR, a Chicago-based platform dedicated to advancing the interdisciplinary future of design and space through research, events, and publications. FAAR produced the Signals of Change reports series, the Space Exploration as Creative Catalyst framework, and a Space Fashion Timeline tracking key moments in the dialogue between fashion and space from the 1960s onward.
Read her Signals of Change: An interview with Dr. Barbara Brownie and A case for space companies to embrace universal design. Her Contributions on Medium document her work as a design strategist, researcher, and educator.
Earlier still, Lee founded Starkweather in Paris in 2010, an outerwear design business applying technical construction techniques to generate “low-tech” thermal engineering. She managed the company through 2016, navigating supply chain development, manufacturer relationships, and an evolving omnicommerce market.
Between 2013 and 2014, she also served as Co-Lead of FashionTech Week Paris, organizing the first edition of the event with venues, industry experts, media, and sponsors. With Nicole Lenzen, she later launched the Pioneer Mode conference in New York to address structural problems in fashion enterprise.
Read her LinkedIn essay Space and Futurism in Fashion Editorials. Her 2014 memoir on entrepreneurship, On Starting Somewhere, recounts the early-stage experimentation and questioning that defines the founder’s journey.
Lee earned her Executive Master of Global Management with a concentration in Space Leadership, Business, and Policy from the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University in 2024, a one-of-a-kind program tailored for executives entering commercial spaceflight, defense and civil aerospace, AI and big data, and next-generation manufacturing. She earned her Master of Science in Strategic Design and Management and her BFA in Fashion Design (graduated with honors) from Parsons School of Design – The New School, and studied Fine and Studio Arts and Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She also completed French Studies through School Year Abroad and graduated with honors from Westminster School.
Lee holds professional certifications as a Human-Centered Design Practitioner from the LUMA Institute (2025), ExO Innovator from OpenExO (2025), and in Scenario Building from the Institute for the Future (2023), the latter focused on the alternative-futures methodology developed by futurist Jim Dator.
From September 2020 through January 2021, she served as a Facilitator for the World Design Organization and ISS National Laboratory’s Design in Space for Life on Earth Design Challenge, a virtual two-week workshop applying design thinking to space-based research in sustainability, education, and entrepreneurship. She also mentored members of The Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York for the NASA Space Apps Challenge in October 2020.
Read Aerospace, fashion find interdisciplinary future and her Chicago Artists Coalition profile Lee Anderson. She is fluent in English and French, both at native or bilingual proficiency.
Visit her LinkedIn profile, Medium page, and F6S profile. Learn more about her ISDC 2026 speaker page.