Kirsten Petree

Kirsten Dettor Petree serves as the Chief of the Administration Branch in the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA since November 2024. She leads a team in workforce management, information technology, contract oversight, travel, training, safety, correspondence control, and office space management. Kirsten is a champion for crosscutting strategy development and implementation to foster collaboration between SMD, other NASA Headquarters organizations and Field Centers, and the broader scientific community. 

Kirsten has more than two decades of management and programmatic experience and has served in various roles at NASA. From 2020 – 2024, held the Executive Officer and Chief of Staff role in SMD. She represented SMD in interagency and intra-agency working groups, managed the quality control process, and coordinated across the directorate and agency for high-profile announcements and mission direction with Chiefs of Staff, Field Centers, and Executive Operations communities. She oversaw updates to the NASA 2020-2024 Science Plan for alignment with the agency’s Strategic Plan objectives. She also worked to foster relationships and partnerships, furthering SMD’s impact to the public and science community, reaching multiple stakeholders, Centers, institutions, industry, international partners, and Minority Serving Institutions to improve engagement with new and underserved, non-traditional audiences.

Before joining NASA, Kirsten spent over a decade at Booz Allen Hamilton, consulting with government agencies including NASA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leading teams in strategy and communications, information technology, and organizational design. Prior to Booz Allen, Kirsten held positions within the U.S. Government at the Department of State and the Department of Health & Human Services and began her career in political and broadcast organizations. 

Kirsten received a Master of Business Administration from Johns Hopkins University, Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a Change Management Advanced Practitioner certification from Georgetown University.