Jonathan Firth, Executive Vice President at Virgin Galactic, the anchor tenant at Spaceport America, will be the guest speaker at the April MVEDA Business in the Borderplex Forum. 
Mr. Firth, who has been with Virgin Galactic since it started up in 2004, oversees the company’s activity to ready itself for commercial operations in New Mexico. As a Las Cruces resident, he has also led the collaborative community group that has developed the annual ‘Las Cruces Space Festival’ event, the first one of which will be held April 12th-14th in the city. Mr. Firth will provide an update on both activities.
The meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 3, 2018 from 11:30 AM until 1:00 PM at the Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces, 705 S. Telshor. It will begin with a hot entree buffet followed by a brief update by MVEDA staff.
Advance registration is $25.00 per person, payable by major credit card via the secure portal on the registration form. Payment at the door with cash, check or credit card is $30.00 per person.
Reservations are required and registration closes Thursday, March 29, 2018.
About the Speaker
Jonathan Firth has been a member of Virgin Galactic’s leadership team since 2004, and his current role is Executive Vice President of Spaceport & Program Development based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he lives.
He began his Virgin career in the UK in 1998 as Project Director at Virgin Rail Group, where he was responsible for delivery of the Pendolino and Super Voyager tilting train projects on the UK West Coast and CrossCountry networks respectively, and was the company’s professional head of engineering. After that, he spent three years as Director of Projects at Virgin Atlantic Airways, overseeing the airline’s portfolio of business-led projects, before joining Virgin Galactic.
Jonathan has worked in engineering and project management throughout his career, and in a diverse array of industries before his time with Virgin -including oil and gas, petrochemicals and mass transit. He holds an honors degree in mechanical engineering from Imperial College, London and an MBA from Henley Business School.
