Kate Kleman
Director, Business Portfolio
Kate Kleman joined the Elara Nova team in June 2023.
She was previously the Vice President of Space Programs for Elding Group LLC. In this capacity, she helped commercial businesses explore and expand business opportunities with the
Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.
Kate also has 35 years of experience in the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Space Force, and U.S. Department of Defense, retiring as a Colonel in 2020. As a senior leader in both the Air Force and Space Force, Kate held positions in space systems and operations, modeling and simulation, the Intelligence Community, as the Chief of the Air Force House congressional office, and as a personal military aide to the Secretary of Defense.
Kate served in several General Officer positions as the Mobilization Assistant to the Director of Air, Space, Cyber and Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) Operations, and the Mobilization Assistant to the Director of Strategic Requirements, Architectures, and Analysis at Headquarters Air Force Space Command. In these positions, she helped organize, train, and equip all Air Force Space Command space and cyber units; develop strategy, doctrine, and policy; defined future space system requirements; and manage international and foreign disclosure programs. Mission areas included missile warning and defense, space control and space protection, spacelift and range operations, satellite command and control, nuclear event detection, airfield operations, offensive cyber operations, defensive cyber operations, satellite communications, position navigation and timing.
As a Space Operations Analyst at the Pentagon, Kate performed key studies on Air Force ISR, information warfare/cyber, and space programs. And at the Air Force Institute of Technology her published, pioneering thesis work applied military pattern recognition technologies to automated breast cancer diagnosis.
Kate is a 1989 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, a 1994 graduate of the Air Force Institute of Technology, and a 2014 graduate with distinction from Joint Forces Staff College.