Ruth Stilwell, DPA

Ruth E. Stilwell is an internationally recognized authority on integrated space and aviation policy, with a career that bridges operational expertise, academic scholarship, and high-level policy leadership. She is the executive director of Aerospace Policy Solutions LLC, is an adjunct faculty member in the Master of Public Administration program at Norwich University and served as a senior nonresident scholar at the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University.

Her research and policy work span critical issues such as integrating commercial space operations into civil airspace, projecting air traffic controller staffing needs, Federal Aviation Administration funding structures, human factors, and safety governance for human spaceflight. She is a contributing author to Global Space Governance: An International Study and An Introduction to the Spaceport Industry: Runways to Space and has published widely in both academic and policy forums. She has written extensively on governance structures for space traffic management and has been invited to testify by congressional committees and the National Space Council on the topic.

During her 25-year career as an air traffic controller at the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center, Stilwell served as executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and as the founding chair of the Air Traffic Services Committee of the International Transport Workers’ Federation. From 2010 to 2015, she represented the global air traffic control community as the industry expert on the International Civil Aviation Organization Air Navigation Commission in Montreal.

In recognition of her contributions, Stilwell was named a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 2018 and a corresponding member of the International Academy of Astronautics in 2025. She also serves on the International Academy of Astronautics Commission 5 – Space Policies, Law and Economics.

Stilwell earned her bachelor’s degree in labor studies from the National Labor College, and both her master’s and doctoral degrees in public administration from the University of Baltimore.