Registration will close at 9 PM on 18 September 2026. Seats are limited to 60 attendees.
INDUSTRY NETWORKING
The Moment Everything Changed: The Shift from Expert to Explorer
Every career has a turning point: the moment expertise wasn't enough, and curiosity had to take over. Join us for an evening of Ignite Talks, live Q&A, and open networking with four leaders who'll share the pivots, risks, and reinventions that redefined their paths.
Featuring
🎤 Tim Boyd, Senior Program Manager, Northrop Grumman, Caltech Instructor
🎤 Stephen Guine, Managing Partner @ Kelcey & Co.
🎤 Kevin Noertker, CEO & Co-Founder, Ampaire (Sustainable Aviation)
🎤 Tanacha Gaines, EdD, PMI-ACP, Learning & Operations Leader, Founder of Opsided
🎤 Idris Manley, PMP, CSM, Founder, Outcome Orchestration Initiative
Each speaker takes the stage for a fast-paced, high-energy Ignite Talk — sharing the story of how they moved from expert to explorer, and what it taught them about growth, risk, and reinvention.
What's in it for you:
✅ Ignite Talks — bold, personal stories in a fast, engaging format
✅ Live Q&A — bring your questions and get real answers straight from the speakers
✅ Open Networking — connect with speakers, recruiters, and fellow professionals across industries before, during breaks, and after the program
✅ Fresh Perspectives — walk away with insight you can apply to your own next big shift
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
- Identify the inflection points in a career where deep expertise stops being enough — and curiosity has to take over.
- Apply an "explorer mindset" framework to navigate uncertainty, risk, and reinvention in their own professional path.
- Evaluate real-world pivot stories from leaders across aerospace, project management, and learning operations to extract transferable lessons.
- Connect with speakers and peers through structured Q&A and networking to build actionable next steps for their own transition.
Whether you're navigating your own transition or just looking to expand your network, this is your chance to ask, engage, and connect.
Guests will enjoy hearty appetizers:
- International and domestic cheeses with assorted crackers
- Fresh vegetable crudités with dips
- Thai beef satay
- Margarita flatbread
- Beef quesadillas
- Chicken drumettes with sweet chili sauce
- Assorted desserts
- Vegetarian options will be available
- Non-alcoholic refreshments.
- Adult beverages will be available for purchase at the bar.
Speakers
Senior Program Manager, Northrop Grumman, Caltech Instructor
Tim Boyd is an accomplished technical leader, systems thinker, and organizational strategist with deep expertise in aerospace and defense. He currently serves as a Program Manager for one of the nation’s most advanced space programs, where he leads cross-functional teams through the full program life cycle.
He has held key leadership roles spanning engineering execution, strategy, operations, and business development. Tim brings a rare ability to connect technical excellence with strategic vision.
Tim also teaches at Caltech, where he develops future leaders through advanced courses in systems engineering and program management. He is the host of Curious and Cuirky, a podcast that unites thought leaders to share fresh insights on the hottest happenings in the technology-driven world of business.
Known for his engaging style and grounded authenticity, Tim creates space for real talk—inviting introspection, sparking ‘aha’ moments, and delivering takeaways that resonate long after the session ends.
Managing Partner @ Kelcey & Co.
Stephen Guine is an Instructor with the Caltech Center for Technology and Management Education focused primarily on Systems and Digital Engineering, Technical Project and Risk Management, and Leadership Dynamics in Socio/Technical Environments.
Stephen has over 30 years of experience implementing and executing Systems Engineering and Project Management activities on aerospace, public utility, healthcare, and nonprofit programs, including leadership roles at Northrop Grumman, Kaiser Permanente, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Stephen is also the founder and Managing Partner of Kelcey and Company; a strategy and systems engineering consulting firm focused on individual and small-team systems engineering mentoring and coaching as well as providing project-specific non-advocate review services.
Stephen is credited with several presentations and panel discussions on the application of systems engineering across the lifecycle and cross-domain approaches for project management risk mitigation including his most recent presentation at EMEASEC 2026 in Sweden on the application of product design approaches for guiding MBSE model development.
Additionally, Stephen is an INCOSE Certified Systems Engineering Professional, the current president of The Engineers' Council, and a proud veteran of the United States Marine Corps.
CEO & Co- Founder at Ampaire (Sustainable Aviation)
Kevin Noertker has contributed engineering expertise to stealth aircraft and satellite development programs and contributed to our understanding of the universe as a research fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
An entrepreneur at heart, Kevin is driven to apply the science and engineering disciplines of large aerospace organizations to pressing environmental problems. He views the U.S.’s robust startup culture as an opportunity to direct technological innovation toward people and communities, gaining quick feedback and making rapid progress.
Prior to founding Ampaire with Cory Combs, he served as a senior systems engineer at Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, where he worked on satellite programs. Among other accomplishments, he led a team that developed a hardware fix for a key component of the Joint Polar Satellite System, improving NOAA’s hurricane projections from 3 days to 5-7 days and enhancing the supply of other crucial weather data.
Earlier, he was an engineer at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems developing low-observable (stealth) technology. He has two patents from this period. As an undergraduate research fellow at JPL, he investigated requirements for a unique robot capable of collecting rock samples in challenging terrain on Mars, Titan, and the Moon. He also analyzed data from the Infrared Spitzer Space Telescope to chart star formation over
the last seven billion years.
Kevin graduated from Caltech with honors, majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in History.
EdD, PMI-ACP, Learning & Operations Leader, Founder of Opsided
Tanacha Gaines, EdD, PMI-ACP, is a learning and operations leader who designs the workforce and capability systems behind high-velocity teams. Over 15+ years she has led large-scale training and transformation efforts, built AI-enabled talent operations that reduced vendor spend by 42%, and governed hundreds of contracts across a global learning portfolio. She serves on the ATD-LA board, mentors through PMI, and writes and speaks on experimentation, operations, and the shift from experts to explorers.
Founder, Outcome Orchestration Initiative
Idris Manley, PMP, CSM, is founder of the Outcome Orchestration Initiative and a technology delivery and transformation leader with 30+ years leading enterprise technology programs in Silicon Valley — with roles at companies including Oracle, Yahoo!, Visa, and Infoblox. A two-time founder (Founder of Intralign), he has published research on AI and project leadership at Northeastern University and now helps define Outcome Orchestration — an emerging discipline for using AI to strengthen understanding, judgment, and decision-making so project leaders own outcomes, not just deliverables. He writes a field-notes newsletter for working PMs and speaks to PMI chapters as they navigate the shift from managing tasks to governing outcomes. Start with the discipline and a maturity self-check at outcomeorchestration.ai.
