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Palo Alto, CA — Great Place to Work and Fortune magazine have honored Stellar Solutions as one of this year’s Best Workplaces in the Bay Area. This is the company’s second time being named to this prestigious list. Earning a spot means that Stellar Solutions is one of the best companies to work for headquartered in the Bay Area. In prior years, Stellar Solutions also ranked as a Best Medium Workplace™ and Best Workplace for Millennials™.

This year’s Best Workplaces in the Bay Area award is based on employee feedback collected through America’s largest ongoing annual workforce study of over 1 million employee survey responses and data from companies representing more than 6.1 million U.S. employees.

The Best Workplaces in the Bay Area list is highly competitive. Great Place to Work, the global authority on workplace culture, selected the list using rigorous analytics and confidential employee feedback. Companies were only considered if they are a Great Place to Work-Certified™ organization and headquartered in the Bay Area.

Great Place to Work is the only company culture award in America that selects winners based on how fairly employees are treated. Companies are assessed on how well they are creating a great employee experience that cuts across race, gender, age, disability status, or any aspect of who employees are or what their role is.

“As employee demands and expectations have dramatically changed over the past year, these companies have risen to the occasion—and it’s not been easy,” says Kim Peters, executive vice president of global recognition, research & strategic partnerships at Great Place to Work. “Their hard work and dedication to listen to and care for the well-being of every employee, and support them in a way that’s meaningful to all, is the standard all organizations will be held to.”

About Stellar Solutions

Stellar Solutions, Inc. is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors.  Stellar Solutions provides systems engineering capabilities and strategic support for global communications, remote sensing, national defense, and space exploration. These solutions to customer critical needs connect technology and customers across multiple domains. With physical operations throughout the U.S. and the globe, Stellar Solutions is a recognized leader in delivering end-to-end critical expertise and problem-solving skills.

About the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area™

Great Place to Work selected the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area by gathering and analyzing confidential survey responses from its study of thousands of companies representing more than 6.1 million U.S. employees at Great Place to Work-Certified™ organizations. Companies must be headquartered in the Bay Area to be eligible. Company rankings are derived from 60 employee experience questions within the Great Place to Work Trust Index™ survey.

About Great Place to Work®

Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, it has surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Its employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Everything it does is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work For All™. 

Award-winning space industry leader joins global aerospace engineering services innovator  

Palo Alto CA – Stellar Solutions, Inc., the global aerospace engineering services leader, has named Michael Hollis, Jr., as Vice President, Civil Sector.  He joins the senior executive team of the woman-owned and woman-led company that delivers high-impact engineering services to intelligence, defense, civil, commercial, and international customers.

In announcing his appointment, Stellar Solutions CEO Janet Grondin said, “Stellar Solutions is proud to welcome Michael Hollis to our leadership constellation. With 20 years of award-winning experience in the space industry, his systems engineering expertise and business development acumen will support our growth and mission to solve customers’ critical needs.” 

Hollis joins the company with an extensive career in publicly-traded global engineering companies.  Most recently he served as Program Director of Intelligence Community Systems Solutions at Jacobs (previously KEYW). Prior to 2020, he led a successful 16-plus year career at Northrop Grumman Corporation, where he was promoted several times, most recently to Business Development Manager. He also served as Program Manager for a substantial classified program, and as Systems Engineering and Integration Test Lead. 

He was twice awarded Black Engineer of the Year awards at Northrop Grumman, both for Outstanding Young Alumni and as a Science Spectrum Trailblazer. 

Inspiring a pipeline of young people is a passion for Hollis. Earlier in his career while at Aerospace Corporation, he was Chairman of the Robert Herndon Science Competition to encourage STEM interest among lower-income and minority middle and high school students. He also served as Aerospace Corporation’s Black Caucus Vice Chairman, and later in his career participated in the Jacobs Leadership Development Program. Through DiscoverE he has conducted engineering workshops in schools, and has supported educational programs for homeless youth.

Hollis has also supported the broader community through organizations including Habitat for Humanity and the Los Angeles Urban League Young Professionals.

He holds an MBA from University of Maryland, College Park, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University. He currently serves on the Clemson University’s Honors College Advisory Board. 

About Stellar Solutions

Stellar Solutions is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors.  Stellar Solutions provides systems engineering capabilities and strategic support for global communications, remote sensing, national defense, and space exploration. These solutions to customer critical needs connect technology and customers across multiple domains. With physical operations throughout the U.S. and the globe, Stellar Solutions is a recognized leader in delivering end-to-end critical expertise and problem-solving skills. stellarsolutions.com

Founder of 27-year aerospace engineering services company honored for a life’s work of mentoring, hiring, and funding women leaders

Palo Alto, CA – Celeste Ford, Board Chair of Stellar Solutions, Inc. and Managing Director at Stellar Ventures, was bestowed the AWESOME Legendary Leadership (ALL) Award at the 9^th Annual AWESOME Symposium gathering last month in Chicago, IL.

The ALL Award recognizes women leaders who have achieved professional excellence and success, have addressed challenges impacting opportunities for women in the supply chain field, and have advanced to the highest levels of leadership and roles with broadest impact. 

“Celeste Ford is an extraordinary role model who began her aerospace engineering career as the only woman in a room, grew a renowned global company, expanded opportunities for women there and throughout her industry, and now is at the forefront of space venture investing,” said Ann Drake, Chair and Founder of AWESOME.

AWESOME is the preeminent women’s leadership group for the supply chain industry, with more than 1,500 women in diverse senior supply chain leadership roles making up the organization. The Symposium is AWESOME’s signature annual event, and this year’s theme was “The New Possible: Igniting Powerful Progress.”

As Founder of Stellar Solutions, the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award-winning aerospace engineering services company, Ford pioneered a new business model that ensured its talented engineers were working in their “dream jobs.”  This created a team of experts who forge high-impact solutions to customers’ critical needs across defense and intelligence, commercial, civil and international realms.

From the company’s inception in 1995, Ford served as CEO until 2018 when she became Board Chair.  She launched Stellar Ventures in 2022 which is distinguished as a woman-led firm investing in the next generation of space technology companies.

Ford has cultivated opportunities for entrepreneurial growth and innovation for women outside Stellar Solutions as well. She has served as a mentor and speaker at her alma maters the University of Notre Dame and Stanford University.

Ford’s numerous honors include Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Baldrige Foundation and the National Association of Women Business Owners, Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, Entrepreneur of the Year from Ernest & Young, and Small Business Executive of the Year from National Defense Industry Association. Under her leadership, Stellar Solutions has been named a Fortune Magazine Great Place to Work® since 2014.

Ford is a member of numerous public, private and nonprofit Boards, including the Board of Trustees at the University of Notre Dame and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Associate Fellow.

AWESOME was founded in 2013 by Ann Drake, former CEO of DSC Logistics. After nine years, AWESOME remains the preeminent women’s leadership group for the supply chain industry, with more than 1,500 women in diverse senior supply chain leadership roles making up the organization. The Symposium is AWESOME’s signature annual event, and this year’s theme was “The New Possible: Igniting Powerful Progress.” The AWESOME Symposium is an integral part of the organization’s mission to advance and transform the future of supply chain leadership by bringing together senior women leaders for connecting, learning, collaboration, recognition, and inspiration. In addition to their annual Symposium, AWESOME curates a series of virtual events each month, maintains the AWESOME Excellence in Education Scholarship Program, and, since 2016, has partnered with Gartner on annual research studying the progress of women in supply chain. 

About Stellar Solutions, Inc.:  Stellar Solutions is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors.  Stellar Solutions provides rapid-response capabilities related to global surveillance and cyber-security, space exploration, risk management, and technology optimization. These solutions to clients’ critical needs involve satellites in space, sensors on Earth, and intricate technology connections across multiple frontiers. With physical operations in California, Colorado, the greater Washington DC area, London and France, as well as employees throughout the U.S. and the globe, Stellar Solutions has become a recognized leader in delivering end-to-end critical expertise and problem-solving skills to dozens of significant programs. Stellar Solutions Foundation supports employees’ community engagement. QuakeFinder, Stellar Solutions’ humanitarian R&D division, pursues earthquake prediction models. www.stellarsolutions.com

Stellar Solutions CEO Janet Grondin was recently featured on “Talon Talks,” a  podcast showcasing the best and brightest of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University alumni.  Grondin received her BS in Aeronautical Engineering, Magna cum Laude, in 1989 – a time, she recalled, when the music and energy of “Top Gun” was pervasive on campus.  Since then, as the host noted, Grondin attained three Master degrees and served for 26 years in the U.S. Air Force before joining the private sector and then Stellar Solutions.

At Embry-Riddle she was encouraged to run experiments and stress-test specimens in a lab without a professor to look over her shoulder. “Having that early empowering experience was foundational to my career. That’s why as CEO, I am protective of that part of our culture at Stellar. It’s what inspires us to come to work every day.”

Grondin shared her respect for the core values first envisioned and led by Celeste Ford. “I don’t know of any other company that is all about putting people in dream jobs and solving customers’ critical needs,” she said.

Some key defining moments:

·      With the Air Force, Grondin created a  frequency-hopping system on airplanes to evade enemy detection during Desert Storm.

·      She led fielding of a next-generation GPS ground system, which was like “replacing the engine of a car while driving 60 miles an hour.”

·      As a Lt. Colonel,  Grondin flattened her organization to speed decision-making and empower  the team, many of whom are now leaders in the Space Force.

“You don’t always know what your dream job will be, but if you can pursue your curiosity and have the opportunity to test yourself, great things can happen,” she says.   

What is her favorite cartoon character? Elastigirl from The Incredibles – like many working moms who have to stretch. What historic person would she like to live as for a week? Martin Luther King Jr., whom she deeply admires: “I would love to see how he changed history.”  

Listen here to learn more about Grondin and why she is proud to be at Stellar Solutions.  https://alumni.erau.edu/s/867/bp20/interior.aspx?sid=867&gid=1&pgid=6231

Stellar Solutions CEO featured on “Talon Talks”