Moving Forward with Brian Freitag

NASA MSFC Employee and IMPACT team member Brian Freitag sat down for an interview with Behind the Biography, an Envision podcast series. In the interview, “Using Adversity to Drive You Forward,” he discusses a wide range of topics from his time at Envision, current work at NASA, and the points of failure along the way that helped propel him from a kid interested in weather to his career in NASA’s Earth Science Division.

While Envision is an education organization with students as the target audience, the podcast contains information relevant to students and professionals alike. For example, Brian talks about the power of facing rejection and failure and using it as a springboard for your career path and about the tools NASA has available to improve discoverability and usability of NASA’s Earth science data for scientific discovery. Specific to his work within IMPACT, Brian highlights his involvement in the development of the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 data products, web applications NASA provides to help users search and visualize NASA Earth science data, and the COVID data visualization dashboard.

Brian’s sister, who works for Envision, reached out about participating in an interview focused on his career and the steps that helped him get there. In the interview he recounts the many people who helped and inspired him when he faced challenges and setbacks.

"I think the non-linear career path laden with rejection is something most people can relate to. I think a lot of times we see people in their current positions unaware of the trials that helped propel them there."

Brian hopes that by sharing his story and making himself available as a resource to others listening to the podcast, he might help inspire the next generation of Earth scientists. He also advocates for better inclusion of NASA’s Earth science data in middle schools and high school course materials as a way of inspiring and preparing the next generation of Earth scientists to reach their greatest potential.

Listen to the interview “Using Adversity to Drive You Forward”.

NASA Earth science resources mentioned in the interview:

NASA COVID Dashboard NASA Worldview (visualization platform for NASA’s Earth science data)

View Brian's LinkedIn profile.