For the past decade, Paul Propster has been revolutionising the way space scientists tell – and sell – their stories at NASA’s iconic Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He tells The Brilliant why he made good storytelling a priority at the world’s largest space agency.
Paul Propster describes landing his job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California as “very unusual – a bit of a miracle”.
“I was a communications major at university, with an advertising minor,” he says. “My goal was to work at a big ad agency and be a creative director.”
But, a graduate internship at an aerospace company set him on a very different course. He spent the next 15 years in communications and business development in the aerospace and defence sector, including at major US defence contractor, Raytheon Technologies (now RTX Corporation).
A serendipitous LinkedIn notification in late 2013 alerted Propster to a ‘capture lead’ role opening up at NASA. The remit? Convincing sales leads to sign on the dotted lines – the kind of position Propster was very familiar with.
“I was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t think NASA needed these types of folks.’ I thought they just directed space missions,” he recalls.
Propster soon realised that the demand for someone with his skills was a reflection of the rapidly evolving and increasingly competitive space sector. He submitted his application, and after a months-long assessment process, he landed the job.
Opportunity knocks
Propster arrived at JPL in 2014 to find his new colleagues in the middle of responding to an ‘Announcement of Opportunity’ (AO). AOs are issued by NASA headquarters, inviting the scientific community, including NASA centres such as JPL, to propose innovative projects, missions and solutions to big research challenges. The ideas are reviewed by a panel of experts and stakeholders such as mission directors, compliance officers and collaborating partners, with funding and resources allocated to successful proposals.
Propster was familiar with AOs, as they were similar to how proposals for specific projects or research are solicited in the private sector. The difference, he says, is that while private-sector proposals have specific requirements and deliverables, NASA’s AOs are broader and more open-ended. For example? “We would like the best ideas to explore ocean worlds, or to bring back a sample from an asteroid in the asteroid belt,” he says.
This “looser” approach, as he describes it, is designed to foster innovation and creativity. To Propster, it presented a unique communications challenge. “I realised that there was a need for a kind of ‘story strategy’ to help zero-in on these very broad goals that NASA had.”
While six teams at JPL were responding to that particular AO, Propster was introduced to them as the “new story person” who was going to help them. His involvement wasn’t always met with open arms. Storytelling was still seen as a ‘soft skill’ by many of the scientists – Propster says it was “this kind of squishy thing” they preferred to leave to the very end of the process. He knew he would be facing an uphill battle in explaining the true value of accessible communications in securing funding and ultimately driving science forward.
The rise of the story architect
Based on that early experience – and his growing appreciation of the unique culture at NASA – Propster decided to change his title to ‘story architect’.
“We had a mission architect, a concept architect, and a lead system architect – we had all of these architects,” he says. “So, for the next couple of missions, I’d introduce myself as a story architect.”
While that shift in language helped Propster make some headway in convincing his colleagues of his value, he was still met with concerns that he might be “dumbing down” the science. “I’d say, ‘No, no, no – we’re going to make it more accessible. We want the stakeholders to be as excited as you are about your science. We have to make it ‘get-able’ to them.’”
The first proposal Propster worked on was for JPL’s Earth sciences team – for a mission to use a JPL satellite called MAIA to study the impact of air pollution on human health. The proposal had been submitted twice before, and lost both times. Working with the project’s principal investigator, Propster took his editing pen and storytelling skills to the existing document, and on attempt three, they were finally successful. Despite that first key win, Propster still had work to do in convincing JPL leadership of his value. “They were like, ‘Well that’s great, but maybe it was luck.’”
His next proposal was from the Astrophysics team, for a mission to study the Sun with unprecedented focus, to better understand the solar atmosphere and its magnetic fields. The team had faced multiple challenges in selling its mission concept; their proposed use of miniaturised satellites called ‘SmallSats’ was met with scepticism. In his storytelling, Propster narrowed in on the mission’s potential to help governments predict and prepare for coronal mass ejections, which pose a risk to Earth’s digital infrastructure. This proposal was also successful.
Something more than luck was obviously at play, and the power of storytelling was becoming increasingly clear – in fact, it was driving an entire cultural shift at JPL that had begun to impact NASA as well.
When Propster finally heard feedback on their successful MAIA proposal, he was told that his storytelling “nearly brought a tear to the eyes of some of the reviewers”, he recalls. “They said, ‘That’s where these proposals need to go in the future. It’s getting so competitive that you really have to emotionally connect.’”
Selling the science of stories
JPL’s Innovation Foundry, where Propster is employed, uses a scale system to describe the maturity of mission concepts. Called CMLs (concept maturity level) these range from levels 1 to 5 – from a “back-of-the-napkin” stage to “I’m about to submit my proposal”, Propster explains.
When he started his role at JPL, storytelling didn’t factor in until level 5. That left only about three months to weave a compelling narrative through the key proposal documents, which could be up to 200 pages long.
“Now we’re in level 1,” Propster says, proudly. This change not only reflects the increasing priority given to storytelling in developing mission concepts and proposals, but also bought communicators such as Propster many more months to work with the scientists to craft their story.
The cultural shift that was taking place at JPL wasn’t all one-way – Propster wanted to speak the language of the scientists, just as he wanted them to understand where he was coming from as a communicator. He investigated the science of storytelling and used data and evidence to explain the ‘why’ of his own work to his colleagues. “Those were some of the building blocks needed to start convincing them that the earlier we focus on the story, the better,” says Propster.
In 2022 Propster co-authored a paper explaining his team’s story-focussed approach to communicating mission concepts at JPL. By then, he had also founded the StoryLab at JPL, where he leads a team of people with skills like him, working together to help JPL researchers more effectively and strategically communicate their work.
Creating credible messengers
Over the years, as Propster increasingly stepped into leadership positions, his work has become less hands-on – although he does write JPL’s annual report. His leadership work includes nurturing scientists to become more competent communicators and discovering and connecting “hidden gems” of talent and opportunity throughout the organisation.
For example, StoryLab partnered with Brian Brophy – Director of Theater Arts at Caltech, the university that founded and manages JPL – to develop a 10-week ‘credible messenger’ training programme. This course is now available to JPL researchers and Caltech students, with the aim of helping them reconnect with and better express their excitement and passion when communicating their work.
“We’ve had salty engineers crying – people really getting to know each other as humans,” says Propster.
By the end of the course, the students are able to confidently deliver a seven-minute TED-style talk about their research, without slides or prompts. “We’ve said this probably a billion times now, but these are no longer soft skills, they’re critical skills,” says Propster.
Propster admits that he’s experienced imposer syndrome many times as he’s tried to push the boundaries at NASA. But seeing the results of his work has helped quash those doubts. Key to his success, he says, has been understanding and embracing the culture, not dismissing or fighting against it.
In May 2022, Laurie Leshin started as the new director of JPL. In her vision for the organisation, she highlighted her appreciation of the power of storytelling. This moment was, Propster knew, his ‘golden ticket’ to not only continue his work, but to bolster it, driving JPL into its new era of what he calls “narrative thinking”.
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Story by Kylie Ahern
Image: Myriam Baril-Tessier