When you first meet Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony, the Albuquerque native's surname probably catches your attention. Not many people have a legal last name that also stands for, according to Merriam-Webster, a "consonance of sounds," after all.
It's fitting, then, that Otero-Symphony started her education at the University of New Mexico (UNM) as a music major. Her time spent playing the viola with the Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program naturally transitioned into collegiate studies at her hometown school.
But Otero-Symphony never had her own instrument. She would use public school violas and, once at UNM, a viola loaned to her by the New Mexico Philharmonic — contingent upon her studying in UNM's music department.
Otero-Symphony ended up leaving the university's music department, eventually graduating with a bachelor's degree in statistics. That meant she had to return the instrument.
Upon graduation in spring 2022, Otero-Symphony, a first-generation college student, was surprised with a new viola of her own. Her family, she said, had saved up to buy her the instrument as a graduation gift.
"I like to play it every now and then," Otero-Symphony said. "I'm trying to look into ways to contribute back to music, because music is so important to me, through the [Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program] and things like that."
What does this instrumental story have to do with Otero-Symphony's experience in the space industry? It provides one example of something the recent graduate told New Mexico Inno in June — space is really for anybody.
Otero-Symphony credits her time in the Brooke Owens Fellowship — a nonprofit fellowship organization that pairs undergraduate women with paid internships and career connections in the aerospace industry — with spurring her professional interest in space. She learned about the fellowship just days before graduating.
Through the fellowship, she interned with a financial company in Washington, D.C., and connected with space professionals from around the world — including, Otero-Symphony said, Sirisha Bandla, the vice president of governmental affairs and research operations for space travel company Virgin Galactic.
That experience would spin into Space Collegiate Opportunities and Pathways for Excellence, New Mexico, a website Otero-Symphony built this year.
But that's not the only space-related activity Otero-Symphony does. She's also a member of the UNM Space Sustainable Research Grand Challenge advisory board, a data science consultant for Florida-based Quilty Space and the Albuquerque lead for the NASA International Space Apps Challenge.
New Mexico Inno sat down with Otero-Symphony during a break from all of her various space activities to learn more about the website she created and her thoughts on New Mexico's aerospace ecosystem.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
New Mexico Inno: Can you explain SCOPE-NM and why you started it?
Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony: It is a website project I started to help inform and engage college students about space development and activity happening around New Mexico, so that we can specifically address those needs, not only at the college level but also at the local level.
I had a pretty windy path through college. When I was a kid, like most of us, I wanted to be an astronaut and the whole nine, but I never actually pursued anything space-related while I was in college. It wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't until after I left the state and got into the Brooke Owens Fellowship, which is an internationally competitive aerospace cohort, that I started to get into the space industry, and I learned about the activity happening here, in my own home.
This really shocked me, and I just wanted to make sure that college students were aware of this because when you move on into your professional career, you lose a lot of those perks you get as a student.
What do you think makes New Mexico's aerospace sector unique?
I thought aerospace here was just defense. And it is, but it's also other things, too. That's because the space industry recently, as most people know, has started to be transformed by the commercial opportunities that are available.
Earth observation, for example, was one of those ways that I thought was really interesting. I learned that there was a spatial lab at UNM and I thought, 'Why hadn't I heard of that before?' The geography department can do things with space. There's of course astronomy and the life sciences.
What I'm trying to paint a picture of here is, as a recent college student, I look at it from the lens of different departments. What are different departments doing in space? OK, now I'm a young professional — what are the different companies doing for space? There are so many moving pieces that I'm trying to understand. We have a lot of startups, we have a lot of companies that maybe didn't start here but are coming here and are expanding their operations here in New Mexico.
Why, specifically, I'm still learning and trying to figure out, but I think that's just another signal in the market.
What do you wish people in your shoes knew about the aerospace industry? What lessons do you wish you would have known two or three years ago?
I think the biggest one is that space is a huge market. You could be in business and you can go into space. You could be studying geography and you can go into space. If you're engineering, of course there's room for that too.
The second thing is how much it's like any kind of volunteer opportunity almost is the way I can explain it — you get [out] what you put into it. Space, because it is still growing, evolving, getting centered market-wise, there's a lot of room for experimentation. I think that's very poetic, because it's space. How did we start off even looking into space in the first place? So that experimentation, that willingness to explore, which is key to space itself, is also key to the market. That's what I wish people would know.
