Coaching for leaders in the space sector

You can see what needs to change
The hard part is thriving while doing it

I partner with leaders in the space sector navigating transition whose challenge is creating lasting change while staying true to their values.

Start a conversation Is this you?

I'm Jake Malthouse. For two decades I've worked at the frontier of large systems — sustainability, finance, the Internet, and now space — and I coach leaders in the space sector trying to do the same.

You work for a reason — an opportunity others couldn't see, a wider canvas for change, a chance to move humanity forward, or to make life better here on earth. You bring a strategic perspective that lets you see what others cannot.

But seeing the opportunity for change and creating it aren't the same thing.

You are navigating a transition — a new role, institution, specialization, or country. Each carries its own complexities: norms you don't know, connections you can't see, stories that reinforce the status quo.

It's not clear where, when, or how to act. The wrong calls can be costly — and so can standing still: momentum stalls, conviction wears thin, and the system you came to change can slowly begin to change you. The right ones can change the world. I help people thrive through these transitions.

"Leading a nonprofit foundation in a sector as dynamic as space comes with constant complexity, and Jake's support has been invaluable. His approach — grounded in lived leadership experience, high emotional intelligence, strong business acumen, and a curiosity that gets to the crux of matters — has helped me find clarity through rapid change. He brings a rare combination of big-picture thinking and operational pragmatism, and has helped me make critical decisions I could stand behind with confidence, from long-term strategy to governance and budgets."

Hannah Ashford
Managing Director, The Karman Project

Leaders I've coached and worked with come from

Who I work with

The people I work with are trying to change something

They work in the space sector — one of the fastest moving industries there is, where the rules are still being written. They have come to their current role with an outside perspective. That perspective is how they can see what needs to change. Meeting the challenge that change creates is where I help.

i

You came to make something change

You took a role because you saw an opportunity, or wanted a wider canvas for the change you care about.

ii

Your outside perspective is your edge

You see what those inside cannot, or will not — the assumptions, the limits, the openings. It is why you were brought in, or why you moved.

iii

You are navigating an unfamiliar system

A board, a regulator, an institution, a new sector — each with norms you do not yet know, relationships you have not yet built, and a gravity that favours the established way.

iv

You cannot always tell what is you and what is the system

Is the friction a sign that your approach needs to change, or simply the nature of the system you have entered?

“

We can't impose our will upon a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.

Donella Meadows · Dancing with Systems

How we work together

We start with the change. Then we discover how to thrive within it.

My support is most useful during an active transition in a dynamic environment. We start with your story and values, then work outward — reading the system you're in, finding where you can genuinely move it, and learning how to sustain yourself while you do.

i

Read the system

We map what you are actually working within — its norms, relationships, incentives, and history — to see what is genuinely constraining the change, as distinct from what merely appears to be.

ii

Find where your influence is real

We work out where your outside perspective is leverage and where it is friction, so you can move the institution without provoking the reflexes that defeat change introduced from outside.

iii

Sustain yourself within it

Leading change from the edge of a system is demanding and often isolating. We keep sight of who you are becoming, so your conviction holds for as long as the change takes.

Throughout this process, the work moves between the big picture — strategic, systemic, who you're becoming — and the practical: a board dynamic, a financial decision, a key relationship. Having built and led global organisations myself, across governance, finance, fundraising, and operations, I can stay with you across both levels.

This wide-ranging exploration is central to our work. It's where clarity opens up, and action follows.

What I ask

Real change takes time. You can expect a space that takes your full complexity seriously — your culture, your values, your professional and personal worlds both.

Be ready to reflect deeply, sit with discomfort, and explore — this work is positively oriented and high-empathy, but it asks something of you.

Commit to going beneath the surface — examining not just the practical challenges but the assumptions, stories, and values underneath them.

Bring what you discover back into your daily work. The goal is not just insight — it's change you can see and feel in how you lead.

What clients say

From the people who've done the work

"Jake has this amazing ability to understand the core of the issues you are trying to solve or address, and is able to verbalize what you are experiencing with such clarity. Every time we had a conversation, Jake enabled me to identify with greater understanding the options that were in my control and the things that required a different way of thinking or perspective. Ultimately, Jake is a true professional and excellent coach as he tackles difficult matters with great care and compassion."

Fani Kallianou de Jong
Space Economy Lead, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

"I asked for Jake's help during a period of profound change: country, job, role, and parenthood all at the same time. He's extremely sharp, with a rare ability to draw clear statements out of a conversation even when it takes non-linear paths. Over our sessions we developed a concrete framework that's helping me tackle my daily challenges — specific but generalizable, something I'll be able to reuse and expand over time."

Senior executive in the space sector
A leading international company

"I reached out to Jake at a moment when my work had hit a confusing roadblock: it was meaningful, but the structure around it had stopped letting me bring value — to others, or to myself. As an engineer-artist, my work sits between two languages that rarely speak to each other. Jake has an unusual ability to see through someone else's chaos without getting lost in it — and he showed me that, ultimately, the storytelling I needed to do here was my own."

Dr. Priyanka Rajkakati
Founder & Artist, Atelier Arth · VP Strategic Initiatives, vorteX-io

"I came to Jake while leading my university's space program through a major organizational transition — scaling from a small, agile team into a formal center, with the people involved more than doubling and a new layer of leadership added. His questions helped me see the change not just as a structural problem, but a human one: understanding my colleagues' motivations, learning to listen before deciding, and recognizing that a good decision sits in the middle of a process, not the beginning. I didn't just navigate the transition — I became a better leader, and a better colleague, because of it."

Péter Kristóf
Péter Kristóf
Rector's Envoy for Space Affairs, Óbuda University – Space Lab

Background

I have navigated these transitions too

Jake Malthouse, executive coach for leaders in the space sector
Open Lunar Foundation
Executive Director of a nonprofit working to keep the Moon a peaceful, cooperative place — in a domain where the rules are still being written and the people in the room are shaping them in real time.
.eco · Big Room Inc.
Co-founded and led for a decade. The industry's assumption was that you couldn't ask domain registrants to uphold environmental values. We proved otherwise — finding allies, building the technology, and moving the industry, without losing commercial viability.
UNEP FI · PRI
Founding architect of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment — asking the world's largest investors to weigh what the system was built to ignore. Now signed by institutions managing $139 trillion.
Save Dot Org · ICANN
Co-founded the global campaign that blocked a $1.1B private-equity acquisition of .org — arguing that some infrastructure belongs to the public, against the financial logic pushing the other way. Built ICANN's global presence across 28 countries.

I know these transitions from the inside. My career has moved between worlds more than once — from the top-down world of UN officials and global investors to the bottom-up world of internet engineers and multi-stakeholder governance. Reading a system from the outside and the inside at once is something I learned by living it.

I have also sat where my clients sit: leading institutions, navigating boards and regulators, making change in systems built to resist it. And I have worked alongside senior executives and founders doing the same. That does not make me the authority on your situation — it means I can stay with you in the difficult parts, and ask the questions that cut through.

My coaching is informed by more than two decades navigating the spaces between sectors: sustainability and finance, technology and policy, mission and market.

It is also grounded in formal training. I am a Certified Organizational Coach through the University of British Columbia, and hold the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) — the body that sets the global standard for the profession. I hold an Executive Space Certificate from the International Space University and am a Karman Fellow (2023).

That distinction matters. Many former operators will simply offer you their own playbook. The training is what keeps me in service of your thinking, rather than substituting mine for it.

Work with me

Questions

Before you get in touch

What does a coaching engagement look like?

Eight sessions over four months, one every two weeks. We open by mapping the terrain you are working within and close by integrating what has changed. In between, you have access to me for the moments that can't wait.

Who do you work with?

Leaders in the space sector who are navigating a transition — a new role, institution, specialization or country — and who are trying to create lasting change while staying true to their values.

How is coaching different from consulting or mentoring?

I won't hand you my playbook. I have led organizations myself, which helps me understand your context, but the work is yours: my questions are there to bring clarity to your thinking and your decisions, not to substitute mine for them.

Is what we discuss confidential?

Yes. I am an ICF-credentialed coach and work under the ICF Code of Ethics, which includes a strict standard of confidentiality. What you share stays between us unless you give permission, apart from the narrow exceptions the code and the law require.

Where do sessions take place?

Online by video, so we can work together wherever you are based. I work with clients globally and am based in Vancouver, Canada.

What happens on the first call?

A 30-minute discovery conversation about what you are navigating and whether working together makes sense. There is no obligation, and no preparation is needed.

A conversation

If something here has named a tension you've been carrying

That's probably worth a conversation. I work with a small number of clients at a time. We'll talk about what you're navigating — and whether working together makes sense.

Start a conversation

jake@jakemalthouse.com  ·  Vancouver, Canada  ·  Working globally