Chief of Staff

Pedro Almeida is the Chief of Staff for Space Foundation, where his responsibilities include leading process improvement and integrating strategic and operational efforts to deliver maximum impact across the Foundation’s mission areas.

Prior to joining Space Foundation, Pedro served as a deputy executive director in Colorado’s Department of Human Services, where he led information technology, human resources, legal, auditing, quality assurance and facilities management support for the department’s 5,000 employees and 300 buildings across the state of Colorado. He also served as the chief operations officer at School District 49 in Colorado Springs, where he successfully co-led the district alongside the chief education and business officers throughout the COVID pandemic. At the rapidly growing school district of 20,000 students and 30 schools, Pedro supervised new building construction, facilities maintenance, transportation services, information technology, safety and security, and nutrition services.

Pedro is proud to note his 27 years of active military service as a Soldier where his service included commanding an augmented combat aviation brigade task force in Afghanistan, serving as chief of staff for an Army theater component command, and designation as a foreign area officer for Africa.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from MIT, a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, and served as the senior Army fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. He was designated a master army aviator and has 800 combat flight hours in the AH-64 Apache and the UH-60 Blackhawk.