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Mike Ciannilli is a former NASA mission leader who equips leaders in high-stakes environments to protect decision quality under pressure. Drawing on human spaceflight experience, he shows how risk shifts as confidence grows and what it takes to maintain discipline when decisions carry real consequences.

As a NASA Test Director and senior leader, Mike’s work focused on one essential question:  How do organizations ensure that lessons learned actually change future decisions?  Over time, he recognized a pattern that extended far beyond aerospace.  Failures rarely repeat because people lack intelligence or effort. They repeat when learning breaks down under pressure and never translates into operational change.  That insight became the foundation for his keynote and learning discipline: 
Preventing Failure: Lessons Learned to Lessons Applied

Today, Mike equips leaders across industries to identify risk earlier, strengthen communication, and embed learning into how work is done.

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Former NASA Test Director | Keynote Speaker on Safety & Risk Mitigation

Mike Ciannilli

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Keynote

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45 min

60 min

Insights + Action

Healthcare

Workplace Culture

Leadership Mindset

Resilience

The Test Director Mentality When Lives Are on the Line
In an operating room or emergency department, highly trained professionals with different areas of expertise must perform with precision while working toward a single outcome. Decisions happen quickly. Communication matters. And when something doesn't look or feel right, someone needs to say so.
Mike Ciannilli knows that environment from a very different room.
For 30 years at NASA, Mike worked inside the firing room, where hundreds of specialists came together for the final countdown to launch a Space Shuttle. As a NASA Test Director, Mike led 21 launch countdowns in an environment where technical complexity, intense time pressure, hierarchy, and human lives converged.
The environment is different. The dynamics are remarkably familiar.
Using the structure of a Space Shuttle countdown, Mike takes healthcare audiences inside the firing room and introduces the Test Director Mentality, a practical approach to preventing failure when the stakes are high and no single person has all the information.
Failure rarely begins with one catastrophic decision. More often, it develops quietly. A small deviation is explained away. An unusual condition becomes familiar. A concern isn't voiced. Critical information fails to move through the hierarchy. Each moment may seem insignificant until, together, they are not.
That is why effective leadership in high-stakes environments depends on more than having exceptional people in the room. A Test Director cannot do every job required to launch a spacecraft. Like a conductor who cannot play every instrument, the leader relies on expertise they do not personally possess. Success depends on knowing who is in the room, understanding why their expertise matters, keeping information moving, and recognizing when the person who isn't speaking may be the person everyone most needs to hear.
Drawing from 58 Space Shuttle missions, the recovery of Columbia and her crew, and Mike's later work leading NASA's efforts to ensure lessons from Apollo, Challenger, and Columbia were understood and applied, Preventing Failure challenges healthcare professionals to look differently at the moments before something goes wrong: who is speaking, who is silent, what is becoming accepted, and what deserves one more question before continuing.
Because when lives are on the line, having the right expertise in the room isn't enough. The right information has to reach the right people in time.
Audience Takeaways
Participants will:
•	Apply the Test Director Mentality to recognize and respond to developing risk before consequences become irreversible.
•	Recognize how hierarchy, familiarity, assumptions, and pressure can interfere with critical information reaching the people who need it.
•	Keep expertise and concerns moving across roles and levels, particularly when questioning or stopping may be difficult.
•	Pay attention beyond spoken words to silence, hesitation, tone, body language, and other signals that something deserves another question.

Preventing Failure
Breaking the Failure Cycle When Consequences Are Real
When failure repeats, it is rarely because people did not know better. It repeats because learning broke down under pressure and never changed how decisions were made.
Mike Ciannilli delivers a keynote that equips leaders to prevent repeat failure before consequences appear. Drawing on 30 years inside the U.S. space program, including direct responsibility as a NASA Test Director, Mike shows how lessons fade, risks go quiet, and reasonable decisions lead to unacceptable outcomes.
This keynote gives leaders a practical way to stop that cycle.

Preventing Failure: Lessons Learned to Lessons Applied
Mike’s keynote is structured as a disciplined countdown that mirrors how Test Directors think and operate inside high-consequence systems.
Through powerful storytelling, humor, and real operational lessons, audiences experience a clear progression from explanation to prevention.

T-05
Identify Risk Early
Leaders learn how small signals get dismissed, how normalization of deviance begins, and how to recognize risk before it becomes operational exposure.
T-04
Align on What Happened and Why
Teams examine not only how events unfolded but why decisions made sense at the time, replacing hindsight with clarity.
T-03
Apply Lessons to Decisions
Learning moves beyond reports and into real operational ownership, decision rights, and behavioral change.
T-02
Challenge Drift and Assumptions
Leaders recognize false confidence, question assumptions, and strengthen communication under pressure.
T-01
Commit to Prevention Discipline
Organizations leave with a practical framework for maintaining vigilance as urgency and complexity return.
This structure creates a keynote experience that is engaging, grounded, and operationally relevant.

Audience Takeaways
Participants will:
•	Earlier identification of risk and weak signals
•	Clearer communication across roles and silos.
•	Stronger operational discipline under pressure.
•	Explicit ownership of lessons learned.
•	Fewer repeat failures and near-misses.
Most importantly, leaders gain a disciplined way to move from explanation to prevention.

"It's critically important that we don't forget the lessons learned from our past... Mike translated the agency’s most challenging moments into a world-class, continuous learning framework that educates new teams, sharpens executive decision-making, and embeds operational discipline across all missions and commercial partnerships."

Bob Cabana - NASA

Lisa W. Miller praises Mike Ciannilli as an exceptional speaker and media guest, highlighting his unique ability to share profound lessons from his 30-year career at NASA. Lisa emphasizes that Mike excels at discussing challenging and tragic historical events through a constructive lens, focusing on how organizations can learn from past mistakes to prevent future errors. By championing themes of humility, human connection, and safety, Mike is described as a powerful communicator capable of "turning darkness into light," making him an invaluable asset for those seeking a speaker who blends technical experience with purposeful leadership.

Lisa Miller - Lisa Miller & Associates: The Business of Joy

"Leveraging his legendary career as a NASA Test Director, Mike brings "out of this world" lessons to terrestrial challenges, helping organizations navigate complex crises and build resilient teams.  "Mike’s ability to translate NASA’s most rigorous safety protocols into actionable leadership strategies is a game-changer for the aviation sector."

Tracey Payne - Chicago Department of Aviation

"Thanks again for an excellent presentation last Thursday. The presentation should be mandatory for everyone on the Orion program. It really helps one realize how important the small details are and how keeping a dialogue going and asking questions may keep a disaster from occurring."

David Erickson - Lockheed Martin Corporation

"This is in appreciation of your enduring efforts for the advancement of safety and reliability in human spaceflight. I, along with several of my Boeing CCTS Program teammates, recently had the opportunity to tour hear you so eloquently speak. The experience had a profound impact on me and my colleagues. It was a sobering reminder of the importance of our Mission and the responsibility we have to our Nation and, in particular, to the astronauts who entrust their lives to us by flying the spaceships we design and build. Your efforts and continued support are greatly appreciated."

Mauricio E. Peña, Ph.D. - Boeing

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