For most graduates picturing where their future careers might take them, the phrase “the sky’s the limit” is optimistic hyperbole. But for Middlebury Institute graduate Tatiana Lind, MATI ’08, it was an understatement.
Lind, a native of Siberia, was pursuing her master’s in Russian language interpretation and translation when a NASA contractor visited the Monterey, California, campus to recruit language specialists. Lind took (and aced) the NASA recruiter’s language test, the first step on a path that led to her joining the flight control team at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, after graduation. Today, as a freelance interpreter, she facilitates communication between the control team and Russian crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
In 2023, Lind received a Silver Snoopy Award, an honor bestowed on fewer than 1 percent of NASA employees and contractors each year. The award recognized her support of Crew-5, the fifth crew to travel to and from the ISS on the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft. Among the crew’s four members was Anna Kikina, Russia’s only active female cosmonaut, with whom Lind discovered a connection beyond their native language: the two women hailed from the same remote region of Siberia.
As a liaison between Russians and Americans, Lind sees firsthand how the ISS program operates outside of—or perhaps despite—geopolitical friction. In a recent Institute news article, she said, “This is the most remarkable achievement of the program—not something technical or the conducting of any experiments, but individuals and cultures working together for larger benefit. For me that’s one of the greatest motivators: unfortunately or fortunately, this is more or less the last frontier.”
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