Roger Forsgren

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Roger Forsgren retired from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2021 as the agency’s Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO).

As CKO, Forsgren led NASA’s knowledge sharing efforts to ensure that the agency’s employees had access to the critical knowledge needed for mission success. He was responsible for establishing, maintaining, and overseeing knowledge sharing policies, standards and capabilities that supported the development of NASA’s technical workforce.

Forsgren also served as Director of the NASA Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL). APPEL was responsible for the project management and systems engineering training for the agency. As the director, he managed the operations, contractual activities, and budget as well as the overall training curriculum. Under his leadership APPEL developed a wide variety of project management, systems engineering, and knowledge management courses.

Forsgren and his team are credited with developing APPEL into a world-class project management training activity. In 2015 APPEL was named, “The Best Academy in the World” by Human Systems International, a subsidiary of the Project Management Institute, and also earned the International Association for Continuing Education and Training’s (IACET) “Exemplar Award for Internal Training.” In 2016 APPEL earned the Agency’s Group Achievement Award for, “Outstanding support of NASA’s mission by providing world-class training to help ensure agency PMs have the skills and knowledge needed to advance mission success.”

In his dual role as CKO and APPEL Director, Forsgren worked within NASA as well as with leaders of industry, academia, professional associations and other government agencies to develop NASA’s capabilities in program and project management and engineering. He was responsible for integrating CKO activities with APPEL, leveraging APPEL courses to share lessons learned across the agency.

His NASA career started at Glenn Research Center as an apprentice mechanic. He attended over ten years of night school to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering, and progressed from mechanic to engineer, deputy project manager and project manager, serving in virtually every role on a project team prior to moving to NASA headquarters in 2005 to begin his APPEL support.

Forsgren has written numerous papers and articles, appeared in a variety of newspaper and magazine articles, and served as guest speaker on topics such as ethics and training NASA engineers. His paper, "The Architecture of Evil," (https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-architecture-of-evil) concerning engineering ethics and the need for liberal arts in an engineering education, was published in the August 2013 issue of The New Atlantis journal. Forsgren also authored an article about Herbert Hoover for History.ney (https://www.historynet.com/one-of-smartest-u-s-presidents-crashed-and-burned.htm). Mr. Forsgren presented a paper at the 2010 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) conference. The paper, entitled “Unique Education and Workforce Development for NASA Engineers,” covers the goals of the Academy and the role of its unique training and educational curriculum in the development of NASA’s technical workforce.

During his career, Forsgren has received numerous awards and honors. He received the Silver Snoopy and Manned Flight Awareness Award, the highest awards given at NASA from the Astronaut Office and Space Shuttle Program Office, respectively. He was selected in 1990 for Glenn Research Center’s “Suggester of the Year” award, and holds a patent for his work on an adjustable depth gauge.

Forsgren earned a bachelor’s in history from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s and master’s in engineering from Cleveland State University.