“Your character is one of your biggest assets in the sector. Whilst honing individual traits for professional settings and demonstrating competence, it is important to show warmth and curiosity.”
Marie-Claire de Bruijn is a law student at the University of Cologne. While she studies to pass the first of the two state examinations required in Germany to become a lawyer (“With one state examination, I’m half a lawyer?” she jokes), she is working at her school library.
When I hop on the call, Marie-Claire is wearing a black long-sleeve t-shirt and sips what I can only imagine is cool water from a hydro-flask. She is calling me from Germany, specifically from the offices at the university’s library. Behind her, fluorescent lights illuminate surrounding cubicles and a tastefully spiky plant by the window.
Marie-Claire has earned the Space Law and Policy (SLP) Spotlight because of her drive, passion, and team leadership skills. Though she is only a law student, we at SLP thought it would be refreshing to begin our new spotlight series by highlighting a young professional. What draws new faces to the field of space law? How is the new generation already making an impact? What are they looking forward to, and what wisdom can they offer?
Raised in the German small town of Trier, where comfort zones were prophecies and the pursuit of university education was unusual, Marie-Claire had ambitions for something more. Though at first, she didn’t know what. When she was younger, she interned in a wide range of fields. From woodworking, to optometry, to house painting, and even pharmacy — she was open to new experiences. But while visiting a nearby university at age 14, she learned about the field of law and instantly knew it would be a good fit.
“For a very long time I loved to work with texts and interpretations,” she tells me. “My gut feeling drew me to the sense of law.”
Having no university graduate role models, she emailed as many law professors she could with questions about the field and the path through it. “It was so sweet because most of them actually replied.”
The way in which Marie-Claire entered space law was rather serendipitous. As she read about air law, Marie-Claire began to question just how far the jurisdiction of air space extended.
“I was literally one day wondering, does anything like space law exist?” she says, “and this is how I found out about the University of Cologne, where [one of the] oldest space law [institutes] is settled.”
Her first job in the sector was a work study with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). “Every time I opened a new door it was because of an email or a phone call,” Marie-Claire explains. “The legal department of the German Aerospace Center didn’t have any advertisements that it was looking for interns.”
“I think that was the scariest thing I [could] have done [at the time],” she says about simply calling up the DLR and asking if they had any student positions.
“They didn’t pick up. Three days later, I got a call back.”
This is one of the reasons why Marie-Claire has grown to love the industry. She speaks about how welcoming and encouraging professionals have been, and how open the channels of learning can be — if one is brave enough to seek out opportunities.
“Be bold and ask questions and reach out. You can always reach out and the worst that can happen is no reply, and that’s completely fine.”
Since then, Marie-Claire has interned and worked at BHO legal, participated in the Manfred Lachs Moot Court competition by the International Institute of Space Law (IISL), and attended the Singapore Space Challenge. On top of this, Marie-Claire has gone above and beyond to showcase her passion and expertise for the field in her free time. She has volunteered as first an operations intern, and later a coordination manager for the World Space Week Association, as well as led a group project under Domi Inter Astra (DIA), an initiative in the SGAC Space Exploration Policy Group.
Currently, she volunteers for Women in Aerospace as a mentor, where she encourages people entering the sector to be the “best versions of themselves while exploring the diversity of the field”.
“Your character is one of your biggest assets in the sector. Whilst honing individual traits for professional settings and demonstrating competence, it is important to show warmth and curiosity.”
Marie-Claire also cites the importance of knowing your value and your sense of right and wrong when entering a new work space. She urges people to listen to their gut feelings when they think they are having a negative experience. Normalizing your narrative and pushing through rather than speaking up can perpetuate unproductive or unsafe workplace culture.
As for her experience in the sector so far, Marie-Claire adores the intersectionality of space law, as a field rife with scientific innovation and global collaboration. “In the beginning I really had no idea — this is very important — how quickly you can join volunteering programs.”
In fact, Marie-Claire has met some of her best friends in the sector in this way; a couple of which are now collaborating with her on her research paper entitled, Life Science Beyond Earth: Exploring the Legal Landscape in Outer Space.
As a volunteer in the SGAC Space Law and Policy Group, look out for her and her team’s research paper in one of the upcoming newsletters! (Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do so here.)
This post was written by Mackenzie Pereira, SLP Professional Development team member.
