Sylvie Espinasse is the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) Office in Washington since January 2020. She represents ESA in the United States and Canada, and supports the implementation of the Agency’s cooperation with these two countries with a particular focus on NASA, NOAA and CSA, and the identification of new areas of potential collaboration. This involves establishing a network with U.S and Canadian institutional, academic and industrial entities and monitoring of the North American space policy and industry. Prior to this position she was responsible of the Coordination Office of the ESA directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration and executive secretary of the ESA Programme Board for Human spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration. She joined ESA in 2009 as an administrator in the Directorate of Human Space Flight. From 2000 to 2009, she was a project manager at the Italian Space Agency (ASI), in charge of the Italian participation in some ESA and NASA science and exploration missions and she was part of the Italian delegation in ESA. She started her professional career in the private sector in the field of applied research and environmental monitoring systems. She has a PhD in Geophysics from the University Joseph Fourier in Grenoble (France).