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The Austin Planetarium board incorporates a strong mix of gifted individuals, from community leaders, educators and business executives. Currently the Austin Planetarium board is a 9 member board.
Torvald Hessel, Executive Director & President
 Torvald Hessel was elected to the Board in 2003 and currently serves as Executive Director and President, additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at ACC. He grew up in a small town in the northern part of the Netherlands, and received his Masters Degree in Astrophysics from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. During his graduate school he worked for several years at the Artis Planetarium in Amsterdam as a lecturer and presenter. He developed planetarium presentations and taught Astronomy on all levels, from kindergarten kids to adults and fellow Astronomers. In 1999 he immigrated to the United States and ended up in Austin, TX. Before he started working fulltime for the Austin Planetarium he worked for seven years as a web designer and programmer for the University of Texas at Austin and in 2005 he became a naturalized citizen.
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Lary Cotten, Vice President
 Lary Cotten was elected to the Board at the November 2007 meeting, and after serving as Secretary for a year is now the Vice President. He is an electrical engineer specializing in the design and engineering of art, media, and entertainment technologies. Lary has spent the last couple of decades in Austin developing automated lighting, projection and control systems at High End Systems, managing electrical engineering for Frog Design, founding Open Labs, a manufacturer of audio and music production workstations, and creating installations for NAKA Media design and engineering. He now serves as the director of research and development for D2M Technologies, a locally based engineering and product development firm. After growing up in a school with a planetarium, observatory, theater and television studio, he came to Austin and never left. Lary often claims to be building a large telescope.
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Ron Johns, Secretary
 Ron Johns was elected to the Board in 2003 and served as Board Vice President for five years. Currently he holds the Secretary position. He is a professor of geology at Austin Community College. Dr. Johns obtained his B.S with honors in Geology from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, then continued his education at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his M.A in Geological Sciences in 1987, and his Ph.D. in Geological Sciences in 1993. He was formerly the Chair of the Physical Sciences Dept. at ACC, and oversaw the college's programs in Astronomy, Engineering, Geology, and Physics. He is now the Assistant Dean of Math/Sciences at ACC's Riverside campus.
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Jon Morgan, Treasurer
 Jon Morgan was elected to the board in August 2009 to serve as the Treasurer. Jon is a native Austinite, husband, and father of 2. After completing his degree in economics at Texas A&M, Jon moved to Dallas to begin a career in banking. He has worked with Bank of America, Wachovia, and Citigroup and is currently the President of the Manor Independent Bank, a privately owned financial institution that prides itself on having local leadership and shareholders. In addition to his career in banking, he has been active in non-profit work for the Manor Education Foundation.
As Treasurer, Jon brings a history of fiscal and social responsibility to the important role of financial overseer for the Austin Planetarium. Jon is very excited at the prospect of bringing a Planetarium to Austin so that he might give his children (ages 5 and 8) the opportunity to see the stars in a way he was not able to, growing up in the planetarium-free city of Austin.
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Amanda Justice, Director
 Amanda Justice comes to us with a strong philantropic background in the Austin community with organizations such as Association for Corporate Growth and Association for Women in Technology of Austin. She is also involved as an investor and board advisor for several start ups in the Austin community.
Amanda will be serving as Chair of the fundraising committee. She will oversee all private, corporate and grant fundraising.
Since 2007, Amanda serves as a Senior Client Executive at Capgemini, where she oversees sales and delivery of all project based consulting for High Tech and Manufacuting clients in the Southwest Business unit which maintains an annual run rate of 135 million for Capgemini. In 2008 Capgemini championed Ms. Justice to lead and develop public sector business for the Southwestern United States with a US goal of $250 million revenue in 2009.
Capgemini is a 12+ Billion dollar systems integration company headquartered out of Paris, France. She is responsible for clients including Dell, HP, Apple, Temple Island, AMD, Freescale, Continental Airlines, State of TX, and OK, just to name a few.
Prior to Capgemini, Amanda held positions at Ciber and Trilogy Inc. She earned her bachelors degree from the University of North Carolina and attended graduate school at MIT in the EECS Masters of Science program.
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Craig Negoescu, Director
 Craig Negoescu was elected to the board in December 2008. Since coming to Austin to serve at Bergstrom Air Force Base in 1982, he has made his mark in Austin in entertainment, business, engineering, art and science. After performing as a keyboardist and composer for local and national bands for several years, Craig gained experience at High End Systems and frog design before becoming an entrepreneur. Since 2004, Craig has founded several companies including Open Labs, edioma and NAKA media.
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Steve Rung, Director
 Elected to the Board in 2004, Steve currently serves as backup webmaster for www.austinplanetarium.org. He spent his childhood in upstate New York, where the night sky is very dark – perfect for a boy to fall in love with the stars. Steve attended both Trinity University and the University of Texas at Austin, graduating from UT with a degree in Mathematics. Still an astronomy enthusiast, Steve currently works as an Assistant Director for the University of Texas. He is married and has two kids (ages thirteen and nine) who would love to go visit a planetarium in Austin.
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