Spexalink Names Former NASA CIO Dr. Linda Cureton Global Ambassador
Mumbai, India, October 8th, 2026, Chainwire
The former NASA CIO becomes the face of Spexalink’s work with new C-suite leaders, and launches the First 100 Days C-Suite Playbook drawn from her work.
Spexalink, the executive transition firm, today named Dr. Linda Cureton, former Chief Information Officer of NASA, as its Global Ambassador. Dr. Cureton, whose 39-year federal career took her from NASA mathematician to the Senior Executive Service and the Chief Information Officer seats at NASA and its Goddard Space Flight Center, becomes the public face of Spexalink’s work with newly appointed C-suite leaders and chief information officers, and the voice behind its new First 100 Days C-Suite Playbook.
The appointment closes a loop. Spexalink began with a research question that came out of an engagement with Dr. Cureton: how do senior executives actually decide to let an outsider in? The answers became the firm’s matching model, which pairs leaders in high-stakes seats with veteran operators who have personally held comparable seats. Dr. Cureton has been Spexalink’s first Pioneer Practitioner.
The appointment comes as the first year in a senior seat draws closer scrutiny than ever. Research from McKinsey & Company puts 40 to 50 percent of new-leader transitions coming apart within the first eighteen months, and McKinsey’s review of the major transition studies found that, two years in, between 27 and 46 percent of executive transitions are regarded as disappointments. The pattern, Spexalink argues, says less about the leaders than about how the seat is built: expectations are steepest at the start, and formal support usually ends at the signature.
A Washington, D.C. native who studied mathematics at Howard University, Dr. Cureton served as NASA’s Chief Information Officer from 2009 to 2013, the agency’s first African-American CIO, and led a $1.4 billion IT portfolio supporting 44,000 employees, contractors, and partners. Across her federal career she also served as the first CIO of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Deputy CIO at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and Associate CIO at the Department of Energy. She founded Muse Technologies, a management consulting and technology services company, in 2013 and leads it as CEO. She is the author of The Leadership Muse, and her writing and teaching explore what leadership looks like beyond titles and image: executive presence, authenticity, courage, gender dynamics, and the experience of being underestimated in professional environments.
“The first hundred days in the C-suite are rarely about competence. They are about reading a seat nobody fully explains to you,” said Dr. Cureton. “I spent nearly four decades learning that, in rooms where the scrutiny never let up. What I want for the leaders stepping in now is to learn it faster, from someone who has been there.”
As Global Ambassador, Dr. Cureton anchors The First 100 Days C-Suite Playbook: Six Moves to Own the Seat, a free guide for leaders stepping into their first C-suite role. Drawn from her book and stories from her own seats, it sets out six moves for the first 100 days: diagnose before acting, contract the mandate, win peers and map the terrain, assess and reshape the team, set the operating rhythm and early wins, and manage the shift in identity the seat demands. It carries the conviction at the center of her work: that leaders can become more effective without becoming less themselves. It runs on two tracks, for leaders promoted from within and for those hired from outside. Readers can claim a session with Dr. Cureton that leaves them with a roadmap for their own situation. The playbook is available at 100days.spexalink.com. Dr. Cureton will also appear in Spexalink’s video series for executives and technology leaders.
For technology leaders, Spexalink has also released The CIO AI Accountability Playbook, a free guide available at cio.spexalink.com. It addresses a gap the firm sees in boardrooms: according to CIO.com’s State of the CIO 2026, only 19 percent of 662 IT leaders say their AI initiatives have met or exceeded business goals, and only 47 percent have formal AI KPIs. The playbook sets out six moves a CIO can make this quarter, from agreeing an AI scoreboard signed off by the CFO to reporting to the board on evidence rather than promises.
For Spexalink’s founder, the appointment is also personal. Before founding the firm, Ajay Tambe built his career helping women leaders bring their ventures to market: executives who had built their careers on their own terms and, when they set out to start something of their own, brought him in to lead their marketing. Dr. Cureton was among them.
“I was raised, professionally, by lionesses,” said Ajay Tambe, founder of Spexalink. “The women leaders who trusted me early on had each fought their own way to where they were, and they took a chance on someone from a small town in India. Linda is the reason Spexalink exists. She is the LeBron James of C-suite leadership, the standard everyone else in this field is measured against. To have her represent what we do is something I could not have imagined when I started.”
Spexalink matches leaders in high-stakes seats with veteran operators who have personally held comparable seats, and works the window between a senior appointment and proven performance. Engagements begin with sessions at no cost, so the fit is judged on results.
About Dr. Linda Cureton
Dr. Linda Y. Cureton is a former NASA CIO, technology executive, entrepreneur, author, and founder and CEO of Muse Technologies, Inc. During a 39-year career in U.S. Federal Government information technology, she rose into the Senior Executive Service and served as Chief Information Officer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership and writes and speaks about leadership, executive presence, authenticity, resilience, organizational complexity, and leading effectively through change. She is Spexalink’s Global Ambassador and first Pioneer Practitioner.
About Spexalink
Spexalink is an executive transition firm. Every senior placement has two halves: the search that finds the leader, and the window after the start date that decides how the placement gets read. Spexalink works the second half, matching leaders in high-stakes seats to veteran operators who have personally held those seats, with engagements that begin at no cost so the fit is judged on results. The firm works with leaders directly and through the partners who make placements, and is headquartered in Mumbai, India, with global operations. Learn more at spexalink.com.