Veronica manages the news office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Prior to joining JPL in 2001, she worked at CNN’s Los Angeles bureau as a field producer covering major trials, natural and man-made disasters, and everything in between. A respite from covering the daily flotsam was being assigned to cover NASA missions including the occasional shuttle landing at Dryden/Edwards AFB in California. Veronica was CNN’s lead producer for coverage of the Pathfinder landing on Mars, the Mars Global Surveyor mission and Mars Polar Lander. After several years pitching space stories to mostly uninterested reporters and news editors, she decided to jump the fence from journalism to media relations and joined JPL. Her goal now is to transition the JPL Media Relations office to new media and social media venues while maintaining strong ties with traditional media. Veronica graduated from UCLA in 1990 with a degree in communications. She is raising two teens who think she spends too much time on the computer.