Payton Barnwell ’19 has dedicated her successful high-tech career to creating meaningful impact through innovation. She helped optimize space station crops as a NASA intern, worked in mission control at Virgin Galactic, and led geospatial product development at SkyFi, creating easy-to-use tools from complex data and imagery.
Now, the Florida Polytechnic University alumna has embarked on a new adventure. Barnwell recently launched Broadside, a tech-fueled platform that makes it easy to access and understand federal governmental actions.
“If you think about the last law that was passed, most people probably can’t tell you what it was and can’t grasp all the nuances,” she said. “I want to use AI (artificial intelligence) to boil that down and surface different information to people and businesses in the way that’s most applicable to them.”
Barnwell said her past experiences all centered on storytelling with information. In mission control, she helped flight sciences teams by normalizing complex datasets. At SkyFi, she filtered massive amounts of information to pinpoint what mattered most for specific needs.
“I found a great opportunity to continue doing that with Broadside, which will take the entirety of U.S. government systems and boil them down to something useful and find the laws and policies that can affect you or business innovations,” she said.
Barnwell, who received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2019, said her positive Florida Poly experience was the launchpad for her professional success.
“I chose Florida Poly because I knew it was going to be the hub of innovation in Florida and I was so excited to have the small classes and really focus everything on STEM,” she said, as she touched her Florida Poly purple tanzanite engagement ring. “With that and the really incredible professors, many of whom came from industry, I could tell this was the place that was going to take me from a good engineer to a great engineer within four years.”
As part of the University’s second graduating class, Barnwell seized opportunities to pursue interesting projects and follow her curiosity, finding support through every “crazy idea” from research projects to 300-person outreach events. She also was selected for the prestigious Brooke Owens Fellowship during her time as a student, connecting her with aerospace mentors from across the country and introducing her to the world of startups. She later went on to work at First Resonance, a manufacturing software company for advanced hardware and aerospace clients, before continuing on to SkyFi.
“I think it was ingrained in me from day one that you can start things and just crush it,” the Tampa, Florida, native said.
That spirit of determination has carried Barnwell through her astonishing career, including a 2023 White House invitation for panel participation at a National Space Council event.
“It was a great opportunity for me to talk about why I love the space industry so much, why so many people should join it even if they don’t think it’s for them at the start, and why engineering can take you beyond your wildest dreams,” she said.
Contact:
Lydia Guzmán
Director of Communications
863-874-8557
