MILA SOLUTIONS, LLC
MELBOURNE, FLORIDA

President, MILA Solutions, LLC Jim Banke is an award-winning, veteran communicator with more than 30 years of experience as an aerospace journalist, writer, producer, consultant, analyst and project manager based at Cape Canaveral, Fla. In 1987 he earned a B.S. in Aviation Business Administration from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. In 2014 he earned an M.S. in Space Education, also from Embry-Riddle. Previous employers include Florida Today, Space.com, the Space Foundation and SAIC. As co-creator of Space Online in 1995, Banke was an early pioneer in online news reporting. While at the Space Foundation from 2004-2006, he helped manage the Coalition for Space Exploration, an industry team dedicated to winning support for space exploration. His expertise and experience with the space program was recognized in 2006 by Gov. Jeb Bush, who appointed him to the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Aeronautics and Space in Florida, which led to the creation of Space Florida, essentially the state's space agency. As a journalist, Banke received a variety of writing honors by Florida Today and its parent company, Gannett. For their work on Space Online, the Internet's first news site dedicated to space news, he and his colleagues were honored with the 1996 Digital Edge award for best online newspaper from the Newspaper Association of America, as well as a 1997 Editor and Publisher's award. In 1988 he was part of a writing team that earned a prestigious Robert S. Ball Memorial Award from the Aviation and Space Writers Association. In 2003, as a writer/producer for space.com, he was honored with an Online News Association Award for Breaking News – Independent, for team coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. As a NASA contractor who is part of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's strategic communications team -- a role he continues to serve in today -- he has received the agency's Group Achievement Award three times. The Minnesota-native is now owner and president of MILA Solutions, LLC, providing strategic communications, media products and project management services to the aerospace industry. For more than 20 years Banke has provided live commentary for Cape Canaveral-based launches on WMMB-AM radio, and from June 2009 to April 2013 he hosted "Space Talk with Jim Banke," a weekly radio show about the space program. His contributions to the local community include serving as Secretary for the U.S. Air Force Space & Missile Museum Foundation and as a member of the board of directors of the National Space Club Florida Committee. Jim and his wife, Dawn, have been married since 1983, have three grown children, three granddaughters, and remain loyal fans of the Minnesota Vikings. Welcome to MILA Solutions. We're here to help the space community tell its story, provide personal commentary and insight, and offer professional services that include producing quality media products, creative communications, and managing special projects. page provides some helpful links to other website that keep better track of the latest launch schedules than we do. page gathers links to some of the published online writing we're doing, mostly for NASA's Aeronautics Reasearch Mission Directorate.