Michael Colglazier

Michael Colglazier has served as Virgin Galactic's Chief Executive Officer and as a member of Virgin Galactic's Board of Directors since July 2020 and as Virgin Galactic's President since February 2021. With a focus on safety, scale, engineering and manufacturing excellence, and amazing customer experience, Michael brings together and leads the incredibly talented, impassioned and diverse team that is designing, building and operating the world's first commercial spaceline. Born in Lafayette, Indiana in 1967, he leads the company at a critical inflection point for commercial human spaceflight, having joined Virgin Galactic as the company was in the final stages of its test flight program and preparing for the launch of commercial spaceflight service.

Colglazier graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering in 1989 and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1994. He had an extensive career at Disney spanning over 30 years, where he drove new businesses, innovative growth, and operational excellence at Disney locations around the world. Colglazier began his career at The Walt Disney Company in 1989 as a corporate strategic planning analyst and previously served as President of The Disneyland Resort in Southern California from 2013 to 2018.

Career History

• President and Managing Director, Disney Parks International (March 2018–July 2020)
• President, Disneyland Resort, Anaheim, California (2013–2018)
• President and Managing Director, Disney Parks Asia Pacific Region
• Vice President, Disney's Animal Kingdom Park, Florida
• Corporate Strategic Planning Analyst, The Walt Disney Company (1989)

At Disneyland, Colglazier led a workforce of nearly 30,000 employees and drove record business performance and growth. Under his leadership, the resort experienced record business performance driven by the execution of a successful 60th Anniversary Diamond Celebration and the introduction of the Marvel franchise. At Virgin Galactic, Colglazier has overseen multiple successful spaceflights, with the 11th mission marked as the first time all four seats aboard VSS Unity were occupied by private astronauts. Most recently in Q1 2026, he completed pivotal milestones with assembly of the first new SpaceShip nearly complete and ground testing set to begin in April.

What Michael Colglazier could bring to Virgin Galactic: Colglazier's three-decade track record at Disney—managing massive, complex operations with tens of thousands of employees, executing billion-dollar capital projects (including the $2 billion Galaxy's Edge expansion), and cultivating world-class customer experiences—positions him uniquely to scale Virgin Galactic's commercial spaceflight operations. His proven ability to commercialize experiential offerings and drive innovation in consumer-facing businesses directly translates to accelerating Virgin Galactic's transition from test flights to routine commercial service. His engineering background combined with strategic execution capabilities enables him to navigate the technical and business challenges of making spaceflight accessible to customers worldwide.