Politics Isn't Rocket Science—Or Is It?

Although a rocket-scientist-turned-local-politician may not be the typical American dream, it’s safe to say Leland Cheung is doing quite well for himself. In fact, the 32-year-old graduate student has quite the resume.

He became the first Asian-American elected to the Cambridge City Council in November last year and is concurrently pursuing a double degree at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. And before that, Cheung was a “rocket scientist” (that was actually his title) at Space Adventures, a Virginia-based company that sends private citizens into space.

But running local politics is quite different from studying outer space—a career shift that Cheung said was driven by his sense that the privatization of space travel was occurring too slowly. He began to get more involved with the community, volunteering at local church and neighbourhood organizations.

“I was so focused on the big picture that I was missing all these other opportunities to change the world at a more local level,” he recalled. “It’s important to realize what you do in your backyard has a really immediate impact.”

Cheung cites physicist Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, as one of his biggest inspirations and likes to say that humans, like dinosaurs, could go extinct—a disaster that space exploration could somehow ameliorate.

In 2005, Cheung left the company—for which he had been promoted to Chief Information Officer—and moved to Boston, where he got involved with organizations like Big Brother Big Sister.

Cheung also has another accomplishment under his belt: he has been on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In a segment that aired on Aug. 12, 2009, Cheung appeared alongside several other MIT and Harvard grad students to discuss an ethics oath for MBA students. Check it out here.

Photo by Aleah C. Bowie, Crimson Staff Photographer.