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July 6, 2025 14 mins

Most people bury their childhood dreams. Sarah Pousho built a company on hers. In this intimate episode, she shares how a life steeped in wonder fueled by Carl Sagan, failure, and fire led to founding SpaceBridge Partners in her fifties.

If you’ve ever thought it was too late, too crazy, or too far out of reach to start again, this conversation will shake you loose.

“Six people can go to space whenever we want. Right now.”

This isn’t about rockets. It’s about resilience. About rising. About remembering who you were before the world told you to shrink.

Your comeback won’t look like anyone else’s. That’s exactly the point.
Tune in and come home to the future you still believe in.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of
Arise from the Ashes.
I am honored to be in front ofmy next guest, Sarah.
Sarah, how are you Please sayhello to the world and tell the
world what you do and a bitabout who you are.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thanks for having me, baz.
I'm Sarah Pujo, co-founder andCEO of SpaceBridge Partners, and
I'm doing really well.
I'm talking to you from nearSan Francisco and in the middle
of starting up this company,which I launched a little over
15 years ago with my or 15 years, 15 months ago with my
co-founders.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
You wish it was 15 years, right?
So that's a bit about yourcompany.
Tell me about you.
Obviously, you're in SanFrancisco.
Are you Bay-born or did youcome there from other means?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I was actually born in Detroit and, yeah, I wasn't
there very long.
My parents moved when I was sixmonths old to Arizona first,
and then Southern California,where my brother was born and my
sister.
So I consider home SantaBarbara.
That's where I grew up and thenI came to the Bay Area to go to
college.
I went to University ofCalifornia at Berkeley and then

(01:09):
moved back to Santa Barbara andgot a job that moved me to
Virginia.
So I lived there a couple ofyears and then Indiana.
I lived there about five yearsand then moved back to Northern
California a long time ago, 98.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
That wasn't a long time ago.
Come on, you make me feel old.
When you said Detroit, itreminds me of an 80s film,
beverly Hills Cop, because thefirst ones to come out was him
in Detroit, when he was a cop inDetroit and he went anyway.
That's what the first one comesto mind.
Love that movie.
So you went to Berkeley.
What did you study at Berkeleyand what was your passion back
then?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
My passion back then was my passion for most of my
life, which is space.
I wanted to be an astronautsince I was a little girl, so I
went to Cal to study astronomy.
That was my goal, and when Igraduated I was going to go work
for NASA and discovered veryquickly that I would not be able
to graduate if I stayed with anastronomy degree.
Yeah, all the math andeverything that went along with
that, even though I was astellar student in high school,

(02:07):
was tough at UC Berkeley.
So I switched majors torhetoric and graduated with a
rhetoric major, which mostpre-law people did.
I was not going to go into lawschool, so I wasn't sure what I
was going to do after Igraduated.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
You said you mentioned earlier you lived in
South Bay, whereabouts.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
I lived in Southern California, so I was in Santa
Barbara, but in the Bay AreaI've either lived in Fremont or
Berkeley or Sausalito.
Now I'm currently in Richmond,which is like Northeast Bay.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, I know I've traveled quite extensively
Awesome, I know these sort ofareas.
The reason I ask is because mywife and I we lived in Redondo
Beach for a while.
I had an office in Palos Verdesfor two or three years.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
There's nothing like Southern California.
I definitely miss it.
And, of course, now we boughtour house it's a beautiful house
overlooking the ocean I shouldsay my parents when I was a kid
for I don't know $35,000 orsomething crazy, and now it's
worth $4 million, so it'sphenomenal.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
It just got so that your upbringing was coming from
West Coast to East Coast, EastCoast to West Coast.
You graduated through Berkeley,you changed, pivoted.
What was the driving forcebehind being an astronaut?
Because space, I love it,universe, etc.
I've always had a fascination.
Never really understood fullywhat it is and how.

(03:29):
The expanse of it is a work inprogress always.
What was your passion for space?
What intrigued you at a veryearly age?

Speaker 2 (03:37):
A couple things.
One is I was born the yearbefore we set foot on the moon,
and so I think I grew up aroundjust seeing that in the news a
lot.
And the second was my parentswere very strict when it came to
television.
We were only allowed to watchPBS or the news, and then we or
we could had to highlight the TVguide to show which shows we
wanted to watch.

(03:57):
We got two hours of non-newsand non-PBS a week, so I watched
Cosmos a lot, which, of course,carl Sagan, lots of educational
shows, and so, yeah, I thinkthat sort of intrigued me.
Whenever I had a chance in gradeschool and high school to write
a paper that I got to choosethe subject, it was always
something to do with space, like, especially habitats.
I was always fascinated withliving off of planet earth.

(04:18):
And what would that look like?
How do you make gravity?
Could things grow?
Science was always my favoritesubject, so going down those
rabbit holes was alwaysfascinating to me and I just
thought, oh my gosh, if I couldgo into space and seeing
pictures of the earth rise andlike to be able to like I'm
giving myself goosebumps rightnow to be able to experience

(04:38):
that myself someday.
I haven't been to space yet,but that's on my bucket list for
sure.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Now I've got an interesting question for you.
Do you think space travel ispossible in our lifetime?

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yes, 100%.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Can you back it up or can you elaborate, because I'm
curious now.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, right now a little bit of the hurdle is
finances.
But I'll give you an example onInspiration4.
I had the pleasure of chattingwith Chris Zambroski, who was
one of the civilian astronautsthat was on that mission.
That just happened a couplemonths ago that Jared Isaacman
funded.
Jared Isaacman made a lot ofhis money through financial
services company that he foundedand he had a contest for all

(05:20):
these businesses that used hisservice apply and you could
basically for a lottery to gointo space.
And chris zambroski I think he'she's in one of the trades like
carpentry or plumbing orsomething like I'm embarrassed
to say I cannot remember, but heapplied and won the lottery and
he got to go up in space andnow he's oh my god, I'm a space

(05:40):
ambassador.
It was so incredible and I'mthe first question out of my
mouth and we chatted was likeI'm super embarrassed to ask you
this, but I just got it Likehow was it?
What was it?
Like he goes.
I will never stop being able toanswer that question Cause it
was so amazing, I loved it somuch.
It was one of the best thingsin my life.
So there's ways to get in withif you don.
But and I know you probablyhave heard about the all women

(06:01):
trip from blue origin and allthe backlash they got from that,
but the thing I took away fromit, aside from blue origin,
could have probably done abetter job pr wise on that was
holy smokes.
Six women, or six people, cango into space whenever we want
to right now, and it took 280 intoday's dollars, $280 billion

(06:23):
to get three guys to the moon inthe sixties.
That's just crazy.
The progress that we've madeand it's speeding up
exponentially with AI and withmore and more billionaires and
trillionaires like contributingto the space ecosystem, that I
think it's just a foregoneconclusion that in our lifetimes
we'll have the opportunity togo to space.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I love these conversations and this is why
Because people who arepassionate about what they do
and love light up.
You can hear it, you can feelit, you can see it, and this
tells me that you're not onlygenuine about what you do, but
what you do is real and it alsoimpacts lives, and this is what

(07:07):
this podcast is about, becausethe listeners love to hear your
story, your origin story, whereyou come from and also what your
aspirations are.
Things become possible thatwere once deemed impossible.
People like yourself make thempossible.
10-year vision for yourself.

(07:30):
Where do you want to be?
What do you want to be doing in10 years?
Retire, set up a beach inFlorida or just giving it all
into your business and gettingpeople to the moon and beyond?

Speaker 2 (07:42):
10 years from now.
I don't think I'll everofficially retire.
I like working, especially atsomething I like which isn't
really work.
10 years from now, my goalwould be to be back living in
Santa Barbara and to be involvedin a few different businesses.
One is somebody else willprobably be running Space Bridge
Partners.
I want to be in charge of thephilanthropic arm that I want

(08:05):
Space Bridge Partners toeventually evolve.
We're hoping to generate enoughrevenue to where we can give
back to.
My passion's always beenscience, so how can I encourage
more science and educationmissions and even pay for them,
either personally or as thecompany, and then just be
involved in a lot of things thatI care about animal welfare,
animal welfare and a lot ofunderserved communities that

(08:27):
I've experienced over the courseof my lifetime and how can I
give back to them?
My whole goal, for obviously Iwould like to have enough money
to not have to worry aboutthings, but mostly I want to be
able to generate enough money towhere I have plenty to give
back to these organizations andservices and people that really
need it.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
That's interesting.
You say that because that's todo with compounding, and
compounding helps not onlyyourself but the ripple effect
for the future.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Giving back, paying it forward.
Those are so important and 100%, and not just in the US.
I love to travel and I loveexperience in other cultures and
I'm sure there's a bunch ofunderserved communities I don't
even know about, and so beingable to go see them for myself
and then figure out how I canhelp would be awesome.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
What's your?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
passion when it comes to underserving communities.
You mentioned the underserved,but what specifically?
I'm personally passionate aboutwomen in STEM fields.
So if I could start there, thatwould be great.
Like finding budding scientistsall over the world and help
them somehow, either paying foreducation or putting them into
paying for their school'sscience projects or space
projects or things like that.

(09:37):
That's one way.
Another is universities orcountries that want to do some
space related scientific studybut don't have the funds to get
their project into space.
How can I help them?
And that's that's also a goalfor Space Bridge Partners
eventually too.
So those are the two key points.
I love mentoring as well, soI'd love to have kind of a
mentoring not really a businessbut program especially for young

(09:57):
women, but also for older women, because I transitioned in my
50s from a completely differentcareer.
So if I could help somebody dothat, I don't really need to be
a coach, but if anybody wantssome inspiration, I'd love to
just be an ear for them andfigure out how I could help them
do that.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Listen, no matter what you do and work how you.
A cat seems to come up and sayhello.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
I have the same problem.
I locked her out.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
This one broke in.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I love cats.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Max, come on.
No, we're not doing that.
Come on, get down.
The struggle is real.
What you're building isn't justfor now, it's actually setting
up for the future.
But, more importantly, why Ilike people like yourself, sarah
, it is is because you want togive back and help other people.

(10:52):
And that's important for two ormany reasons.
One you said earlier is becauseit leaves a legacy In an ideal
world.
You want to go to space.
You want to give back.
How are you serving yourself?

Speaker 2 (11:07):
One is by creating my dream job.
I think that's a big one.
You talk about me lighting upwhen I talk about it.
I've never done that in my 30years in a different career, so
I know I'm in the right spot butalso understanding the people
that I choose to spend time with, the people that I choose to
support, and my work-lifebalance, which is such a cliche,

(11:29):
but I always thought I knewwhat it was until now, and now I
feel like I really get it, andI think also part of that is
building the company that Ialways wanted to work for has
been really enlighteningpersonally, because that I also
thought I knew what that lookedlike and as now I'm getting to
start from scratch and definecompany policies and what even

(11:53):
our website looks like andthings like that really has
directed my own personal journeyas well, and it's been really
enlightening.
So I think those are a few waysthat I've been serving myself.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Love that If you could give the audience one
piece of advice about startingup a business in this day and
age.
You're, you're going through itand you have gone through it.
What's the one piece of adviceyou would give the audience
about starting the business?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
it's hard to narrow that down to one victory of the
financial means to stick it out.
That's the one thing.
And whatever you think, thatnumber is double it stick it out
.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
That's the one thing.
And whatever you think, thatnumber is double it great.
That's great advice for myaudience.
Thank you very much forlistening, sarah.
We will see you on part two.
This is rice when she's podcastmy guest, sarah parushi.
I'm sorry if I took the show.
I do apologize anybody wholistens to this will say I'm
credit, I'm incredibly nasty atnames and I hate that.
Any of any of that.
All good, all good, but myaudience.
Thank you very much.

(12:52):
Please share the message, enjoy, change someone's life and I'll
see you on part two.
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