Elizabeth Loftus is Head of Total Rewards at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) located in Southern California. JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech that carries out robotic space and Earth science missions. In addition to its missions, JPL developed and manages NASA’s Deep Space Network, a worldwide system of antennas that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft.

Elizabeth has been at JPL since 2006 and in her current role since 2022. She oversees the compensation, rewards, recognition, and benefits functions of HR for all employee populations. This includes the design, development, implementation and administration of policies, programs and infrastructure for these centers of excellence in HR. These HR functions impact 6,700 employees with 5,100 representing the research and development workforce.

Prior to joining JPL, Elizabeth held various HR management roles overseeing compensation, records, and HRIS at California Institute of Technology for 6 years and Harvard University for 7 years. She has a BA, BS and MS with concentrations in organizational leadership and human sciences from Purdue University. In addition, she has been part of ACA/World at Work since 1995 and holds CCP and Prosci certifications.