Ark Galactapedia

Magda Hurston (2833 - 2921) was the CEO of Hurston Dynamics from 2883 to 2915. It was her initiative that led the company to purchase Stanton I from the United Empire of Earth (UEE) in 2865. The third moon of Hurston is named in her honor. She was succeeded as CEO by her son, Gavin E. Hurston.

The oldest child of Chesterfield Hurston and Mariah Park Hurston, Magda was born in 2833 on Rytif (Bremen II) at a hospital near the site of Hurston Dynamics' secondary headquarters. She received her early education on Earth (Sol III) and attended the Haymore School of Economics in Geneva for her undergraduate and graduate degrees, where she attained a Master of Science in Organizational and Social Psychology. Her dissertation, Live, Work, and Play: Employee Productivity in Controlled Environments, was selected as one of the winners of the Best Dissertation Prize for the 2854/2855 academic year. After a year-long internship at the University of Persei Analytical Research and Quantification (UPARQ) on Persei (Rhetor II), she joined the family business in 2856, starting as an Associate Operations Analyst.

Magda moved upward through the ranks despite several clashes with distant relatives in higher positions, eventually becoming Chief Operations Officer in 2863. During this period, she made multiple cost-saving operational changes to Hurston Dynamics, such as utilizing nutritional supplements instead of fresh ingredients to reduce the cost of employee meals and opting for in-house production of worker protective equipment in place of renewing expensive outsourcing contracts. In 2865, she spearheaded her largest project: the purchase of governing interest and settlement rights for the naturally habitable planet Stanton I and its four moons from the UEE. It was under her advice that then-CEO Chesterfield Hurston agreed to the unprecedented expense. The changes they could make to the weapon manufacturing process, out from under the strict laws of the UEE, would save the company trillions. Chesterfield approved, and the planet Hurston was officially established.

While Hurston Dynamics' mining division broke ground on antimatter precursor mines on the surface of Hurston, Magda supervised the design and construction of the first residential buildings that would later form the heart of the Workers District. She took a brief break in 2867 after the birth of her son Gavin. When Hurston's first antimatter refinery plant was completed in 2872 and workers began to arrive, the need for a much larger settlement became apparent. Magda spent five years identifying areas to cut costs so that new construction could be built quickly and at low price. The city of Lorville was officially founded in 2877.

In 2883, halfway through the erection of Central Tower, Hurston Dynamics' new headquarters, Chesterfield died after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. Magda succeeded him as CEO. Under her leadership, daily work hours were extended for those under the Life/Labor contract, and a weekly task-completion competition to shorten workday minutes was introduced. These changes improved overall efficiency by 3%. She oversaw the completion of Central in 2890, as well as a wide expansion of the company's antimatter mining, processing, and weapons construction. The contract she signed to provide the UEE military with antimatter warheads netted record profits. She continued her father's strip-mining operations, exempt from the UEE's anti-pollution laws thanks to the planet's independent status, allowing speedy and cheap extraction of Hurston's natural resources.

She retired as CEO in 2915 and was succeeded by her son Gavin, though she stayed on the board of Hurston Dynamics in an advisory capacity.

While en route from the Hurston Central building to Teasa Spaceport, where she was planning to travel via a private service to her family's vacation home on Cassel (Goss II), her shuttle suffered a mid-flight collision with another shuttle. She and six other people died in the crash.