Alumni

Science Centered: From Space Satellites to Botany

By Jana F. Brown

TOM KENT ’72 KEEPS HIMSELF BUSY CREATING SOFTWARE FOR SATELLITES, CATALOGING PLANTS, AND HELPING PLAN HIS 50TH BERWICK REUNION THIS FALL.

In the years since he left Berwick Academy, Tom Kent ’72 has made contributions to space, while also focusing on life on Earth.

During a career spent mostly developing scientific software applications, Kent has worked on a variety of large-scale projects in areas ranging from machine vision to aviation navigation systems. In 2006, Kent began collaborating on an X-ray telescope for a mission called Hinode (“sunrise” in Japanese), a satellite that allows near-continuous observation of the sun. The project, a joint venture between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the satellite as part of a mission to explore the magnetic fields of the sun.

“It was designed to have a three-year mission lifetime,” says Kent, who is currently developing a spectrographic analysis software package for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “but 16 years later it’s still producing good science and I’m still making modifications to the software.”

For the Harvard project, Kent is developing ATSAL, software that lets astrophysicists perform spectral analysis — a method of determining measurements like temperature, density, magnetic field, and speed of an element in space — much more productively, allowing them to keep pace with the flood of observations from astronomical telescopes. As a boarding student at Berwick out of Falmouth, Maine, Kent says he was free to explore his budding interest in science. He particularly enjoyed physics with Bob Hamilton and chemistry with Philip Carlisle, and recalled one independent study project when a putrid-smelling gas accidentally seeped out of the basement chemistry lab into a third-floor study hall. During his time on the Hilltop, Kent says he may have been “among the few who were breaking into Fogg Memorial” to get additional time on a computer terminal the School rented from the University of New Hampshire.

“[At Berwick], I was able to do the things that interested me,” Kent recalls, “and what I mean by that is nobody was worried that I really should be working on something else.”

Kent’s interest in science and technology continued in college, where he majored in computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He worked at Digital Corp. before starting his own company, Accessible Software, around the time Apple released the revolutionary Macintosh computer.

When he’s not helping earthlings gather data from outer space, Kent enjoys exploring plant life as an amateur botanist. It’s a hobby he picked up when he started taking long daily walks aimed at improving his health and began to notice the variety of flowers and greenery along his path. He has continued his pursuit on frequent hikes with his wife, Susan.

On his website (florafinder.org), Kent has so far photographed and cataloged more than 2,700 plant species, searchable by categories of plants (mosses, lichens, trees and shrubs, etc.), colors, and climates in which different species grow. While most are local to New England, Kent has ventured to the Florida Everglades, the Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest to explore other plant biomes. While Indian cucumber-root is one of his favorites, one of the earliest plants Kent discovered turned out to be a rare Hartford fern, a species once reported by Henry David Thoreau.

“Other people had been trying for a century to locate it again,” Kent explains. “Coincidentally, it’s one of the very first plants I came across when I started getting interested in this, so that was very special for me.”

Kent will continue his work both in software (the ATSAL project may have a 15- to 30-year lifespan) and on cataloging as many plants as possible on FloraFinder. In the meantime, he is building a specialized camera for botanical photography and helping to plan his 50th Berwick reunion this September.

“I’m looking forward to seeing everybody,” Kent says. “There’s a close group of friends and we try to get together every year. When you make friendships at boarding school, they stick with you.”

Social Impact

By Jana F. Brown

THROUGH HER WORK IN CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY, TATIANA BRADLEY ’15 IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

Some may not see the connection between social justice and sustainability, but the two are inextricably linked and Tatiana Bradley ’15 has made it the focus of her career.

“A lot of the impacts we’re seeing on the environment — pollution, flooding, and disaster scenarios,” Bradley says, “are happening because of climate change. And they more often directly impact minority communities. That just fuels social inequities.”

As an associate in corporate sustainability at Environmental Resources Management (ERM) in Manhattan, Bradley helps Fortune 500 and privately held companies create strategies for making positive social or environmental change. She is a member of a team at ERM that consults with these industry giants to integrate sustainability and DEI into their corporate practices and employee cultures.

“Companies want to show their investors and stakeholders that they’re doing positive things,” Bradley explains. “It’s great to see that companies are really starting to care about things like climate change and social inequities. Being able to help them do that is really gratifying and something I’m passionate about.”

Though she majored in sociology (with minors in communications and art) at Hamilton College, Bradley’s interest in the environment pre-dates her schooling. Her family runs Old Stone Farm, a small organic farm in West Newbury, Massachusetts, where they grow a wide variety of vegetables and berries. The farm connects with local residents through a communitysupported agriculture program that offers fresh produce to participating customers weekly via a farm share program.

“Growing up around that and also just the relationship with food and the environment, I was interested in learning more about it,” says Bradley, who earned a graduate certificate in environmental studies from Tufts University in 2021.

Taking classes at Tufts was the most recent stop in Bradley’s educational journey. She enrolled at Berwick as a seventh grader and was a three-sport athlete on the Hilltop, playing field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse. Bradley also thrived in the fine arts, and enjoyed the opportunity to take classes in metal and ceramics while at Berwick. She looks back with fond memories of those art courses and on learning algebra from Charlene Hoyt and making interdisciplinary connections in a humanities class co-taught by history teacher Brad Fletcher and English teacher Ted Sherbahn.

“I was definitely well prepared going into Hamilton,” says Bradley, who earned her B.A. in 2019. “I was very comfortable with the community and the academics. I think there were a lot of other students who had a bit more of a difficult transition to college, but when I got to Hamilton, I knew how to write a paper, I knew how to study for a test.”

Bradley also found that she had already read some of the same books at Berwick that were assigned at Hamilton, and was grateful for the foundation she received from her Upper School instructors. She also felt well prepared for the transition from interscholastic to collegiate sports as a member of Hamilton’s field hockey and lacrosse teams. Though she didn’t study sustainability in college, Bradley’s interdisciplinary approach and critical thinking skills allowed her to make connections between what she was learning in sociology and the social responsibility required for humans to care for the environment.

“It was thinking about how people operate, why people make certain decisions,” she says of her major. “[In my work now], just being a young person and caring about the future generation, knowing that these companies are the organizations that have the biggest impact on the planet and being able to guide them in this process is really exciting.”

Team Building

By Jana F. Brown

WORKING IN THE FRONT OFFICE FOR A MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER TEAM IS A DREAM JOB FOR JED METTEE ’94.

Many jobs come with perks — travel, the chance to meet new people and accept new challenges. Jed Mettee ’94 has done all of that, and his occupation comes with an additional benefit: the opportunity to watch his favorite sport live each week alongside thousands of devoted fans.

“People say, ‘You’re working on Saturday?’” says Mettee, who serves as chief operating officer for Major League Soccer’s (MLS) San Jose Earthquakes. “But to me, Saturday is the reward for working. You get to go to the stadium, see the fans, watch the team play, and hopefully they win.”

A lifelong soccer player and fan himself, Mettee is enjoying an extended tour of duty with the MLS club. From 2001 to 2006, he served as the director of communications for the “Quakes.” After two years as the director of athletic media relations at Santa Clara University, he rejoined San Jose in March 2008 as senior director of marketing and communications. Before recently becoming COO, Mettee was the Quakes’ executive VP for marketing and communications. In his current role, he oversees everything from community outreach to broadcasting to social media in addition to managing operations at PayPal Park, the team’s home stadium.

“There’s always a lot of activity,” Mettee says. “It could be anything from creating a content plan around a player, coordinating interviews, or booking outside events. We had a rugby event last week, and next week we are hosting a Culture Night Market in partnership with PayPal.”

Mettee credits his Berwick experience for teaching him to multitask and develop close relationships with peers and mentors. He came to the School from Dover, New Hampshire (following brother Zach ’91), and says history teachers Jim Sullivan and Brad Fletcher “opened my mind to a new way of looking at the world.” Mettee went on to study history and play soccer at Bowdoin College. He then spent a year in Spain, where he coached soccer while learning Spanish to facilitate his communication skills with many in the sport. He returned to Berwick briefly in 1999 as an assistant soccer coach, and an internship with Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution followed. That led to Mettee’s first stint with the Quakes — at the time, both teams were owned by the Kraft family, which also owns the New England Patriots.

Proud of the role he has played in helping to build the franchise, Mettee is also pleased with the growth of MLS over the last two decades. When he first started, the Quakes were one of 10 original teams; in 2023, with the addition of the St. Louis City, the league will boast 29 franchises.

“It’s been amazing to see the growth of MLS from when I went to the first-ever Revolution game in 1996,” Mettee says.

While he admits soccer — the most popular sport in much of the world — still has a lot of competition for fans in America, Mettee shares that MLS average attendance now ranks behind only the NFL and MLB among major U.S. sports leagues. The Quakes fill their 18,000-seat stadium on most game days, and have a turbo-boost in attendance to 50,000 for their annual rivalry game against the LA Galaxy at Stanford Stadium.

The league’s reach is starting to go global, too, with players hailing from the U.S. to South America to the Caribbean and elsewhere (one of Mettee’s earlier jobs involved helping foreign players acclimate to San Jose, find housing, and enroll their children in local schools). In 2018, Mettee negotiated a broadcast contract with Telemundo to show three Quakes games on the Spanish-language station. More recently, the MLS signed a deal with AppleTV to broadcast all league matches in 2023.

Another way Mettee and others in MLS are helping the league grow is through community outreach and philanthropy. The Quakes host youth soccer clinics and also spearhead an initiative — Get Earthquakes Fit — to promote health and fitness for underserved youth. And, the team is a co-sponsor of Pledge 74, which partners with local organizations to reduce food insecurity in the San Jose area.

While he has done a great deal in his tenure, Mettee is particularly proud of those service initiatives and of helping the franchise shatter a Guinness World Record in 2012 by recruiting 6,226 volunteers armed with shovels to break the record for the biggest-ever groundbreaking ceremony (for PayPal Park). He also led a major logo and branding overhaul in 2014.

“Our goal here is to create authentic connections with people through the way we do our work,” he says. “That’s related to my Berwick experience, where I learned that having those one-on-one conversations between teachers and students was so important.”

High Voltage Career

By Jana F. Brown

AS AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER, ALEX ZANNOS ’11 IS BREAKING GROUND FOR WOMEN AND ALSO HELPING TO PROPEL SATELLITES INTO OUTER SPACE.

Last summer, when Astra Space announced the successful ignition of its electric propulsion thruster on board the Spaceflight Sherpa-LTE1 orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), the milestone came with a Berwick Academy connection.

That’s because Alex Zannos ’11 is an electrical engineer at Astra who worked with a 15-person team to make the soda-can-sized thruster operational. The thruster itself is a small engine that uses electric propulsion to transport a satellite in space. An added note is that the Sherpa-LTE1 with the Astra thruster is the first fully functional electric propulsion OTV.

“The Spaceflight LTE mission was our first thruster in space,” says Zannos, who has been with Astra for almost three years. “It went into orbit last year and it has been working up in space ever since. I worked on the electronics that control the thruster system.”

The thruster system, Zannos explains, is the element that creates the propulsion for the satellite, and the propulsion then creates the thrust required for the satellite to move. The system is composed of three main parts — the thruster, which is the actual engine; the electronics that run the thruster; and the feed system, which controls the fuel. All three must work in tandem for the system to operate properly.

“How electric propulsion works is you apply different high voltages at different points and then you flow the propellant, which is the gas, and using both the particles and the high voltage, a plasma forms between the high voltage nodes. What I work on is the part that creates the high voltage and is also the brain of the system.” In addition to breaking new ground in space, Zannos is helping to break the glass ceiling for women in STEM fields. She is one of only four women — and the only female engineer — on the 15-person thruster system team at Astra.

“The field is pretty dominated by men, which is unfortunate,” Zannos says. “It’s definitely palpable. But I came into this field because I really like solving interesting problems, and it’s fun to be able to do that every day.”

Zannos’ extensive knowledge comes by way of her education at Berwick and Stanford. She arrived on the Hilltop as a ninth grader and took on the demanding curriculum, particularly enjoying high-level calculus and physics classes.

“The academics at Berwick were super rigorous,” she says. “It felt like every teacher cared about what they taught — and cared about every student.”

Zannos went on to major in physics at Stanford, where she also minored in computer science, before earning her master’s in electrical engineering from the University. She was attracted

to the field because of the opportunities it presented to work on projects with tangible, hands-on results and a fairly rapid timetable. In graduate school, Zannos completed an internship in power electronics at Tesla, where she first had a chance to apply her education to finding real-world solutions. She got another opportunity while preparing the electronics system for Spaceflight. After a detailed research and development phase, the Astra thruster was in space six months later.

“It was a little intense,” Zannos says, “but really exciting to see.” The next step for Zannos and her Astra team is building and delivering thrusters for additional satellites.

IN MEMORIAM

William I. West ’57 May 28, 2022

Dr. James C. Frangos ’67 July 17, 2022

John ‘Jack’ T. Fogarty, USA, Retired ’53 February 20, 2022

James K. Stedman ’54 May 16, 2022

JOHN ‘JACK’ T. FOGARTY ’53

Major John “Jack” T. Fogarty, USA, Retired, 86, of South Berwick, Maine, died peacefully at his home surrounded by family on February 20, 2022. Jack was a lifelong learner and member of Berwick Academy’s Class of 1953. He went on to earn his BA from the College of the Holy Cross (1957) as well as a master’s from Boston University (1977). His 20-year military career in the U.S. Army included a tour of duty in Vietnam and brought him to many corners of the world. Upon returning to South Berwick after his Army retirement, Jack continued on to many other careers, including real estate, tax assessing/code enforcement for the town of South Berwick, contract supervisor for the National Passport Center, and as an H&R Block tax preparer. Jack was a member of VFW Post 5744, Knights of Columbus Council #140, and a communicant of St. Mary Parish in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. Jack was an active member of the Berwick alumni community, serving on the Alumni Council, participating as a panelist for the Innovation Celebration several times, and attending numerous events on campus throughout the years, most notably the Veterans Day celebration each November, where Jack proudly shared stories of his time serving in the military.

Jack is survived by his loving wife, Heidi; daughter, Sharon ‘82, a member of Berwick’s Alumni Advisory Board; son Brian, daughter-in-law Debbie, and grandson Andrew; as well as brothers and sisters-inlaw, nieces, nephews, and cousins.

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