Wentworth Institute of Technology SPRING 2012
status, updated John Tenanes, AE ’79, is giving facebook a facelift
IN THIS ISSUE
Orga ns , Ma de to
Or de r
w Navi gatin g th e Ne
Spac e Race
Photo: John Blais
WIT is published three times a year by the Office of Publications.
E d i to r
E DITORI A L B O A RD
Daniel Morrell Director of Publications
Amy Intille Chief of Staff
A s s o c i at e E d i t o r
Brenda C. Sanchez Vice President for Institutional Advancement
Julie Barr Assistant Director of Marketing and Publications
[ www.wit.edu ]
Robert Totino Vice President for Finance Jamie Kelly Associate Vice President of Public Affairs
Wentworth Institute of Technology Spring 2012 IN THIS ISSUE
14 R ocket Man
NASA is getting ready to hand space flight over to private companies. It’s up to engineer Kevin Vega, BELM ’03, to get them ready for takeoff.
18 S tatus, Updated
Facebook’s John Tenanes, AE ’79, is charged with finding the company new digs fit for a new kind of tech king.
02 Feedback Reader response. 04 Leading Thoughts President Zorica Pantić on inspiration and innovation.
05 WIT News Rowing, roller coasters, and the real deal on North Korea.
10 E yewitness A student-built race car takes on an uphill battle.
12 WIT@Work Rich Parker, CHC ’87, is building the future of medicine, one cell at a time.
24 Alumni News Gatherings and events with alumni near and far.
29 Class Notes Personal and professional updates Madeline Lamour Holder, AET ’89 (p. 36)
from alumni.
36 Firsthand Madeline Lamour Holder, AET ’89, Connor McGann Media Relations Co-op
On t h e c o ve r
Photo by Toby Burditt
is working to ease the struggles of her fellow immigrant women.
D E SI G N E R
Lilly Pereira www.lillypereira.com
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Re: Fall 2011 from the editor I joined Facebook with hesitation. It was January 2006, and back then, you needed a “.edu” email address to start an account—which today feels like telling someone about how, in your day, you needed a crank to start your car. The idea of a virtual hangout just seemed so absurdly nerdy that I even signed up under a fake name: Dave Thomas. (Yes, that Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s.) Eventually, I gave in—friended, poked, liked, and tagged into submission. Six years later, I check it once a day. During that same period, Facebook became ubiquitous. Its January IPO put the company’s value nearly on par with American icons like Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Boeing, and the Ford Motor Company. But Facebook isn’t anything like the old guard. It is a sevenyear-old company with a 27-year-old CEO who has already been the subject of an Academy Award–winning movie. So the challenge for Facebook’s director of global real estate, John Tenanes, AE ’79 (p. 18), is to get the company into offices that befit an eclectic new brand of corporate giant—which means deciding what one of the world’s most successful virtual companies should look like in real life. This issue is filled with Wentworth alumni and students tackling similarly huge questions. For NASA engineer Kevin Vega, BELM ’03 (p. 14): What does the future of American space travel look like? For senior Sean Smith, BCOS ’12 (p. 9): How can people who live in a country without a 911 system get the emergency services they need? For Digilab Vice President Rich Parker, CHC ’87 (p. 12): How can we make sure that no one ever has to die waiting for an organ transplant again? That is what makes it so easy for me to find good stories for WIT. I just start with some of the world’s most pressing questions, and I usually find a Wentworth grad right in the middle of it, looking for an answer.
Dan Morrell editor@wit.edu Director of Publications
NOTE: Letters and emails in the feedback section may be edited for length and clarity.
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Missed any of the Fall 2011 stories? Find them at www.wit.edu/magazine.
I really liked the fall issue of wit. Great improvement to the graphics and overall look of the magazine. I also thought the gift section was clever. It promotes the alumni in their careers and exposes us to cool things coming out of the school. —David Shonk, AET ’85
Global Appeal
3% 2% 1% 54
of the traffic from the fall issue came from Mexico came from India viewed the magazine in Spanish visitors from different countries
Online Reunion Our story on John Slamin, MDE ’74, and his work on personalized knee replacement technology got him back in touch with Tim Dalton, a childhood friend who happens to also be a professor at Wentworth’s College of Professional and Continuing Education (CPCE):
Blue Hills Booster “John, I have been an adjunct professor here at WIT. I enjoyed reading the article and learning about all the good work you do. I also wonder if you grew up in Dover. If you did we were classmates.” —Tim Dalton
“ Thanks for sharing! I live near the blue hills brewery and they are great. We always get beer from them. Thanks!” —Jason
DEVOE-TED FANS
“ Great work!”
Slamin replied that he was the John from Dover that Dalton remembered, and the two were able to reconnect.
—Kevin Rabbit, AET ’80
comment
facebook comment
“ If/when I ever need a knee, I know who I will be calling first. Nice pic, John!”
Having a very strong patronage to MAKE.GOOD Studio bags, I can tell you that they are each unique and beautifully made. Susana has an amazing eye and sense of design. Her new winter 2012 collection is incredible and architecturally inspired! —Alyson Therrien, ARC ’98
—Caroline Dee
BY THE NUMBERS Most viewed Video profile of Susana Perriera DeVoe, AET ’94, ARC ’97 from the Holiday Gift Guide feature.
981
17.5%
of website traffic this issue came from our Holiday Gift Guide.
MOST “LIKES”
40 39 Holiday Gift Guide
Building Triumph Carlos Valverde Rojo, BARC ’07, MARC ’07
“ Carlos, keep up the good work, we are very proud of what you have accomplished.” —Carola
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from the president
Thinking Ahead Nikola Tesla, a prolific inventor with a background in both electrical and mechanical engineering, has been a great inspiration to me. He was a genius driven by a desire to improve people’s lives. His induction motor and polyphase generator proved the supremacy of alternate currents over direct currents and ushered in a modern era of efficient electric power that revolutionized American industry. Some of his other inventions laid the foundation for radio communications and remote control. I see this pioneering spirit in our alumni. William H. Flanagan, MC&TD ’51, Hon. ’11, founded Nexus, Inc., a company that would define the market for connectors used in military and commercial communication headsets. Doug D. Schumann, AM ’64, Hon. ’08, took great ideas about sensors and joystick controls for mobile equipment and turned them into an industry-leading business at P-Q Controls, Inc. Robert H. Swanson, PET ’59, Hon. ’07, had unique insight into the need for high-performance analog, integrated-circuit products and took his 30-year-old Linear Technology Corporation from start-up to a tech giant listed on the S&P 500 index. Today, his products are essential components in MP3 players, high-end cell phones, and automotive electronics. The pioneering spirit is also alive in our current students. I see it in the fourteen Wentworth architecture students who were featured at the first-ever Boston Society of Architects student showcase last year. I see it in the industrial design students who worked with Design Museum Boston to plan, fund, and launch their own travelling exhibit. I see it in the group of engineering students who designed a sub-pressure chamber to accelerate wound healing. I see it in the student projects that often fill Watson auditorium—self-propelled hydrofoils, motion-controlled robots, miniaturized diagnostic chips no bigger than a quarter, and many others. Wentworth strives to empower these ideas, both through our interdisciplinary, project-based educational model and in our dedication to developing an environment conducive to innovation. To that end, we are readying two new campus facilities that will spur the next generation of innovators: the Center for Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, including new labs outfitted with the latest technology, and the Flanagan Campus Center, with facilities that will provide students with a hub for interaction and discovery. To ensure a bright future for Wentworth and for the industries our students will go on to impact, I encourage you to visit www.wit.edu/tomorrow and find out how you can support these campus projects—and help us make a true investment in innovation.
Zorica Pantić, EE, Ph.D. PRESIDENT
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We Art One
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See how it all came together at www.wit.edu/magazine
For the 13 Master of Architecture students charged with designing a public art project this fall, the toughest thing to build was consensus. After spending nearly two weeks with course instructor Rob Trumbour seeking out inspiration in the art and landscape of locations in Texas, New York, and Boston, the group sat down to hash out a collective vision. “The only thing harder than climbing 2,500 feet to the tallest peak in Big Bend National Park—on a trail lined with bears and mountain lions—was getting thirteen people to agree on a single cohesive idea,” says Patrick Schulz, BSA ’11, MARC ’12. The representation of their experiences: an interactive art installation constructed from 100 sheets of plywood and 3,750 feet of steel, featuring 255 interconnected objects ranging in height from 9 to 20 feet. And while Schulz and his classmates worked hard to unify their visions, he says the installation’s placement at the Boston Society of Architects’ new Atlantic Wharf office building offers visitors a subjective experience. “Because of the juxtaposition of the space—brick buildings on one side and the vastness of the water on the other—the experience is different for everyone depending on how they approach it.” —Julie Barr
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[wit]news COASTER CONNOISSEUR
Web Celeb
John MacInnis, BIND ’13, with his toaster prototype
In December, John MacInnis, BIND ’13, logged on to the video game blog Kotaku— a morning ritual—and found himself staring at one of his class projects: a toast-firing gun designed specifically for Mega Man, who sits alongside the Mario brothers and Pac-Man as one of the most popular video game characters of all time. Built for his sophomore studio class, which charged students with building a toaster for a cartoon character of their choice, the images were picked up from MacInnis’s online portfolio and ran with the headline “The World Deserves a Mega Man Toaster.” This wasn’t the first time MacInnis’s work had garnered an Internet audience. A few weeks before the Kotaku article, his work was featured on the main page of Coroflot, a popular design website. “People were telling me what a big deal it was to be featured on Coroflot,” says MacInnis. It was cool, he says—but being featured on Kotaku, his favorite website? “That was a dream come true.” —Dan Morrell
“ I had to show it to a friend so I could make sure it was real—that this was actually happening.”
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Go inside MacInnis’s design process at www.wit.edu/magazine
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Derek Poitras, BMET ’14, is an amusement park authority. His various park visits total as many as 20 a year, he cofounded his own amusement park fan site, and he has already graduated from the Disney College Program—a professional preparatory program for students interested in amusement park careers. For co-op this summer, he's heading back to Disney World, where he’ll help build the park’s new Fantasy Land expansion. We asked for his top three roller coasters for your must-ride list. —DM
Derek Poitras, BMET ’14
1
Bizarro Six Flags New England
“It’s the number-one steel roller coaster in the country. It really packs a punch—lots of air time, lots of speed. And it doesn’t let up until the brakes hit at the end.”
2
Goliath Six Flags Atlanta
“It is 200 feet tall and goes 80 miles per hour. And it is a real air-time machine, which means that riders experience weightlessness for a few seconds because of the different forces at work.”
3
Boulder Dash Lake Compounce (Conn.)
“It literally uses a mountain as its course and follows the natural curves and dips to make for a completely different experience than most wooden coasters. The best time to ride is at night, because when the sun sets, you can barely see the track in front of you.”
The Long shots Opposing teams ignore Wentworth’s rifle and rowing teams at their peril. Here’s a look at how both squads are playing spoiler to traditional powerhouses and turning rookies into all-stars. —DM
RIFLE’S BIG win
st place
2011 beanpot invitaional
“Winning the Beanpot in 2011 was huge for us,” says coach George Pantazelos. The event, hosted by rival MIT, also included teams from Penn State and the Coast Guard Academy. “It was the first time Wentworth ever won the Beanpot,” says Pantazelos. “And really, it was the first time we’d even come close.”
Cinderella stories
rOWING’s BEST Finish
Kirstin Torento, BMET ’11 Now an assistant coach, Torento joined the team in 2007 never having shot before. By her senior year she was part of a US national squad known as the Randle Team, competing in the equivalent of the women’s Ryder Cup of shooting. Mark Zak, BELM ’15 Zak was the coxswain—the person at the front of the boat who steers and coordinates the rowers’ rhythm—on the vaunted Head of the Charles regatta team. It makes the team’s finish all the more remarkable, considering that Zak, now the club vice president, has been rowing for only two years.
#10 Wentworth Institute of Technology #11 Iona College #18 University of Notre Dame #19 Lehigh University Head of the Charles Regatta While the team had plenty of results that put them ahead of scholarship teams from the likes of Tufts and Trinity, they count their top 10 finish in Boston’s 2011 Head of the Charles as their biggest. “It is such a publicized race,” says Ryan Andrews, BELM ’14, the group’s treasurer. Among the teams in their wake: Notre Dame, Iona College, and Lehigh—all Division I rowing programs. “We really surprised the rowing community that day.”
//FACTOIDS///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Rifle: Unlike other women’s sports, where there are modifications to the equipment (softball vs. baseball) or rules (the shorter 3-point line for women’s basketball), rifle is an equal playing field. “They are shooting shoulder-to-shoulder,” says Pantazelos. Rowing: The strongest rowers, says head coach Katie Lane, are typically put in the middle of the boat. The better technical rowers are in front, more responsible for the boat's direction.
technical rower
strongest rowers
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[wit]news
Unconventional Wisdom: North Korea
1
The North Korean leadership is not the mafia.
“Most people view the country as a one-family dictatorship—that’s not right. It is a very entrenched bureaucracy with many levels of power and privilege and various factions. If Kim Jung-Un wants to do something, he would have to get approval from all kinds of people. The state bureaucratic system in North Korea is what runs the entire society. Plus, [Jung-Un] is not even thirty, and elders are the most respected in North Korean society. This is a society where young people at meals routinely wait until the elders have taken the food they want before they take theirs.”
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Watch an extended interview with Katsiaficas at www.wit.edu/magazine
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North Korea has been quietly reforming for years.
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North Korea is not on the verge of collapse.
“North Korea has watched as their closest ally, China, has become a capitalist country. And they have seen China’s prosperity and are trying to emulate it by bringing Chinese firms into the country. They see it as one of the few ways to climb up the economic ladder.”
“Factions in the US and South Korea have long thought that there would be a massive change that would take place quickly—like what happened in East Germany with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But look
at the plan for Korean reunification: From 1997 to 2008, they made all sorts of progress. They built a joint economic zone with North Korean workers and South Korean capital. They opened a tourism site in North Korea that was visited by more than a million South Korean tourists. They built railroad ties between the countries. They allowed family visits. You had ten years of forward motion with a longrange, strategic view that the country would be reunified step by step. But if it didn’t collapse then and it didn’t collapse when Kim Jong-Il died, when would it collapse? I don’t think it is going to happen.”
Maxim Tupikov / Shutterstock
When North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il died in January, many thought it could signal the end of the regime and—quite possibly—the end of the country. Instead, the longtime ruler’s son, Kim Jung-Un, has taken up the reins—a move that raises as many questions as it answers. We asked humanities professor George Katsiaficas, an expert on the Korean peninsula and author of a new book detailing South Korea’s 20th-century social movements, for a bit of perspective on what’s happening in Pyongyang. —DM
student work
An App for Aid
+
Project: The Haiti Emergency Relief Application, by Sean Smith, BCOS ’12. WHAT IT IS: A smart phone application that helps connect Haitians to first responders.
WHY IT IS NEEDED: “Haiti doesn’t have a centralized 911 system,” says Smith. “It leads to a lot of wasted time trying to find the right contact in emergency situations.” As part of a Microsoft-sponsored student technology competition last year, Smith and two classmates worked with computer science professor Pierre Elysee to develop an app that puts all of that information in one place. WHAT IT DOES: The app not only provides a list of local emergency numbers, but also sends out a user’s geographic coordinates to responders. “When you make that phone call, it pulls your GPS location, phone number, and a time stamp,” says Smith. “So even if you get cut off, [responders] can find you.” The app also allows users to submit a more detailed message, noting where they are and what sorts of items they may need—everything from water to insulin. WHAT'S NEXT: Smith is still formalizing the app, which he hopes to see in use this year. He is also developing a version of the app that will provide emergency contact information to anyone whether they are in Bali or Berlin—perfect for the world traveler. “It’s great to be able to shine light on how we can use technology to make our lives safer,” says Smith.
Provost Russell Pinizzotto’s hopes for his Introduction to Astronomy class this fall were high—very, very high. Literally, hundreds of miles above the Earth. Instead of focusing only on textbooks and theory, his students focused on one major project: building a picturesnapping nanosatellite complete with communications capabilities, power sources, and a telescope. By the end of the semester, students had successfully designed and built a 10 x 10 x 38cm model of the device, which Pinizzotto calls a “kind of mini Hubble [Telescope].” Future classes will work on designing a ground station to collect images taken by the satellite and figure out how to get the device ready for orbit. The full effort will require students to find a larger satellite launch they can piggyback, but when it does finally launch, says Pinizzotto, it will be powerful enough to get detailed campus shots from miles overhead. “If we get the time right, we hope to get a picture of students arranged on Sweeney Field spelling out W-I-T.” –DM
To Third Period and Beyond…
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THIS CAR CLIMBED MT. WASHINGTON After buying a car off Craigslist for $800 and spending a year getting it ready to race, five Wentworth students—Anthony Burden, BELM ’12; Ben Nadeau, BELM ’13; Jeff Roy, BELM ’12; Kevin Loeliger, BELM ’13; and Joe Kobrianos, BELM ’12—formed Eccentric Rally Monkey (ERM) racing and hit the rally car circuit last year. Their car is shown here in the midst of a third-place finish in the “Climb to the Clouds” at Mount Washington, NH, on June 26, 2011.
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Photo: Mike Proulx
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Photo: Mark Wilson
@work
Designed to Cell Rich Parker, CHC ’87, is building the future of medicine: machines that can print working human organs. by Dan Morrell
Rich Parker, CHC ’87, is confident that there will come a day—maybe 20, 25 years from now—where patients suffering from a weak heart, damaged kidneys, or a failing liver won’t have to worry about waiting around for organ donations. They’ll be able to just print new ones. As vice president of business and technology at Digilab, Parker is building the kinds of tools that can make that seemingly fantastical future a reality. One of his major projects is the company’s CellJet printer, which can arrange live human cells into layers of tissue. The printers are employed by biomedical researchers for any number of biological trials: making large collections of a patient’s cancer cells to test the effectiveness of different chemotherapy drugs; adding cactus genes to the cellular makeup of a lettuce plant to make a more droughtresistant plant; or—perhaps their most spectacular use—building functional human organs. So how exactly does someone print an organ? Researchers first harvest a bunch of cells from a patient and replicate them by the billions. The printer then layers these cells onto a frame that gives the organ its shape, and stem cells are added to direct the growth. “The great things about stem cells,” says Parker, the son of an engineer and a nurse, “is that they know what to do.” The organ is then incubated and—theoretically— ready for use. So why aren’t we already building human hearts for needy donors? Parker says there are vital biological questions that need to be answered before this hits hospitals en masse: “Are we putting in the right amount of cells? What is the effect of the environment on the cells?” Research trials with the cell printer will take time, but Parker says there is a good reason for that. “The science needs to be validated,” he says. “But the technology is there.”
“ The science needs to be validated. But the technology is there.”
[www.wit.edu]
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ROCKET
MAN NASA is getting ready to hand space flight over to private companies. It’s up to engineer Kevin Vega, BELM ’03, to get them ready for takeoff. by Amy Wimmer Schwarb
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S
ome mornings, when Kevin Vega, BELM ’03, pulls into the parking lot at Kennedy Space Center, he can feel the weight of history.
The complex has been the launching point of every American manned space mission since 1968. It is where astronauts left for the moon and where a space station was shot into orbit. Even its appearance conjures feelings of pride and patriotic grandeur: painted onto the side of the center’s centerpiece building, the tallest in rural America, are the NASA “meatball”—as the agency’s logo is affectionately known—and a 20-story-high American flag. “It’s tough to work here and not be inspired,” says Vega, 31. “The history that’s gone on out here is just endless. The workers. The dedication.” These days, though, the center can feel a bit less inspiring. The final space shuttle launched in July 2011, and President Obama has canceled a program that was to become the country’s
next giant leap in space exploration. Thousands of NASA and space contractor employees have lost their jobs. But just because NASA won’t be providing the ride any longer doesn’t mean they’ve completely abandoned manned space flight. Instead, they are banking on private company partners to develop their own space-worthy vehicles that can offer space tourism to private citizens and also give NASA astronauts a ride to the International Space Station. That’s where Vega comes in: as an engineer in NASA’s commercial crew program, it’s his job to make sure these private sector partners have ideas that can fly.
See Vega at work at the Kennedy Space Center at www.wit.edu/magazine
Kevin Vega, BELM ’03
a
K
evin Vega grew up in Miami, the child of Cuban-born parents. He doesn’t remember a time in his boyhood when he wasn’t playing with Lego bricks, building creations and tearing them apart. By the time he was 12 years old, he had moved on to taking apart more sophisticated things— a VCR, a television, video game systems. “I wanted to understand how things operated and who thought of these great ideas,” he says, “the inventors and engineers and scientists who came up with [ways] to solve practical issues for mankind and make things a little more efficient and easier.”
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He became intrigued by space travel in seventh grade when his Miami middle school class traveled three hours north to tour the Kennedy Space Center. “From then on, I wanted to work for NASA,” Vega says. “The great feats that we [accomplished], the moon landings and so forth—I loved all of it. I also loved the competition part of it, the drive to be the best.” He was drawn to Wentworth for its program that combined electrical and mechanical engineering. His decision was cemented by an offer to play baseball for the Leopards. He stuck with college baseball for three years, quitting to focus on academics in the fiveyear electromechanical program. (Vega also met his wife, Pauline Leyson, BIND ’03, at Wentworth; today, they have a one-year-old daughter, Arianna.) Following his third year, he took a co-op at the School of Public Health at Harvard University; following his fourth year, his second co-op was with Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. After graduating from Wentworth in 2003, Vega had a few job offers—one with Harvard, one in Michigan, and yet another in California. But he moved back to Miami. “I knew God had a different and better plan for me,” says Vega. “So I held out, and a few months later, I got the call to come work for United Space Alliance.” The job didn’t just get him out of his parents’ house; it put him in the small circle of engineers working directly on NASA spacecraft and brought him within reach of his childhood aspiration. And then, after two years of engineering rocket boosters at United Space Alliance—and 12 years of dreaming of the day—NASA called.
Photo: Preston Mack
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J
anuary 8, 2006. That was Vega’s first day at NASA. Even today, he recalls the date and speaks of it with disbelief. “It just seemed so unattainable, just because of the percentage of people who get to work on any one of the space vehicles,” Vega says. “For me, it was really a godsend and a dream come true to get the opportunity to work out here with people who are as passionate as I am.” By the time he arrived at NASA, the shuttle program was in its twilight years. President George W. Bush had announced plans two years earlier for NASA to return to the moon through a program called Constellation, which would have replaced the space shuttle. But in early 2010, amid a budget crisis and flailing economy, President Obama announced plans to cancel the agency’s efforts to return to the moon. NASA was left uncertain about its future and its mission. In the months after the announcement, Obama’s vision for the agency began to take shape. Among other plans, he wanted NASA to cooperate with private American companies pursuing
“NASA’s goal,” Vega says, “is to help develop a commercial entity that can get our astronauts to the International Space Station by 2016.” Today, Vega is NASA’s chief engineer liaison to aerospace and defense giant Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK), one of seven companies working with NASA to design and develop spacecrafts. In that role, he oversees a team of systems engineers familiar with every phase of the company’s plans, from the electronic systems of an aircraft to its electrical power. Vega spends much of his time inspecting the company’s plans or meeting with ATK personnel to review and test systems on the spacecraft. He has to be intimately familiar with the spacecraft the company is designing so that, when the time comes, he can help the agency decide whether it can depend on a private company to transport its astronauts. “The biggest part of this program is insight into what they’re doing,” Vega says. “The more insight NASA gains, the more comfortable we’ll be.” Beyond his work with private companies on manned space flight, he also teaches within NASA’s
As an engineer in NASA’s commercial crew program, it’s his job to make sure these private NASA partners have ideas that can fly. ventures in commercial space flight. Ultimately, NASA might even hitch a ride on one of their space vehicles— and an endorsement from the agency might help the private companies develop demand in the public for personal space travel.
retool for NASA’s future—whatever it may hold.
I
n January, when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was stumping for primary votes in Florida, he promised to build an American colony on the moon by 2020. He was roundly mocked by fellow candidates and talk shows alike, both factions attacking the candidate’s espousal of the fantastical rather than the practical. But NASA officials are quick to point out that projects like moon colonies—while sounding like science fiction—are technologically within reach. After the Florida primary, Charles Miller, a former NASA executive, opined on CNN.com that critics didn’t understand the potential benefits of pushing onward in space. “American history proves that smart, focused action by the US government can jump-start entire new industries that open new frontiers—from western railroads, to the air, to the Internet—and that is exactly where we are today in space,” Miller wrote. NASA continues to stand at that precipice, armed with the technology and, in some cases, even the equipment to move forward with bold plans. “It’s hard to just forget about what we have done and the possibilities of what we can do,” Vega says. “We just have to adapt to these changes.” Vega still has the sort of job he dreamed of as a kid. It just no longer looks quite like he had expected. [w]
Rocket University, showing other agency engineers how to design a rocket from the ground up—part of NASA’s shift in focus from ground operations to design and development. It’s a way, he says, to help the agency’s remaining employees
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Photo: Toby Burditt Photo: Toby Burditt
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status, updated Facebook has gone from dorm room to global domination in eight years. As they prepare to join the stock market this summer, it’s up to their director of global real estate, John Tenanes, AE ’79, to find them the right space for their growing empire—and figure out exactly what a scrappy Silicon Valley start-up is supposed to look like when it is ready to grow up.
posted 5 minutes ago by KEVIN ALEXANDER
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When you first meet John Tenanes, AE ’79, you get the sense that he’s got a lot on his plate. Yes, most of that is due to the fact that he’s Facebook’s director of global real estate and in the process of helping oversee the design and construction of their brand new 57-acre campus housing more than 2,000 employees in Menlo Park, Calif. But also because, when he and I meet, it is the lunch hour, and he literally has a bunch of food on his plate.
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Photo: Toby Burditt
John Tenanes
“You don’t mind if I eat while we do this?” he asks, casting a longing glance at his grub. “Don’t worry, I’m good at multitasking.” Judging from his job requirements, that seems like a ridiculous understatement. Aside from finding and purchasing workspace for Facebook internationally, Tenanes is overseeing each detail of the process involved in building the Menlo Park campus: hiring the architects and design firms; meeting with community and business leaders to hear their concerns; overseeing the company’s
complex employee transportation program; even managing the building’s food program, which includes six restaurants and more than 100 employees. While his path to Facebook and this project now seem like some sort of predestined life mission, that wasn’t always the case. After graduating from Wentworth, he attended culinary school, then, still unsure of exactly what he was going to do, cast his job net wide. “I had a couple of interviews at different kinds of places, and one was with an insurance company,” Tenanes says, laughing. “I remember, because I bought a suit specifically for it. Thank god I didn’t get that job.” He opted instead to return to his Wentworth degree in architecture, taking a gig at the Boston firm Rothman & Rothman and moving to Cambridge. Soon, however, the West and its lack of random April snow showers beckoned. He shipped out to San Francisco and eventually landed at global architecture giant Gensler, where he worked as a senior associate and made questionable fashion choices. “I spent my time doing work for basically all Silicon Valley clients, like IBM, HP, and Sun Microsystems,” he says, smirking, “and I wore a bowtie.” In 1989, after several years of wearing that tie, he was recruited away from Gensler by Sun to help design and build high-end work stations. This, he says, was a real departure from what he’d previously been doing. “I was trained as an architect, worked as an architect, but now I’m doing everything—I’m hiring the contractors as well as the
architects, I’m moving people in and out and figuring out where they’ll sit—and I just really liked it.” Tenanes worked at Sun for about 10 years and then at Silicon Valley giants Siebel and Oracle for the following decade. When he started at Facebook in 2010, tasked with finding them a new home base, he helped them settle on a million-squarefoot piece of property in Menlo Park surrounded on three sides by water. Tenanes knew the property well: He had purchased the very same plot of land for Sun in 1995 when they were looking for a headquarters. So, a decade-and-a-half later— eons in Silicon Valley years— Tenanes acquired the property for Facebook. Though this time around, everything about it— from the space, to the Valley, to his frame of mind coming in—is very, very different. “Across the board, everything’s moving at a much quicker speed now,” says Tenanes, “and it’s our job to make sure we keep up the pace.”
I
f you want to see John Tenanes in his element, ask him to show you something on a map, or a blueprint, or really anything that appears on a scroll of paper that he gets to unroll. The 54-year-old looks like the type of dad that your own personal insecurities make you want to hate—fit, with a solid shock of grey-brown hair—and acts like one of those hands-on professors who really, really wants you to understand what he’s teaching. Several times during our conversation, he’s more
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Facebook Menlo Park Fact Sheet
9
buildings Outdoor seating Just over a million square feet
57
acres
Amenities A central courtyard with a two-story backlit screen Sky bridges to connect the buildings Laundry facilities (off-site vendor) Doctor’s office Food & Leisure Two cafeterias Burger shack, taco stand, pizza window Smoothie bar Open-pit BBQ Coffee shop Fun Fact
47%
of employees use the transport program
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Tenanes’ Timeline: Wentworth
LASTING LESSON Tenanes was building a campus for Siebel Sytems when the hightech bubble burst in the early 2000s, and his job changed significantly. “I was tasked with taking their two hundred buildings worldwide and shrinking them down, which I’d never done before.” He credits his Wentworth professor (and current provost emeritus) George Balich for helping to give him the skill set to figure out his new role. “When he was training us as architects, a big part of it was just teaching us how to problem-solve. And just having that confidence helped me immensely.”
IF WENTWORTH HAD FACEBOOK IN 1979… “Well, I think there would’ve been a lot more interaction with kids at Northeastern and Simmons. We’d have known what was going on with kids in other programs at school, and it would’ve been a great way to get everyone to meet up at the Student Union or at Punters.” “Also,” he says, with a smile and a laugh, “we probably would’ve met a lot more women.”
than happy to get up and point something out—whether it’s a map of the structure they’re working on across the street, or a white wall sketch of how Facebook fits into Menlo Park, or a map of the flow of the courtyard on campus. His stories jump and skitter across paths, double-crossing, and taking turns, but he always ends up righting himself quickly, something you might expect from a man who needs to keep track of a lot of things at once but remain centrally focused. When I visit Facebook’s campus, it is the day before the company files papers to potentially sell its IPO, and there is a nervous energy in the air. The nine-building complex, sitting on the edge of a salt marsh at the cleverly named 1 Hacker Way, is easily identifiable as you get off the highway—just look for the huge image of the iconic Facebook “like” thumbs-up—but is not quite complete. As I walk into the building, construction workers in hard hats and trucks pass by, while on the way out, I run into a serious man in a dark suit and sunglasses with an earpiece, looking like the
Even the doors left over from Sun Microsystems purposefully still have their logos, either as a clever nod to the old Silicon Valley giant, or a subtle reminder companies that don’t stay nimble end up being called “old Silicon Valley giants.” stereotype of a Secret Service agent. “You really just never know who’s going to be here,” says their media relations guy as we both try not to make any sudden moves.
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Once inside, you begin to get an idea of the eclectic, playful start-up-esque sensibility. The walls are covered in chalk boards filled with doodles, stainless steel girders and ducts jut overhead, conference rooms have weird names like “Obi Wan Peroni” or “Cool Story Bro,” and even the doors left over from Sun Microsystems purposefully still have their logos, as either a clever nod to the old Silicon Valley giant or a subtle reminder that companies that don’t stay nimble end up being called “old Silicon Valley giants.” Aside from the random “breakaway spaces” or “cozies” featuring comfy chairs, pillows, and couches, almost all of the workspace is open, with hardly any personal offices or cubes. This is entirely intentional. “At Facebook, we work in a unique, actually oldfashioned way, which is basically Mark’s vision,” says Tenanes, referring to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. And that’s to maximize the amount of social and collaborative space, which means minimizing private space. It’s really a kitchen-table approach,
where you and I are working at the table, with the entire family around you. And we’ve tried to translate that idea—everyone in one room— to a million square feet.”
John Tenanes
One of the biggest, most important components of the new campus—and one of the most dramatic differences from the space under Sun—is the idea of creating a “Main Street” through the nine buildings. “The campus had massive potential that was lost on us twenty years ago,” says Tenanes. “At Sun, there was this kind of English garden outside, in that it was nice to see but not touch. So we really invested in turning that into this ‘Main Street’ idea.” The vision, as Tenanes puts it, is to create an urban streetscape where no one architect or designer dominates. “We’re trying to create a variety of randomness, as if you’re walking down the street and [he gestures to an imaginary building] this place is owned by Bob, and the next one has a different landlord named Jim.” To accomplish that they flew out “people flow” experts from Disney, who know a thing or two about constructing Main Streets, to help devise a street that complements the way Facebook works—on-thefly, ad-hoc, scrappy—while efficiently providing services. (Aside from the six restaurants on campus, they’ll have a bike shop, free dry cleaners, and potentially even an artist-in-residence.) They’ve also brought in a variety of architects, each with their own unique sense of style, from San Francisco– based Envelope A+D, which creating a “Southern California-esque glass burger shack,” to Roman and Williams in NYC, who helped design the uber-hip Ace Hotel—a space Tenanes respects because, like Facebook, “it projects a sense of not quite being finished.” For Tenanes, “not quite being finished” is business as usual.
“
It’s really a kitchen-table approach, where you and I are working at the table, with the entire family around you. And we’ve tried to translate that idea—everyone in one room— to a million square feet.”
Facebook’s future:
Plans for the Menlo Park campus (above) and some of its new space (below)
f
See more photos of the new Facebook campus at www.wit.edu/magazine
Even as they’re wrapping up the main campus, he’s already at work on plans to build out the twenty two-acre plot Facebook purchased across the road to potentially up the company’s capacity to 6,600. And he’s also working on a 120,000-square-foot space in Hyderabad, India, and picking out a building in Dublin, and heading to the London and Paris offices to see what changes need to be made there. This, of course, means long, odd hours while constantly dealing with new, different teams, and a whole lot of jet lag, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I love the global piece. Every country is so unique—when you do a real estate, or construction, or design deal in Paris, the process is entirely different than one in Singapore or India. And to me that’s just fascinating.” [w]
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hand [W]HAT’S YOUR STORY? Send your thoughts to editor@wit.edu
Community Catalyst
Family Ties My grandmother was a
widow, my mother was a widow, my aunt was a widow, and there were 11 of us [children]—five brothers and sisters and six cousins. My passion for economic justice for women had a lot to do with my experience watching the women in my family have to really stretch their incomes and share with others. It was almost like a science for them. Neighborhood Watch When I was
working in financial education in my community, I was finding that financial services companies were setting up in immigrant populations and handing mortgages out to people who weren’t qualified. They were
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[wentworth spring 12]
signing people’s name on mortgages. They would set them up in such a way that, after three months, people wouldn’t be able to pay. Then they would just resell it for profit. Defending the Dream We
demanded that the New York State banking department start a campaign to inform the community about the scams. We would go one by one, street by street taking down the ads—working in collaboration with the community. We also worked with an advocacy group that helped pass a piece of legislation that allowed homeowners more time to rescind a bad contract. When we went to Albany to advocate for
Madeline Lamour Holder, AET ’89 the law, I brought a woman from Guyana who had six children. When she told her story (about losing her home), everyone in the statehouse stopped and listened. That was very powerful. Measuring Change At one of
the breakfasts that the NYWF organized, one of C.H.A.N.G.E.R.’s former homeowners who was able to keep her home made a presentation about her experience to 2,200 people. We had the mayor’s office and very important government officials in the room that day. I had tears in my eyes. Lasting Legacy My family was
raised with the belief that we were born to make the world more beautiful. It was my Grand-Madou’s mandate. And if people say that I am fulfilling my Grand-Madou’s mandate, that would be the highest honor I could think of.
Photo: John Blais
After graduation, Madeline Lamour Holder, AET ’89, got a job at a New York City architecture firm, but her heart was elsewhere. “When I started volunteering in my local Haitian community, it made me think about what my real passion was,” says Holder, who emigrated from Haiti at 19. “And I found that my passion is service.” Since then, Holder has dedicated her career to community work, including leading a financial education program for low-income women in Brooklyn and founding Communities Homeowners and Neighbors Gaining Economic Rights (C.H.A.N.G.E.R.), an organization that protects minority homeowners from deceptive lending practices. We talked to Holder, who now sits on the board at C.H.A.N.G.E.R. and works as a director of community philanthropy at the New York Women’s Foundation (NYWF), about what it takes to make change and where her passion comes from. —Dan Morrell
Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Wentworth Institute of Technology
550 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115-5998 Office of Alumni Relations 800-258-6948 www.wit.edu/alumni
As part of the Master of Architecture Special Topics Studio last fall, Matthew Dessureault, BSA ’11, Whitney Allison, BSA ’11, Taylor Holland, BSA ’11, and Kemal Zahirovic, BSA ’11, collaborated to produce a model of the Galata district of Istanbul, Turkey.