Alumni Profi le: Joseph ’13 and Jennifer ’16 Yates by Megan Tady

Two Siblings, Two Coasts, Two Dream Jobs

Joseph ’13 and Jennifer ’16 Yates

Jen and Joe hiking in Waimea Canyon State Park on Kauai while on vacation in Hawaii, fall 2021

Siblings Joseph ’13 and Jennifer ’16 Yates grew up in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, but attending the Abbey as day students wasn’t automatically a given. Their parents prioritized a rigorous education, and they urged both Joe and Jen to explore all options to find the best fit. It turns out, the Abbey was the best fit—for both of them.

Three years older than Jen, Joe enrolled as a Third-Form student in 2009; he ran cross country and was elected team captain his Sixth-Form year. He also tried something entirely out of his comfort zone: musical theater. “I still have really good friends from that time,” he says. Joe looked forward to his science and math classes with all the zeal of someone who’d been dreaming about space since he was a kid. He was particularly fond of his chemistry classes with Janice Brady, his favorite teacher. “She had a really big impact on me,” he says. “She instilled the curiosity that goes along with the scientific process. She was very invested in seeing her students succeed.”

Observing Joe’s time at the Abbey, Jen was thrilled to become a Raven. She ran track and played soccer, serving as captain of both varsity teams her Sixth-Form year. Jen fondly recalls her humanities teacher and advisor, Ms.

Smith. “She would blow me away with her interpretation of the various texts we read in class,” she recalls. “Her class opened my eyes and offered such a unique perspective. She was also my advisor. Ms. Smith genuinely cared about each of the students in her advisory and made the Abbey feel small in the best possible way.”

Although Joe and Jen didn’t overlap for long, they both participated in the Appalachia Service Project during different years. The one-week trip every spring break allowed student volunteers to repair and renovate the homes of the underserved in the Appalachian region. Joe and Jen were student leaders during their respective Sixth-Form years. Their father also volunteered as a chaperone during the two years Jen went to Appalachia. “The Abbey fosters a sense of community and giving back,” Jen says. “I love that Joe and I both had that experience.”

The siblings also share another experience: they’re now working in their dream fields in two of the nation’s most influential cities. Joe is an aerospace engineer in San Francisco, and Jen is an investment banking analyst in New York City. They’re on opposite coasts, yet both trace their paths back to the Abbey.

Joe’s Journey

When Joe was in the fifth grade, his parents took him and Jen to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and he was mesmerized. The family jokes that Joe read every plaque in the museum, much to Jen’s dismay. But one thing was clear: Joe was hooked on all things space, and he’s manifested his childhood vision to work in the industry.

After graduating from the Abbey, he attended Princeton University, earning his Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) in mechanical and aerospace engineering. He then obtained his Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan, focusing on spacecraft flight dynamics and controls. While at Michigan, Joe pursued his interest in spaceflight directly. For both years of his degree program, he worked as a research assistant at the Michigan eXploration Laboratory - a lab in his department focused on the development of novel

Joe in the lab holding a partially-assembled CubeSat satellite, “MARIO,” on which he led development while at University of Michigan’s Michigan eXploration Laboratory, winter 2019

small spacecraft - eventually leading the development of a CubeSat spacecraft in a lab collaboration with NASA’s Langley Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“In college, I became fascinated with small satellites,” he recalls. With them, “I saw that as an individual engineer, I could have a larger impact” in their design and use. “And I became interested in working with smaller companies and startups,” he adds. Fast forward to today, and Joe has used his experience and interest to join Astranis, a San Francisco startup that builds and operates communication satellites to provide Internet connectivity to customers around the world, including Alaska and Peru.

At Astranis, Joe is a guidance, navigation, and control - or “GNC” - engineer, and designs the systems Astranis’s satellites use to know where they are in space, and then move through it to achieve their missions. “How does the satellite know which way it’s pointing?” he names as one

Joe rock climbing outside in Mt. Tamalpais State Park, California, summer 2021

task his team must tackle. Like many other San Francisco startup engineers, his work involves a lot of coding, but focused around spaceflight: “it’s a lot of math and science,” he explains.

While at the Abbey, Joe was the recipient of a Haney Fellowship, for which he installed a wind turbine and solar array for a village in Addo, South Africa — the community’s first source of electrical power, and a life-changing piece of infrastructure. Astranis’s mission for Peru, in collaboration with South American telecommunications provider Grupo Andesat, will provide critical infrastructure to bring Internet service to millions of Peruvians, and Joe says it “feels like I’m coming full circle. I’ve stayed true to those ideals of wanting to help people, which started back at the Abbey.”

He continues, “The Internet isn’t perfect, but I think maybe we take for granted the amount of opportunity we get from it—everything from job applications to food and other supplies, access to financial and medical services. Getting your basic needs met is all so intrinsically linked to the Internet at this point, so providing that access to people who don’t have it right now is really important.”

When he’s not working, Joe skis, hikes, camps, rock climbs, and soaks up the California coastline. “I’ve been here for two-and-a-half years, and even with a demanding job, it still feels like I’m on vacation,” he says. “It’s an incredible feeling.”

And while it looks like Joe has it all figured out, he says it’s important for Abbey students to know that it hasn’t been simple. He’s had plenty of job and school applications rejected, and his courses at Michigan and particularly Princeton were often grueling. While surrounded by accomplished peers, it could seem that it was smooth sailing for everyone else, but he discovered that many of those same peers shared in his challenges. He learned that “effortless perfection is a myth.” As final words of advice, he offered, “don’t get discouraged,” since those obstacles are inevitable. “And don’t be afraid to ask for help, because people want to help you and see you succeed.”

Jen’s Journey

Jen graduated cum laude from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, completing a double major in finance and management and a minor in psychology. She was scooped up by a Swiss investment bank, UBS, to work at their U.S. headquarters in New York City. Only she couldn’t immediately move there — it was July 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic had shuttered the city and the world. Instead, Jen began her job working remotely from Portsmouth, Rhode Island. “It was definitely an interesting way to start my career,” she says. “That being said, I loved the unexpected extra time in my hometown with my parents.”

Since then, she’s been able to relocate to the Big Apple, where she works as an investment banking analyst in the UBS Financial Sponsors and Leveraged Finance Group. “I’m very lucky to be able to work alongside brilliant, accomplished people every day,” she says. “There’s a strong culture and sense of camaraderie in the group. It’s been great to finally experience that firsthand after so many months of working from home.”

Jen’s team focuses on raising debt capital on behalf of corporations and private equity firms to be used in leveraged buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, and recapitalizations. Jen spends much of her time determining company valuation, a process she explains “includes a lot of financial modeling, which requires attention to detail and a strong background in finance and accounting.” She also relies on her soft skills to succeed in her role. “Every day is a group project,” she explains. “It’s so important to be able to communicate effectively and act as a team player.”

Jen says she often harkens back to the Abbey’s Benedictine principal of community, which guided her time at Georgetown and now at UBS. During her four years at Georgetown, Jen was involved with McDonough Women, a student-run organization dedicated to supporting the professional development of the women in the business school. “From the start of my time at Georgetown, I was involved with McDonough Women. Finance is a male-dominated industry, so I wanted to be a part of a strong female network from the get-go,” she said. From junior year until graduation, Jen served as Co-President. “Once I became more senior, I wanted to give back to the organization that helped prepare me for the professional world in so many ways. It was one of my best experiences at Georgetown, so I wanted to ensure students younger than me would be able to benefit from the same, or even better, opportunities.”

Now that Jen is finally in New York, she spends her downtime discovering the city with her two roommates, also Georgetown graduates. “I missed out on a year of exploring because the whole world was on pause,” she says. “Now that things are starting to return to normal, I’m finally able to take a step back and think about my long-term goals.”

Jen in front of Healy Hall on Georgetown University's campus after graduating in 2020

As for advice for Abbey students, Jen is philosophical. “Use your time at the Abbey to be curious,” she says. “Try a new sport or club. Good grades and test scores are important, but developing yourself and enjoying the journey are just as key. Try not to stress. Everything is going to work out, and it may work out even better than expected.”

– Megan Tady