Employee Spotlight – Jennifer Sitz

Title: Team Lead/Program Management Support

BS in Mechanical Engineering (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology)

MS in Aeronautical Sciences (Air Force Institute of Technology)

It was a bit of a convoluted path, but each step along the way was an important link in the chain.  I’ve always been interested in airplanes and flying – even started working on my private pilot’s license as a teen.  That interest drove me to obtain an Air Force ROTC scholarship, and my mechanical engineering degree has an aerospace concentration.  I commissioned into the Air Force after college, and originally worked on UAV development.  I followed that with an assignment at the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center, providing test support for UAVs, satellites, and other unique systems.  The connections I made there led to a position in test and evaluation at the Airborne Laser Program, and one of my coworkers there eventually passed my resume on to the National Reconnaissance Office, where I worked on my first space program.  I later discovered one of the main reasons I was hired at the NRO was the test experience I had in previous assignments – which I may never have gotten if it weren’t for my very first job working on small UAVs.

Jupiter – the scale and intensity of it are mind-blowing

Reading, traveling, container gardening

For college, I went to Rose-Hulman, a small engineering school (my freshman year was only the second year they admitted women to the school full time), and studied mechanical engineering with a focus on aeronautical engineering.  After college, I joined the Air Force and spent the first half of my career as a program manager for some unique programs, like UAVs and the Airborne Laser.  The second half of my Air Force career, I worked on several different space programs, touching everything from satellite integration, test, launch and initialization to ground systems.  Just prior to retirement, I spent a few years working on program security, primarily supporting space systems, and am now able to leverage that experience as well as my space program management background for future efforts.