Alumni

“When I first came to MIT, I wanted to do something big,” says Jesse Adler ’17. “For me at the time, that meant working for an organization like Apple or SpaceX on technology that had a significant global impact. Thanks to GEL, I got the chance to do both.”

A native Aussie, Jesse’s first visit to the United States was for his MIT orientation. He quickly found a home in the community: competing on the crew team, performing a cappella, and diving into aerospace engineering. It was his classmates and teammates who recommended GEL to him. “Everyone told me, ‘If you want to be a leader, you need to do GEL.’” And so that’s what he did.

For Jesse, Engineering Leadership Labs were revelatory. “There’s a limit to what you can accomplish in a classroom setting,” he explains, “but the practical experiences, schema, theories, and way of thinking that GEL imparted could very easily apply in any number of other contexts. It was wildly fantastic.” To this day, he continues to refer back to the Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders when making tough decisions. “In school, your questions all have answers. In the real world, you need to learn to make decisions when the outcomes are uncertain. To teach students in a classroom environment that the world is actually a very uncertain place is challenging but critical.”

After MIT, Jesse went to work at Apple on the team manufacturing iPhones. He recalls one very specific occasion where he was forced to make a decision in the face of uncertainty. “We heard that there was a quality assurance issue with one of our parts, and we needed to decide if we were going to continue manufacturing or put production on hold while the issue was investigated. I was on the phone with members of my team trying to determine if 80,000 people were going to come to work that day.” Thanks to GEL, he was prepared to handle that situation.

Richard Agbeyibor ’12—known to his friends as Coco—moved to the United States from Togo when he was 12 years old to escape the political conditions in his home country. As with many young people, his love for engineering began with LEGO and then transitioned to small electronics and computers. “I was happiest when manipulating physical objects. I was fascinated by these little black boxes that could do magical things—I would take them apart to investigate their mechanical parts and circuit boards. I wanted to understand everything about how they worked.”

At MIT, Coco had abundant opportunities to discover the science and theory of engineering, but he soon realized that he wanted more hands-on experiences. That led him to join GEL, which was a new program at the Institute at the time. His cohort was instrumental in developing and pressure-testing Engineering Leadership Labs, which are to this day one of the most beloved aspects of the GEL curriculum. “We had the chance to play the role of engineering stakeholders in a way that we couldn’t in our other MIT courses. I wanted to be an engineer that makes things, that could bring a vision to reality—through GEL, I saw that I needed other people to realize bigger and more influential systems.”

Coco joined the military after graduation, where he distinguished himself among his fellow cadets thanks to his ability to see the bigger picture and communicate his thinking with others. “In Togo, I saw that people with power could persecute others and exercise it negatively,” he recalls. “My decision to serve in the military came from a desire to exercise my power positively—to be a person who could fight for justice on behalf of those who couldn’t on their own.” He is currently a flight test engineer and a highly competitive candidate for astronaut school. He’s also enrolled in a robotics PhD program studying how to make autonomous aircraft a reality—a topic that integrates his diverse experiences. “There are so many questions tied up in this field. Can we design a vertical takeoff aircraft that would help with commuting? Or to perform medical evacuations? Or deliver cargo. There’s a lot of talk about drone delivery systems. How can you tell when a front yard is empty and when it’s safe to drop a package? And so on.”

In reflecting on his time at GEL, there’s one thing Coco wants to emphasize. “The people you meet through the program are one of the greatest benefits. They are folks who will go on to do amazing things—and who you will always be able to count on. I think of my fellow GEL alums as my own personal board members.”

Vanessa Kitova ’21 knew early in her MIT career that she wanted to join GEL. “As soon as you start walking the MIT halls as a bright-eyed first year, you will encounter the smiling faces on GEL posters,” she says. “The reason I wanted to join was because of the enthusiasm of the GEL students and alumni I met. People’s eyes don’t light up like that when they talk about organic chemistry.”

Once she became a GEL student, Vanessa understood what the excitement was all about. She thrived in the Engineering Leadership Lab, where she collaborated with classmates to tackle projects that tested their communication, negotiation, and problem-solving skills just as much as their technical knowledge. She recalls, “One of the most important things I learned was how to make sound decisions in the face of uncertainty. This is critical in modern life and fast-paced work environments—how to evaluate your options, how to make a choice, when to change your mind. I rely on these lessons all the time in my current job and in my personal life.”

Following graduation, Vanessa volunteered as an MIT tennis coach while working on Business Analytics at Bristol Myers Squibb—and she would wholeheartedly recommend GEL to her players. “I always tell people you will use the things you learn in GEL more than what you learn in your major, no matter what you end up doing. It’s rewarding, it’s fun, and you’ll develop skills and emotional intelligence you can’t get anywhere else.”

“I was concerned that I was too ‘nice’ and that this might be a flaw holding me back from starting my own company,” she continues. “My GEL mentors and classmates showed me that I did have the capacity to lead—and they would point to specific moments and experiences during the program where I exhibited the skills and capabilities of leadership.”

In addition to the relationships she built with her peers, Simran is extremely grateful for the opportunity to engage in leadership labs. “The magic of GEL is in its complexity, in the depth of feedback you receive regarding who you are and how you lead, and in its ability to help you personally grow. It’s amazing how clearly I still remember my leadership labs—but that’s because they were all so revelatory.”

Of all the skills she gained at MIT, she is particularly grateful to have intentionally developed her capacity to make decisions in the face of uncertainty—one of GEL’s recognized capabilities of effective engineering leaders. “I am currently a product line manager at Corning,” she says, “and it’s my job to make decisions about everything from pricing and product design to manufacturing specifications. It’s critical to be able to work with limited information to make sound decisions, and then to reevaluate those choices over time.”

Towa says it was space exploration that first drew her to engineering—and to MIT. After graduation, GEL helped connect her to engineers actively working in her area of interest. “Before Corning, I joined General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, where I worked for a GEL alum thanks to a GEL connection. The strength of this community is one of its greatest assets, and I continue to prize it as an alum just as I did as a student.”