Scholarship Award Alumni - Jennifer Berry

Jen has always been enchanted by everything space related and “craved the sense of exploration and innovation weaved into every space endeavor.” But growing up on a farm in rural New Zealand, she is also passionate about sustainability.

Through her young career she has worked in both fields, including driving sustainable action and strategy within New Zealand startups, and designing and launching a scientific payload on a high-altitude balloon flight with Kea Aerospace.

But these came together when she was awarded a Brooke Owens Fellowship in 2022, which brought her to New York City to work on emerging space-based energy generation and storage technology. She saw how “using space to address our Net Zero energy needs, innovating in green propulsion or developing hardware to allow us to better monitor, communicate and respond to our changing climate” is pioneering the “overlap between space and environmental sustainability.” So she is now excited by the “opportunities space provides not only to explore but also to aid in climate action.”

In addition, as a Brookie, Jen was able to experience a sense of belonging in aerospace engineering with other women and gender minorities. She subsequently assisted in establishing Women in Space Aotearoa New Zealand for women and gender minorities in the New Zealand space industry, and to establish a national mentoring program to help disrupt the historical gender imbalance in the industry.

Update (January 2024): Jen is an engineer at Rocket Lab in Pasadena, CA.