Ready To Go To Space?

Patrick Zeitouni, MBA ’09, wants to help you get there. From his childhood days spent gazing at the stars from his Lebanon rooftop, Zeitouni has been passionate about space. Now, as the head of the Advanced Development Programs group at Blue Origin, a space exploration company founded by Jeff Bezos, he’s leading a team developing a lunar lander. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve worked on in my whole career,” Zeitouni says. “My group truly lives in the future.”

Blue Origin is shooting beyond the moon. “Our vision is to enable a future where millions of people are living and working in space,” says Zeitouni. The company is developing reusable launch vehicles aimed at lowering the cost of accessing space, with the goal of moving heavy industry off the planet to protect Earth. One of Blue Origin’s rockets, New Shepard, has already flown to space 10 times. The company has also designed and built an engine that can be reused repeatedly without having to be rebuilt.With a background in electrical engineering, Zeitouni says he also relies on the frameworks he learned at MIT Sloan to power his work. “On any given day, I’m using one of the three most critical things I learned at MIT Sloan: evaluating investment decisions, finding patterns in data, or writing a business case.” Above all, says Zeitouni, “MIT Sloan taught me how important it is to surround yourself with a caring, amazing team. I had a great core team at Sloan, which made a great experience even better. Wherever I can, I try to find and build teams like that.” Perhaps one day, even in space.

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