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First, we explore Joy’s hands-on approach to science, her experimental journey through
academics and national labs, and then her rise to the top of a small, women-owned
satellite imagery shop.

If you ask Joy how she became founder and president of Skyline Scientific, she might
simply respond that it was an experiment. After all, experimental trial and error gets to
the very core of progress in science. And Joy started experimenting at a very early age.
But not with sensor technology, rather with baking.

Growing up, Joy learned to bake with her grandma in a small farming community in
northeast Wisconsin. Her sweet-tooth brother and Dad were the human factory where
the cookie and pie experiments took place. The best part for Joy was that they would eat
everything in one night so that she could re-work the experiment the next day.
Yes, the formulas in the baking recipes were interesting, but the art form, the trial-and-
error of the baking experiments is what brought Joy, well, joy.

“I loved just figuring out how things work,” Joy reflects on her childhood. As a kid, she
remembers “people would always come to me and ask me for advice, or how to fix
something, or how to do something”, conversing with her as if she were an adult. 

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Though a conversationalist, Joy admits to being somewhat of an introvert in high school,
focused on finding what she was good at. Wood shop resonated with her. Languages,
not so much. Her curiosity piqued when the physics teacher selected her for a summer
program at a manufacturing company, Procter and Gamble, outside of Green Bay. The
company was promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Building
structurally sound bridges out of popsicle sticks, shaping paper airplanes to maintain lift,
Joy remembers wanting to make her design better. “I think that sometimes it's a single

teacher and a single class that can propel you forward,” Joy remembers her high school

physics lab. This is where she built circuits to turn on light bulbs and learned about the

math and science behind it. Most certainly, this propelled Joy to the Milwaukee School

of Engineering and into the world of electrical engineering.

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Set on the backdrop of Lake Michigan, the small engineering college allowed Joy to
escape the large lecture halls at other universities that terrified her. She soaked up
knowledge about semiconductors, how to fabricate circuit boards, and rolled up her
sleeves to solder cables and build test equipment. Long study hours were the norm.
Unwinding came in the form of playing cards with friends, and a Metallica hour at 9 pm,
heavy metal tunes blaring throughout the dorm.

Graduation from college coincided with the heartbeat of Silicon Valley at the center of
the dot-com boom. While most of her friends were racing into high-paying industry jobs,
Joy had her sights set on academics. When Arizona State came calling with a full ride,
paid tuition plus stipend, it was a no-brainer to put work on hold. The professor
recruiting her was funded by government defense agencies to work on advanced
research in semiconductors. Joy dived into her studies, determining how fast electrons
could tunnel through a conducting material with high heat tolerance properties. This was
fundamental science at the time, only today making its way into the headlines of
laser LED diodes and "mood lighting".

“I felt so defeated every day of my PhD program.” Joy dreaded the notes from her

mentor to come see him. One of their office conversations changed everything.

Growing up not questioning authority, assuming her mentor was just smarter than her,

Joy had been reluctant to push back. Until she realized her intimate knowledge of the

problem that she was a slave to, armed her with enough experimental proof to challenge

his theory. Her mentor succeeded in bringing out the fight in Joy, and she was ready

to defend her thesis.

Toward the end of graduate school, Joy received a fellowship at Sandia National Labs.
Sandia’s mission statement reads “to create innovative, science-based, systems engineering

solutions to our nation’s most challenging national security problems.”
Curious, persistent, and now self-empowered, Joy was no stranger to a challenge.
Sandia brought her on as a strategic hire. Her credentials could have taken her on a
tenure-track professorship, following in the footsteps of many of her peers. Instead, Joy
made her own tracks at Sandia. She was given the freedom to plug into lab projects that
interested her. “I seem to thrive in these types of environments, where I have the least
amount of management, and make the biggest leaps and gains.”

Joy’s mentor at Sandia was the chief of payload systems, the cargo side of satellite
technology. Without really knowing it, Joy had walked into the world of overhead
collection, that is, sensor technology in space delivering high-resolution, map-ready
imagery for analysis by government customers.

At Sandia’s lab, Joy performed dust contamination studies on single-chip camera
sensors, looking to boost production yield. She calculated glint angles and solar
exclusion angles to guard against camera pointing errors toward the sun. Slowly,
though, her hands-on experiments shifted to leadership roles. She began to manage
her own teams, who created models and performance metrics for imaging systems.

When the chief of payload passed the baton to Joy, she learned how fortuitous her
mentorship had been. The chief held a Master’s degree and was looking for someone
with real-world experience, rather than a PhD student fresh out of grad school. All of his
previous advanced degree candidates had failed to realize it was attitude, and
willingness to learn, that earned his respect, not a degree. Joy had the right stuff. From
then on, she reflects, “I learned that you needed to check your ego at the door

if you want to succeed here, willingness to learn and be of service was the key to success.”

Joy became an expert at cranking out sensor payloads. But when the build and design
phase started to become repetitive, and managing three teams against schedule slips
mandated an office cot as a makeshift sleeping quarter, something had to give. As the 
sacrifice for the mission took its toll, Joy started looking for a way out. She set her sights
on a bigger picture. What was all this imagery data going to be used for, and what kind
of questions was it going to answer?

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The seeds for a new adventure were planted. Ones that would grow into Skyline
Scientific, a small business, boutique outfit, providing sophisticated services with
satellite sensor data.

Cameras in Earth orbit are tasked with imagery collection of world events unfolding on
the ground. In reaction to these events, Joy’s company transforms space-based sensor
data into actionable, rapid response imagery products. Joy explains, “We find how to
use and manipulate these sensors in new and creative ways.”

To build her company from scratch, Joy had to battle big defense contractors looking for
‘best price’, while her focus was on quality and providing ‘best athlete’. Joy founded

Skyline Scientific to apply space-based sensor data in agile, creative ways for national

security missions. Building the company demanded grit through challenges, but her

experimental mindset and focus on integrity shaped Skyline into a successful business.

In her own words, “I see the opportunity and I take it, versus I have this long-term plan.”
Her approach to the CEO became clear when Joy had an epiphany. She remembered as a
child wanting to be a psychologist: “I loved problem-solving in the people domain.”

Adding to this skill set, mentoring, helping people grow and be the best they can be, Joy
attributes team building to the success of her business.

When Joy applied ingenuity to automate day-to-day business tasks, she carved out a bit
of breathing space for herself, while still staying hands-on when needed. She explains
her current role at Skyline Scientific as the glue that keeps everything together: “I’m the
one that fills in the gaps and gets it all to work.”

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Today, Joy mentors students, volunteers in STEM programs, and continues to

inspire the next generation of engineers. At Skyline, she sees her role as the glue that

keeps the team and mission together.

In the spirit of childhood baking weekends with her grandma, Joy explains, now, “doing
little creative gestures is my baking.” This is what brings her reward, looking back from
the horizon, over a lifetime of achievement.

 

 

 

 

 

*Text & format inspired by Brian Freed (Aerospace Engineer, pursuing MA Science

Writing at JHU), March ‘24
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