Member Spotlight – Julia Redinger

Julia Redinger is a third year engineering physics student who has been a member of the administration team in AlbertaSat for a year and a half now. As an admin coordinator, some of Julia’s tasks include organizing and maintaining the shared google drive with all of the organization’s files, and onboarding new members into the club. Her favorite aspect of her job is that it’s more self-guided, based on finding an issue and problem solving it. She also likes to wear funky cool socks, enjoys working with others, and really, really likes space.

Through her time in AlbertaSat, Julia has been able to find many role models and like-minded people. Due to AlbertaSat being a student-led club, many of its members are around the same age and are in similar programs or classes. They are students all working together in teams towards the common goal of building a satellite to send into space. AlbertaSat makes this feat accessible, and that is also Julia’s favourite part of this club; the fact that she and peers like herself are building and touching pieces of equipment that at first glance, seems like something someone with years of experience in the space industry should be doing. AlbertaSat prepares its members for the space industry, many of them go on to work in rocket building and similar projects around the world, serving as role models for newer or younger members in the club. Seeing others like her go on to be involved in projects like this has definitely had an impact on Julia’s goals and confidence for her future, as she is now considering doing a master’s degree in Europe. 

When asked what next steps she would like to take for the club, Julia highlighted the need for more business students on the team. Much of the admin team are engineering students, and engineering classes don’t usually teach finance or management-related topics. As AlbertaSat is growing, team communication and organization become all the more important. Having people who are familiar with finance, management and administration would make the behind-the-scenes aspects of AlbertaSat run much smoother.

Finally, here is a piece of advice from Julia to those who are interested in STEM (or even those interested in building their own satellite):  “Go for it! It doesn’t matter what year you’re in or how many classes you’ve taken; be confident in yourself and you can do it!”