Katherine L. Coens is the System Program Director (SPD) for the Narrowband SATCOM Division in SYD 88, Space Systems Command, San Diego, California. In this role she manages an ACAT I program with space, ground, and sustainment components that provide Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Narrowband SATCOM capabilities to over 150,000 joint warfighters and weapon systems.
Ms. Coens graduated magna cum laude from Kenyon College, Ohio with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and then studied laser induced phosphorescence of atmospheric glyoxal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned a Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship in 2008 and interned in the summer of 2009 with Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Edwards AFB, California studying hypergolic fuels. Following her internship, she graduated with her master’s in chemistry from UWMadison. She is a chemist, Systems Engineer, and Program Manager that has worked in a variety of mission areas including weather, launch, satellite communications, and GPS.
Prior to her current position, she was the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) (now SSC) Materiel Leader for Global Positioning System (GPS) IIIF, executing the $10 billion, 22 satellite vehicle program, delivering the next generation of GPS satellites to the operational constellation and over 4 billion users worldwide. She was also the team lead for the Systems Engineering portion of the SpaceX Falcon 9 Certification effort, managed the National Security Space Launch (NNSL) enterprise baseline, and was the Deputy of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) Space Segment. Prior to these positions, she joined the Weather Directorate at SMC where she worked on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate-2 (COSMIC-2) programs.