With ambitions to become a leader and develop game-changing, innovative products, Jordan—despite his success—still felt he had much to learn when it came to management. He decided an MBA would help him acquire the acumen and vocabulary to lead in business as effectively as he could in manufacturing.
Searching for the right program, Jordan came across the Leaders for Global Operations dual degree program, a unique offering combining an MBA at MIT Sloan School of Management with an MS from the MIT School of Engineering. He jumped at the opportunity to mix his technical expertise with a business degree from one of the world’s top management schools.
“The LGO program had a fantastic blend of educational and practical experiences that would get me a lot closer to my goal,” he says.
The MIT LGO experience
After a number of years in industry, Jordan initially found the prospect of returning to school daunting; however, he quickly acclimated to life in the LGO program, which involved an equal split between classes at MIT Sloan and at the MIT School of Engineering.
LGO students take MBA classes with their peers from the MBA program. Through the engineering school, they can opt to focus on one of seven available interest areas. Jordan opted to build on his prior knowledge by specializing in mechanical engineering.
“I was able to get back to the core academic philosophies on a number of critical topics,” he says.
He relished the chance to develop his knowledge of business fundamentals. During modules in finance and accounting, for example, he learned concepts for the first time.
“Getting under the hood of some of the general managerial finance practices that companies use for business case analysis—that type of thing was very helpful,” he says.
Jordan's MIT experience was focused on practical learning, with the Institute's motto—‘mens et manus’ (mind and hand)—present throughout the curriculum.
“For almost everything we were learning in the classroom from a theory perspective, there was a practical component to it as well. There would be a class project, or a case study, or something else that anchored the academic theory in a real-world situation.”
Mind and hand: The MIT way
As part of MIT’s focus on practical learning, Jordan and his fellow classmates had opportunities throughout their studies to interact with real companies and participate in business simulations, developing their expertise.
Through the school’s Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, he spent a month in Hong Kong developing his entrepreneurial knowledge. There, he took part in a competition requiring teams of students to ideate and develop a product before pitching their business case to a judging panel—and his team won!
Winning the competition gave Jordan’s team a platform to turn their product—a device designed to assist with administering prescription medication—into a fully-fledged company that remains operational today.
“The whole ecosystem of the school was very unique,” he adds.
Each LGO student must also spend six months off-campus on an internship; Jordan worked with Nike as a research fellow specializing in supply chain strategy. It was an opportunity to cement his in-class learning.
“I worked on big data and analysis modeling to figure out where Nike should build new distribution centers, for example,” he says. “It was directly applicable to what I had been learning in the classroom.”
Becoming a business leader at Blue Origin
With a wealth of knowledge and diverse experiences under their belts, MIT LGO students go on to unique roles across various industries. Jordan recalls members of his cohort taking up cross-industry positions with companies including Amazon, NVIDIA, and Boeing, among others.
“Almost everybody who emerges from the LGO program has gone on to do something interesting in their careers,” he says.
After graduating from the LGO program, Jordan sought out an opportunity where he could satisfy his core aim of leading something new. He landed at Blue Origin, the space technology company founded by Jeff Bezos, which at the time had fewer than 1,000 employees. He took up a role as the company’s first supply chain logistics manager.
“It was really attractive to me. I sensed that I was going to be given quite a lot of rope to apply what I had just learned in the LGO program, which had all the hallmarks of becoming a really great company in the near future,” he says.
Today, Blue Origin employs more than 10,000 people. In 2025, the firm successfully completed the first launch of its New Glenn rocket (pictured), one of the largest in operation today. Recently celebrating his eighth year with Blue Origin, as vice president, Jordan now leads the end-to-end design and development team responsible for the first stage of New Glenn.
“The ability to be part of something that's much bigger than myself and take those learnings from my supply chain days and the LGO days into leading an engineering development program is an amazing opportunity, and something that I just view as a privilege.”
He reflects fondly on his time in the LGO program: “As somebody who's very curious, in those two years I learned more, met more people who did interesting things—who I stay in contact with to this day—and traveled more than I ever have in my whole life.”
