by Simmy Willemann ’10

At fifteen years out from Webb, I am no longer in the maritime industry, but I look back fondly on Webb. I now work at Apple decarbonizing consumer electronics, and I’m a mom of a very active and happy 16-month-old, Sahni, who I love playing with. My job is all about problem solving and understanding how things are built, so we can manufacture them differently. Motherhood takes hard work, including all nighters, a sense of humor, and creativity. These themes very much remind me of my time at Webb.

Simmy with her family

In October 2024, I had the pleasure of attending the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Conference in Chicago. The real highlight of being at SWE was meeting the Webb Junior Women – Annabel, Rebecca, Zoe, Millay, and Ally! I was expecting to feel out of touch with the school as I haven’t visited in a while but was happily surprised to connect with these lovely Webbies as if they were in my Webb class. When I meet students from other colleges, I feel a generational divide but that wasn’t so with Webbies. Most fun was sharing all the stories about Webb traditions and crosscorrelating what I had heard changed and what they had heard things were like before. How cool that women live in Stevenson Taylor Mansion now! It’s life-affirming to meet younger Webbies and see their drive and spirit.

At SWE, I was on an Apple panel featuring Women in Operations. I shared my career path from Webb to MIT to Consulting to Apple Mac to Apple Environment and the type of support I received along the way. I now manage three teams at Apple. The Environmental Product Managers lead environmental initiatives including carbon and recycled content on each Apple product line. The Environmental Technology team proves what’s possible, from proof-of-concept manufacturing scrap recycling to iPhone end-of-life disassembly automation. The Safety Subject Matter Experts keep workers in our supply chain safe.

I also shared what it’s like to be a mom and work full time in a leadership position. I didn’t know how I’d feel about going back to work after maternity leave but I’m happy to share that I feel fulfilled both working at Apple and being a mom. My husband and I share parenting responsibilities equally. When there are tradeoffs to be made between my daughter and my work, my daughter is now my priority. I know I provide great value at work already and that I don’t need to be on every call or work trip.

At the SWE Conference, I shared three pieces of advice I have for students at the start of their journey:

• Perspective and what we choose to think about and spend our time on is everything. Focus on what you love doing (and financial security). If you’re spending time on anything else, ask yourself if you’ll care about dropping it when you’re 80? If not, drop. Seneca’s “On the Brevity of Life” gave me perspective on how short life is if you’re not living it for yourself. Once I started making time for violin gigs, my sense of self was strengthened. I could have a bad day at work but a great violin performance, and I was happy. I might have messed up at a violin gig, but I had a great work presentation, and I could still be happy. I’ve found that multiple identities tend to strengthen me and make life more fulfilling.
• People make work more fulfilling than the work itself. Choose teams with people who will encourage you to grow and give you a sense of belonging. If you don’t feel you have community now, look for it. Avoid being so focused on the results that you don’t get to know the people and build relationships.
• It’s never too early in your career to support others. As a woman working in multiple maledominated industries for 15 years, I can share that support goes a long way. Much of the support I’ve received has come from men and rather unexpectedly — asking for my opinion in a meeting, assigning me a visible project that let me prove my skills, or giving me encouragement or specific feedback on how I can improve. The opportunity to support others is there if you keep an eye out for it.  If you don’t know what to do, ask others what their biggest challenge is and how you can support them. Those are two of the kindest questions especially from managers to employees – and then listen and follow up

Simmy with the Class of 2026.

by Kaye Lin, Director of Communications & Marketing

The Man Who Cut Ships in Half

It was a bright Spring afternoon when I found myself staring at a plaque tucked on the wall of Webb’s Couch Academic Center. At first glance, it looked like any other recognition of alumni generosity, but if you leaned in a little closer, right there at the bottom, were the quiet words that summed up the entire Webb experience, at least through the eyes of Gene Schorsch.

It didn’t talk about his rocket division, the ships he reimagined, or the lawsuits he pursued. It spoke about the challenge, and what Webb does to the students who rise to meet it.

Gene didn’t start his Webb story with fanfare. In fact, he revealed that he didn’t get in on his first try. Or his second. But on his third. He lacked a year of foreign language – German or French – a small technicality that closed the door to his dream. But Gene wasn’t the type to walk away.

In 1948, after his third try, the doors opened – and from that moment, he never stopped building. Not just ships and systems, but principles, trust, and a way of thinking that would change everything he touched.

After graduating in 1952, Gene went to work at Sun Shipbuilding. He was young, but not the type to play it safe. When the team was asked to build six old-fashioned breakbulk ships, Gene thought, “What if we don’t?”

Instead, they did the unthinkable. They cut ships that were already in the water in half, extending the ships by 125 feet and deepening their hulls by nine feet, then redesigned them into something more forward-thinking.

Containerization was coming, and Gene could see it before most.

“We cut ships in half and made them longer,” he recalled with a smile. “That’s how bold the thinking was.”

Faced with a contract to build six outdated cargo ships, Gene and his team convinced the client and the government to approve a radical overhaul: extending the ships by 125 feet and deepening their hulls. It was a massive structural shift, but a necessary one as containerization transformed global shipping.

SNAME Photo 10/21/77 – New Flexible Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Facilities

From Ships to Space Space

It wasn’t long before a man walked into the shipyard asking for help building… rockets.

Most people would have laughed him off. Not Gene.

“We didn’t wait for the contract. We built a fake rocket case with ship steel to prove it could be done.”And it worked.

The mock-up impressed Aerojet enough to award Gene the contract for the largest solid rocket casings ever built at the time. At just 34, he was featured in Fortune Magazine, but you’d never hear that from him unless you asked.

Webbies of the graduating class of ’52 in 2019. Gene Schorsch, John Sims, Tom Gillette

Integrity in the Details

Gene shared many great stories, and all of them led to the important themes of integrity and that the devil is in the details.

When two ships he helped design, lost their propeller blades at sea, most blamed it on underwater collisions. Gene wasn’t convinced. He went to Amsterdam, inspected the damage himself, and quietly ran tests using dye-penetrant methods. He realized the problem was in the casting – flaws hidden deep inside the metal.

“You don’t learn this stuff in the classroom,” he told me. “You learn it when you’re responsible for people’s lives.”

He pushed for replacements, even when manufacturers resisted. He was young. They were powerful. But in the end, he was right. The ships sailed again, and safely it did.

Gene wasn’t just an engineer. He was a systems thinker. A builder of ideas.

Redesigning the Industry

When oil companies in Alaska’s North Slope needed to move crude oil across the Arctic, Gene pitched something radical: he would design the tanker, build it, own it, and operate it. All they had to do was pay a daily charter rate. For us nowadays, think of oil tankers as Uber rides.

And when delays in the Alaskan pipeline left one of his tankers idle, he turned it into a grain carrier, and (because of course he did) he invented a vacuum system to unload it, earning a U.S. patent along the way.

Webb Always

Through all of this – every design, discovery, and decades-long lawsuit against corporate fraud – Gene remained, at his core, a Webbie. He and his wife Ruth gathered every year with three other Webb couples for a three-day weekend. He returned to campus. He mentored. He remembered.

Now, going back to the original question I had asked him at the beginning of our meeting, “What made Webb students so extraordinary?”

He told me about a time at Webb when he sat in the basement of Stevenson Taylor Hall with his roommate, sipping Cokes at midnight, wondering why Webbies were built the way they were. They landed on this:

“A lot of us came from hard beginnings. Webb took that raw material and made us better.”

That’s what he believed, and that’s what he lived. He didn’t just walk through Webb’s gates; he carried the place with him for the rest of his life.

The Small Print

If you ever find yourself in the Ruby Lounge, take a moment to lean in close and read what’s engraved on Gene’s plaque.

You won’t see a list of accomplishments. You’ll see a message that only someone like Gene could leave behind – a message about challenge, courage, and what happens when someone believes in you enough to expect everything from you.

Because for Gene Schorsch, Webb wasn’t just a school. Webb was where everything began.

Ruby Lounge plaque. The quote at the end of the plaque states, “Unimaginable achievements await you. Embrace the challenges.”