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Maynette Smith
Star Trek spurred Maynette’s interest in space. While a little too young to remember watching John F. Kennedy talk about the United States sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to the Earth, the memory of the crew of Apollo 8 reading from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve still resonates with her. At 8 years of age, she sat with her father watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. From that point on, Maynette dreamed of working for NASA.
2015 -
Courtney Ritz
Shortly after birth, Courtney was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer caused by a genetic defect. She became a patient at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Despite the numerous out-of-state trips for treatments by exceptional doctors and nurses, and the removal of the cancer itself, she eventually lost her eyesight completely around the age of five. But Courtney retained a vivid memory of shapes and colors. Despite her vision loss, she could turn the corner of any room into a spaceship or an alien planet.
2015 -
Christina Deoja
Christina often jokes that when one crosses a physicist and a cake decorator/florist, NASA engineer is born! Christina has always believed that a good engineer is a creative engineer. Attributing to her parents’ very different career backgrounds, she remember her childhood as being a split lesson in arts and crafts and science.
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Vickie Gutierrez
One of Vickie’s earliest memories of growing up in San Antonio, Texas is being in a kindergarten class and watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Her teacher chose to include her class in what would become a defining moment in history.
2015 -
Kate McMurtry
Kate was never certain what she wanted to be when she grew up. She enjoyed science, had a desire to serve in the military, and wanted to go to college. She struggled with how to put her interests together. During her junior year, she found some direction. She took a multiple-aptitude test that measured developed abilities and helped predict future academic and occupational success in the military.
2015 -
Ying Shi
During Ying’s recent visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she took a selfie with Ms. Curiosity–a full size model of Curiosity Mars Rover. She believes they share the same characteristic—always curious about what is going on in space, what is happening on other planets, and whether there is another Earth.
2015 -
Sandra Duncan
Having lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast all of her life, Sandra remembers coming to Stennis Space Center on a field trip with her elementary school many years ago. She remembers the first day as an employee at Stennis Space Center, driving through the South Gate and the moment she saw the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sign by the entrance gate. To say she was excited was an understatement.
2015 -
Karen Meinert
When Karen was a young girl growing up in Milan, Ohio, her father took her to NASA’s Plum Brook Station Open House in the early 1970’s to see a moon rock. She never imagined on her tour that day that she would grow up to have a NASA career.
2015 -
Mary Beth Wusk
Growing up in a small town in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, the daughter of an educator and a social worker, Mary Beth never imagined her path would lead her to where she is today. Her parents provided a wide range of opportunities to help her find her passion. But most importantly, they drove home the idea that one has to enjoy what she is doing to do it well.
2015 -
Venetia Gonzales
Venetia was very determined to go as far in her career as she could, but she never imagined she would work for NASA. She always wanted to become an artist, but there were many obstacles she would have to overcome to become a successful artist. yet, Venetia was very determined to go beyond the limits to what was offered to her as a young girl and not become just another statistic.
2015 -
Mai Lee Chang
As a child, Mai Lee did not envision working for NASA or becoming an engineer. She was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand, the oldest of four children. Her family were refugees of the Vietnam War and settled in the U.S. in 1992 when she was six years old. Mai Lee started school only knowing one English word – “restroom”.
2015 -
Seunghee Lee
When Seunghee Lee’s parents told her about the decision to immigrate to America, she was not happy. She was 17 years old and didn’t want to leave all her friends in South Korea and was afraid of moving to a foreign country that spoke a different language. Although English is taught in South Korean schools, it was limited to reading and writing simple sentences with no speaking lessons.
2015 -
Madhulika Guhathakurta
As a child growing up in middle-class India, Lika would drive her father up the wall with her curiosity. Even at tender age of high school, she knew if she did not pursue science, her desire to pursue questions of physics and meta-physics would never be a reality.
2015 -
Raymonda Yeh
Raymonda was born in Kiev, Ukraine and her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was 6 with only $1,500 to begin their life anew. Raymonda is a fifth generation member of a deaf family and started school in the United States at the age of 8, knowing no English.
2015 -
Donna Lawson
Despite growing up in Newport News, Virginia, the neighboring city of NASA Langley Research Center, and developing a love for space and academics, Donna never dreamt that she would one day work at NASA.
2015 -
Sarah Noble
Sarah Noble grew up in rural Minnesota, where from a very young age she was fascinated with space exploration, staring up at the moon and making plans to visit it one day.
2015 -
Suzanne Honeycutt
One evening in September of 1991, the earth shook, the sky burst into a huge glow, and the loud rumbling sound lingered what seemed like for hours. Actually lasting only minutes, that was Suzanne’s first viewing of a space shuttle launch. Not knowing what to expect since it was dark outside, she didn’t bother bringing a camera or binoculars. But the sight of that glowing magical masterpiece still burns in her memory.
2015 -
Rosalind Cylar
Growing up in the inner city of the Bronx, New York, Rosalind had no idea she would work for NASA. Her mother, sister and she lived in a small apartment with her aunt and uncle. But, as a young girl, she always knew she wanted to be a lawyer.
2015 -
Cynthia Stemple
Cynthia never had aspirations to be an engineer or become a manager. She simply took steps that were shaped by caring people and took a life-altering detour. As a result, her career unfolded before her.
2015 -
Chana Johnson
Chana Johnson grew up in Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, and is a daughter of educators. So it probably wasn’t a surprise when Chana’s affinity for math and science combined with her curiosity about how things work to lead her to an engineering degree and, eventually, a career at NASA.
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Meg Nazario
Dr. Margaret Nazario began her journey into engineering when she was a senior in high school taking physics. While her love of inventing and problem solving provided an architectural roadmap for her future, it was the encouragement and guidance of the teachers who recognized her special talents that put her life on a trajectory that would land her at NASA, where she continues to be inspired and challenged to reach even greater heights.
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Charlene Butler
When Charlene Butler was growing up, she, along with many other young people, thought that it would be cool to work for NASA one day. Little would she have guessed that her dream would begin to unfold during ninth grade for it was in Ms. Butler’s freshman year that she decided on a career in the Computer/Information Technology (IT) field.
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Lelia Vann
For Lelia Vann, moving forward in her life meant stepping back from everything she had worked so hard to accomplish, and asking the big question: Why?
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Pat Fairley
While growing up in a small town in Mississippi only 35 miles from Stennis Space Center, Pat never imagined she would one day be the Deputy Chief Financial Officer at a NASA Facility. Growing up, her family had extremely limited resources. Truth be known, they were very poor.
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Janelle Holt
Despite being a Houston, Texas native, Janelle Holt thought that only engineers and scientists could work for NASA. She was introduced to NASA career possibilities for business students during a Career Fair at her alma mater, the University of Houston.
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Misty Davies
For Misty Davies, it was all about making the world a better place. She grew up wanting to be a veterinarian, a writer, a mother, and a scientist.
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Connie Snapp
Connie Snapp aspired to be an artist and a writer with the long-ago dream of writing and illustrating her own books. She would never have predicted that she would one day work for NASA.
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Valerie Meyers
Dr. Valerie Meyers was exposed to the idea of human spaceflight at family gatherings where her uncle, who worked at Link Flight Simulation in Houston, talked about his job developing simulators to train astronauts. Her personal journey to NASA began in fifth grade when an article in Weekly Reader magazine mentioned NASA would be looking for people with doctorate degrees in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and astronomy to work on a space station they were developing.
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Charmel Jones
For Charmel Jones, the journey to NASA was unexpected. Although she strived to be an engineer since the age of 10, she never imagined in a million years that she would be, or could ever be, a part of the NASA family. Growing up in a single-parent household in Palmetto, Fla., Ms. Jones was faced with the stereotypical persona that she would not amount to anything because of growing up in an “unbalanced” family.
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Crystal Jones
For Crystal Leathers Jones, growing up surrounded by drugs, crime and poverty made her dreams of working for NASA seem unreachable. Through her determination, hard work and perseverance, Crystal was able to change the course of her life and blaze a path of success that her siblings and others growing up in similar situations could follow.
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Toni Mumford
For Toni Mumford, a “positive attitude and a willingness to take risks” … really paid off in career at NASA
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Monica Bowie
Monica’s mother’s example taught her that hard work pays off. She was a single parent raising five children, and she remains Monica’s inspiration. From her mother, she learned three fundamental life lessons: to be true to herself; to be honest, regardless of the situation; and for every blessing she receives, to help someone else.
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Christine Belcastro
Christine Belcastro long aspired to become an engineer but, as a female, thought the door was closed to her. Imagine her thrill when a college counselor enabled her to cross the threshold into NASA as an electrical engineer.
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Dovie Lacy
Dovie Lacy, who first and foremost sees herself as a teacher, took a circuitous route to arrive at NASA – yet arrive she did in 1984.
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Annette Moore
Growing up with six siblings, Annette Moore quickly grasped the appreciation for working as a team. Today she employs the principles she learned as a child in working with her NASA teammates in helping to accomplish the mission of the Agency.
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Karen Gundy-Burlet
For Karen Gundy-Burlet, Walter Cronkite’s broadcasts of the Apollo moon missions were particularly inspirational. The thrill of watching the moon landings and excursions extended her interest in aircraft to the aerospace field and a desire to work for NASA.
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Michelle Haupt
From the time she was a little girl, Michelle Haupt has loved flying on airplanes. As she grew, she wondered what it would be like to travel in space. She discovered that mathematics was her favorite school subject. These interests led Haupt’s decision in seventh grade to become an aerospace engineer.
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Victoria Garcia
Growing up, Victoria Garcia had a knack for being the “handyman” of the family. Being deaf and a daughter of Cuban immigrants motivated her to work hard to prove herself. Today, she uses her problem solving skills performing analysis as a system engineer.
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Vanessa Wyche
“Absolutely amazing” is how Vanessa Wyche would describe her career at NASA. Having the ability to have a profession in one’s area of interest is rewarding, but being able to do that and work at NASA is pretty awesome.
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Laura Iraci
It seemed to Laura Iraci that kids always asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” as if there were one single right answer. It seemed as if “grown up” was a static condition, never changing. Laura did not have a single childhood passion that shaped her view of who she would be when she reached the destination called “grown up”.
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Mary Coan
Mary grew up as the middle child surrounded by three sisters. Communication and prioritization was key to keep a peaceful home. From an early age, Mary set her goals high and set out to work for NASA as an Astronaut. Many children would change their minds but Mary never did.
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Quiana Reese
Quiana Reese was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, but admits to not knowing that there was a NASA facility in Cleveland, located right next to the airport which she had frequented often.
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Nikki Martin
Nikki’s greatest inspirations growing up were her parents. Neither had a college degree but they encouraged her and her siblings to do well in school. From a very early age, she knew that she was going to college.
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Janet Petro
Janet Petro took an impressive step when, at the age of 17, she began leadership training at the highly esteemed United States Military Academy at West Point at a time when women had just begun to be accepted into the nation’s military academies.
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Nancy Holloway
One of Nancy’s earliest memories of NASA was in 1969 when her mom anxiously called her inside the house to look at the television. At the time, Nancy assumed adults could do almost anything, and she wondered why her mother made such a big deal about it. It was not until Nancy became an adult that she finally realized what a monumental achievement sending a man to moon really was.
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Becky Murray
NASA has been part of Becky Murray’s life since she was born-literally! Becky NASA story began at her childhood home as the daughter of an Apollo-era engineer. At a young age, she knew she wanted to be part of the extraordinary NASA family.
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Caroline To
The stories of Vietnamese Boat People had begun soon after April 1975. This story was also a part of Caroline’s life.
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Melanie Saunders
Melanie Saunders found out, in the most joyous way, that “work-life” balance can be tipped – in triplicate – in the direction of “life” when she discovered that she was pregnant with triplets. Being the high achiever she has always been, Ms. Saunders found a way to put family first without putting her career on permanent leave.
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Anna Turner
Anna Turner’s first day at NASA was exciting. Every step was well organized and professional. She could tell that working at NASA was going to be different than any previous job.
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Hashima Hasan
Hashima Hasan’s love for space started when as a five-year old she stood in her grand parents’ backyard in India and watched Sputnik go by overhead. She had no idea how she would achieve her dream to become a scientist and attend Oxford University, as her uncle and grand uncles had done. But achieve it, she did.
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Jennifer Cole
For as long as she can remember, Jennifer Cole has been “hooked on anything that flew” – from the roaring A-10 Thunderbolts and A-4 Skyhawks to the thump-thump-thumping helicopters that flew over her home near Willow Grove Naval Air Station outside of Philadelphia, Penn., to the space vehicles of her professional life.
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Josephine Santiago-Bond
Josephine Santiago-Bond didn’t grow up wanting to work for NASA. Having grown up in the Philippines, NASA was half a world away, and was something she had only read about in old history books, or occasionally heard about on television.
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Cindy Leitell
Joining the workforce at the early age of 16, Cindy Leitell didn’t realize at that time that she’d entered into what would be her career.
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Wendy Pennington
Wendy Pennington discovered her natural passion and inclination for engineering while enrolled in a mechanical drafting class in high school. While her love of drawing and design provided an architectural roadmap for her future, it was the encouragement and guidance of the teachers who recognized this young woman’s special talents that put her life on a trajectory that would land her at NASA, where she continues to be inspired and challenged to reach even greater heights.
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Jill Marlowe
In elementary school, Jill was that girl who loved Barbies, but mostly because she was all about modifying and constructing new and improved versions of her ‘Dream House’ from whatever she could find. Her family spent most of their weekends sailing together on the Chesapeake Bay. Looking back now, she realizes that it was her desire to design and build improved structures and her respect for teamwork that led her to find her dream career in aerospace engineering.
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Hibah Rahmani
Hibah Rahmani was born in Pakistan, raised in Kuwait and moved to the United States after high school. Being fascinated with the beautiful night sky, she developed a passion for science, space and astronomy at a very young age.
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Tiffaney Miller Alexander
Tiffaney Miller Alexander knew by the time she was in sixth grade that she wanted to become an electrical engineer. Sparked by her interest to know how electronic devices worked coupled with the inspiration of her mother becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree, overcome a battle with cancer, and her faith in God, Tiffaney believed she had a great motivational example of determination and resilience to help her along her career journey.
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Sharmila Bhattacharya
For Sharmila Bhattacharya, success is not measured by medals or money but by seeing her experiments flown in space, a dream of flight fuelled by her father, a pilot, who told her that being a girl would not deter her from earning a pilot’s license or from being “absolutely anything she wanted to be …”
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Judy Ballance
Judy Ballance grew up on a rural farm in northern Alabama, and like most kids around her, she never dreamed that she would work for NASA. Her only childhood experiences related to NASA were watching the moon landings on TV and looking at an exhibit of moon rocks that came to her school.
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Corazon Millena
For Corazon Millena, NASA was an ocean away since she was born in the Philippines. Her family immigrated to the US in 1975 to San Jose, Calif., where she immediately secured a job as a customer service representative at J. C. Penny Co.
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Amy Bower
Being open to new opportunities has brought Amy Bower many great adventures. Growing up in a rural community in central Ohio, she explored the farm, the fields and the surrounding woods. She loved school, especially math and science.
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Cristine Dundas
For Cristine Dundas, eight years of waitressing was all she could take. She knew it was time to make a change in her life and go to college. Ms. Dundas started her career with NASA as a management support assistant. While attending college for her two-year degree in the secretarial field, she came across a flier about NASA looking for cooperative education (co-op) students.
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Sarah Ruiz
Sarah Ruiz’s interest in NASA began as a high school freshman when she was challenged by her high school physics teacher to enter a contest. She won the regional prize and traveled to KSC to present a Mars experiment design—an experience which exposed her to the variety of amazing things NASA was doing, including preparations for the STS-61 Hubble repair mission. For the first time, she realized that doing “space stuff” was a viable career option.
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Karen Rodriguez
Karen Rodriguez is known as a talented project manager. But as a teenage mom, she was often told she would never amount to anything. With determination, dedication, and the support of her husband, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University.
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Jeanette Le
Jeanette Le’s road to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California started in Vietnam, which she, with her parents, fled when she was 8 years old – leaving Ms. Le with the feeling that she is, in her own words, the eternal “new kid on the block.”
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Jennifer Eigenbrode
The opportunity to explore Mars for signs of life is what inspired Dr. Jennifer Eigenbrode to join NASA. She wants to answer the question that has been asked for thousands of years — is “life” unique to Earth.
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Robin Henderson
Robin Henderson’s life changed forever and for the better when, in her first year of college, a man offered her the opportunity to serve as a co-op student with Martin Marietta, then a NASA Marshall Space Flight Center contractor
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Dinna Cottrell
Dinna LeDuff Cottrell, whose professional life has been focused on information technology, believes “the key to increasing the number of women and minorities in information technology careers begins by mentoring future generations.”
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Cathy Mangum
New employees at NASA’s Langley Research Center often ask Kathy whether she had a plan for her career. Her answer is a confident ‘no’. But the career Kathy ended up with is one she is privileged to have.
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Mia Siochi
Seeming coincidences may not be accidental. Giving a lab tour to a seminar speaker led to Mia Siochi coming to NASA Langley Research Center when that speaker happened to be the head of the Composites and Polymers Branch who was looking for someone to support its polymers characterization need of the branch.
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Julie Williams-Byrd
Taking advantage of opportunities and challenges has been the mantra for Julie Williams-Byrd’s career at NASA. These opportunities have allowed Ms. Williams-Byrd the ability to excel and to experience the career of a lifetime by working on exciting projects and working with exceptionally talented people from a variety of disciplines.
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Donna Leach
As a child, Donna didn’t think about or plan her life toward a career. As the oldest of five sisters and one brother growing up in a home challenged with poverty, alcoholism and violence, her earliest focus became survival.
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Catherine Bahm
Catherine’s road to NASA began at an early age when she declared, in front of her classmates, that she wanted to be the first female astronaut. A young male student rebutted that girls could not become astronauts. Her teacher would have nothing of it, immediately looking at Ms. Bahm and ensuring she knew she could be whatever she wanted to be.
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Tresa Mitchell
Tresa Mitchell knew from the time she was a very little girl that she had a devout passion for two things: drag racing and NASA.
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Jennifer Heldmann
Jennifer Heldmann studies recent water on Mars through spacecraft data analysis, numerical modeling, and fieldwork in Mars-analog environments. Perhaps more exciting for her personally are her studies into the moon, with “a focus on improving our understanding of the lunar poles.”
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Laurie Grindle
As an engineer and a project manager working in aircraft flight research, Laurie Grindle is familiar with the saying: “You can learn more from failure than success.”
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Tahani Amer
Tahani Amer discovered her natural passion and inclination for engineering while watching her father fixing his car’s engine as she sat inside her small Egyptian apartment. While her love of math created a clear path for a mechanical and aerospace engineering future, it was great teachers and her father that encouraged and guided Dr. Amer.
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Nanette Jennings
Growing up in an inner city as a child born into a single-parent household, Nanette Jennings’ hopes for a bright future seemed hopelessly compromised.
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Loria West
When Loria West was 9 years old, she suffered the loss of her parents in a tragic car accident. That same accident left her paralyzed from the waist down; however, her new circumstances did nothing to slow her down
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Anne-Marie Novo-Gradac
Anne-Marie Novo-Gradac is a planner—one who puts an extraordinary amount of effort into mapping out what should happen next in life. So perhaps it’s a bit ironic that all planning in the world ultimately landed her in a career that she never dreamed she would achieve
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Kathleen Howell
The daughter of an educator and an aeronautical engineer, Kathleen Howell grew up in southern California with varied influences, among them interests in dance, mathematics and aviation.
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Julie Ann RiveraPerez
While growing up in Puerto Rico, Julie Ann Rivera Perez never imagined she would work for NASA. Most people might say they could only hope or dream to work for NASA, but Ms. Rivera never even imagined it would be her who would eventually get a job in what is now the #1 Place to Work in the Federal Government.
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Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger
Dorothy “Dottie” Metcalf-Lindenburger, the daughter of two teachers with a love of the space program, has “The Right Stuff.” As a NASA astronaut who flew with the crew of STS-131 to the International Space Station, Ms. Metcalf-Lindenburger has risen to heights that make those of the Mile High City of Denver, in which she grew up, pale by comparison.
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Rula Coroneos
Rula Coroneos was born in Crete, Greece and immigrated to Salt Lake City, Utah in her junior year of high school. Even though her English was limited, she understood and studied mathematics—the universal language of science—with ease.
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Katie Boyles
Born and raised in a suburb outside of Sacramento, California, Katie grew up in a close-knit family and had a very happy childhood. She absolutely loved school and learning, and when she was in 5th grade, Katie had the opportunity to attend a week of Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama which sparked her love of NASA.
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Nancy Searby
Nancy Searby was raised by a dad in the Air Force and a mom who stayed home to take care of her four daughters. One of her worst school memories, and yet one that was so formative, was when she attended elementary school in Bossier City, Louisiana in the 1960’s. Nancy attended school on the first day of desegregation, black and white students coming together.
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Clara Wright
Although Clara Wright had to learn a new language and adapt to a different culture and the age of 8, when her family moved from Colombia to the United States, she was always fluent in the language of hard work, perseverance, and integrity – thanks to the example set forth by her parents.
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Darlene Boykins
For Darlene Y. Boykins, her path to NASA began as a cooperative education (co-op) student for NASA. Ms. Boykins was born in Washington, D.C. and is a native Washingtonian.
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Latonia Kirksey
Growing up on the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, Latonia Kirksey always had a desire to live her life as an opportunity to make a difference in the world. She was fortunate to have a loving family and the chance to grow up in a small and friendly community where everyone knew each other. She continually received encouragement from her family, friends, and members of her church which motivated her to try to make the most out of her life.
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Sarah Dewitt
Sarah spent four years falling in love with the natural world. As a geology major, she spent the bulk of her college career exploring national parks, volcanoes, and canyons all over the western United States. But when it came time to graduate, she faced a tough realization. She did not want to pursue a career in science. She did not have the burning desire to get a Ph.D. or be a professor. She just wanted to be outside.
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Heather Maliska
At a very young age, Heather became a very driven girl. Inspired by the Challenger disaster in 1986, she has turned her childhood dream to work for NASA into a reality. As a college student looking for her opportunity to work for NASA, Maliska participated in an internship at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.
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Diane Sims
For Diane Sims, Hurricane Katrina was a not only a moment of destruction and guilt but also of belief and compassion in the human spirit. She recalls, “I remember having a huge sense of guilt because my house survived, and I was the only one in my office that wasn’t displaced.”
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Pamela Marcum
Pamela Marcum’s journey to becoming a NASA scientist began in a rural coal-mining community in eastern Kentucky. A public school system weak in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) curriculum, and a lack of mentors to provide career guidance resulted in her path being everything but a well-chartered course to a pre-defined destination.
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Teresa Foley-Batts
As a child, Teresa Foley-Batts really did not think about or plan her life toward any particular career. She was the oldest of five children, and after her parents divorced, the family moved from Nashville, Tenn. to Huntsville, Ala.
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Lori Garver
My interest in space stems from my belief that what we have done, are doing, and can do in space is critical to the future of humanity. Throughout my career—whether it was working directly for NASA, training in Russia to become a space flight participant, advising aerospace corporations how best to help NASA be successful, or having the honor of being the lead for civil space policy for the Obama Presidential Campaign and transition team—I have worked toward that goal.
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Roberta Sherrard
As a child, one of Roberta’s favorite memories was when her whole family gathered around the TV to watch the Apollo missions to the moon. She vividly remembers when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong said those magic words “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
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Monica Ceruti
For Monica Ceruti, the trick has been to learn how to balance work and family without compromising either. Today, in addition to having a rewarding home life, her two sons are on the road to having rewarding careers: her oldest son is a college graduate and her youngest son is a cadet at the United States Coast Guard Academy.
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Maria Nowak
Maria Nowak’s search for a broader meaning in life took her from the floor of a 1950s-themed restaurant where she worked as a dancing waitress, to the esteemed grounds of NASA where she has taken a leading role in the field of physics.
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Tricia Mack
In high school, when other students may have asked for a spring break trip to the beach, Tricia Mack asked to go to Florida to tour the Kennedy Space Center. She still remembers the tour and excitedly taking photos of the space shuttle launch pads (even empty). Years later, she’d actually work in the shuttle on the pad days before launch as part of her duties as an Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) or “spacewalk” flight controller and instructor at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston.
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Huy Tran
While Neil Armstrong was taking his first steps on the surface of the moon, a 6-year-old girl named Huy Tran was climbing a tree. She wanted to climb high enough to watch the historical event unfold through a part in the palm roof of someone else’s home in Vietnam, and she achieved that goal.
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Ramona Travis
For Ramona Travis, her ultimate destination had little to do with astrology, and everything to do with commitment, drive, and a natural curiosity about our own Earth and what’s beyond.
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Ginger Kerrick
As a child, Ginger Kerrick dreamed of growing up to be either a basketball player or an astronaut. When neither dream came to fruition, Ms. Kerrick developed a fresh perspective – best summed up by the phrase “It just wasn’t meant to be” – and is today part of NASA, serving in the Mission Control Center at the NASA Johnson Space Center as a Flight Director.
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Linda McCain
Linda’s earliest memory of space was hearing about the Russians and Sputnik and monkeys flying in space. The world was much different then. There was no Internet or Google. Television offerings were limited, but this was big news at the time. Little did she know that one day NASA would be in her future.
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Stephanie Lacy-Conerly
Stephanie’s parents owned a dry cleaning business in Alabama, and it was one of few successful Black-owned businesses in the 1960s. As a child, she saw her parents and siblings work hard to serve the community, provide excellent customer service, and earn a reputation for quality work. This taught her lessons she used later in life.
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Wendy Holladay
For Wendy Holladay, the trick has been to balance her large family of 6 with her fast moving career at NASA. To accomplish both, she spent 20 of her 29 years at NASA Stennis Space Center as a part-time employee. And, for Ms. Holladay, it has made all of the difference.
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Katharine Lee
When Katharine was young, she wanted to be a doctor or some kind of scientist. Katharine feels that she was lucky growing up-no one was trying to tell her that girls could not do anything they wanted to do or that girls should only be in certain careers. If anyone did say that, Katharine certainly wasn’t listening.
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Janet Sellars
Service has always been Janet’s goal and motivation. It is a sense of purpose passed down to her from her mother. She instilled in Janet a strong work ethic. She didn’t have a lot. They weren’t rich. But she taught her how to give and not expect things in return. That has stayed with Janet.
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Andrea Meyer
Andrea Meyer’s life was changed irrevocably when, on one cold Nebraska morning while practicing emergency landing procedures with her flight instructor, her airplane went into a flat spin before crashing into an empty cornfield.
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Valerie Zellmer
As Valerie looks back on her life and career, all she can say is “not bad for a farm girl from Wisconsin. ” She cannot say she ever dreamed of working for NASA; however, she is extremely thankful that her journeys led her here. Her career choices did not seem to be suitable for the highly technical science and engineer-oriented agency. Yet, she was never so wrong. NASA encompasses all types of disciplines including education and accounting.
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Wanda Peters
Wanda Peters remembers, as a child, having her cartoons interrupted by the Apollo 11 lunar landing. While it was an unwelcomed interruption at the time, those feelings only lasted a moment; however, the impression that the landing made on her young mind would last a lifetime.
Site Last Updated: April 15, 2019
Page Editor: Mamta Patel Nagaraja
NASA Official: Mamta Patel Nagaraja