How NASA Broke The Gender Barrier In STEM
The notorious lack of women in leadership roles in STEM seems to run rampant everywhere—everywhere except NASA, an administration that not only puts women at the helm, but continually gives them a platform to drive the larger conversation around the need for more women in the sciences.
Case in point: Dr. Ellen Stofan serves as the chief scientist of NASA. Deborah Diaz is NASA’s chief technology officer for IT. Teresa Vanhooser runs one of NASA’s largest facilities in the U.S. responsible for building rockets.Dr. Tara Ruttley manages the science programs aboard the International Space Station. For the first time, half of an astronaut class consists of women. And now, through the convening of a new user community called Datanaut Corps, NASA is unlocking opportunities for women entrepreneurs in the tech and maker communities to use the agency’s infinite gigabytes of open data to pioneer space-inspired data science.