Before this summer I had never worked on an all-female project team in my own field. I had never worked on a Grand Challenge. I had never spoken to women in the space industry who could tell me about their career paths, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame them. And I had certainly never had a dance party on a pirate boat.
Thanks to the Brooke Owens Fellowship Summit, I can now check all of those things off of my list.
The Brooke Owens Fellowship is a professional program for undergraduate gender minorities in aerospace that matches fellows, known as Brookies, with internships and professional mentoring by senior people in the industry. Inspired by the indomitable pilot, space policy expert, and all-around fantastic human Dawn Brooke Owens, this fellowship aims to carry on her legacy after her passing. Thanks to the hard work of Brooke’s friends Lori Garver, Cassie Kloberdanz Lee, and Will Pomerantz, 38 women converged on Washington DC for 5 days to learn, grow as people and aerospace professionals, and inspire each other.
Each day of the summit was packed with professional, social, and technical events that kept us on our toes and challenged us in a myriad of ways. We started off our marathon summit with a trip up to the Hill for a Capitol tour and to discuss industry leadership and space policy with Lori Garver, former Deputy Administrator of NASA, Janet Karika, current NASA Chief of Staff, and Congresswoman Kendra Horn, Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. These women provided us not only with expert insights into the current space industry and the policy making involved in it but also with valuable advice to take into our own careers.
Following our morning on the Hill, we kicked off our Grand Challenge projects and met with our teams to brainstorm solutions. My team took on the Lunar World challenge in which we were charged with coming up with a solution to create a sustainable lunar economy while considering the potential contributions of a variety of different stakeholders, both traditional and non-traditional. Over the course of the summit, we had less than 10 hours to brainstorm, compose, and present our ideas to a panel of subject matter experts from industry and academia. While the short timeline limited the detail of our solutions, being able to take on such a large challenge and still leave our presentation feeling proud of our work was an incredible experience that left me energized and excited to tackle all kinds of difficult problems in my everyday work.
In the following days of the summit, we received one-on-one mentoring from industry professionals, had a “fireside chat” about engineering challenges with Diana Trujillo, partied on a pirate boat on the Potomac, and had a pool party. Last but not least we were given a private tour of the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum including a visit from the museum’s current director and former NASA Chief Scientist, Ellen Stofan.
While the summit sadly couldn’t last forever, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities made possible by the Brooke Owens Fellowship and wholeheartedly supported by Generation Orbit. The lessons I learned about leadership, policy, and even about who I am will stick with me as I start my senior year of college and look forward to my future career.
