WOMEN @ NASA : Inclusion Builds Best Innovators

While I put on a Women at NASA Panel with some incredibly accomplished women at a tech conference, this photo involves a presentation at NASA Ames during the Exploration & Science Forum, where I served as the Head of Necessary Ruckus as a part of the Harmless Shenanigans Committee. 

KakiFlynn.us sponsored a Women at NASA panel and Q&A session during a technology conference that focused on women in order to recruit the best tech talent for NASA.

It was an honor and a lot of just plain fun to represent NASA Ames at this sold-out tech conference filled with over 1,500 women that make up the top talent pool in engineering and business.












Multinational corporations at the conference include SpaceX, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Planet Labs, Accenture, Fitbit, the Central Intelligence Agency, Bank of America, Genentech, Twitter, IBM, Wells Fargo and Microsoft.


The conference was kicked off with a letter from President Barack Obama supporting the conference.

With globally respected inventor and engineer Megan Smith as his Chief Technology Officer, President Obama knows first hand the significant contributions of women to the tech community.

Thank you to NASA Ames senior executive Krisstina Wilmoth for being on the panel with me. 


























Many of the women at the conference had worked with NASA in some of the internships and fellowships at the different NASA bases around the United States.

Two of the women at the panel had applied to be astronauts in this most recent round.

Everyone I talked to there had a special NASA memory.

"We have a Sally Ride room in our building; we all voted for that. She's always been a hero of mine."
Carol Schofield, Developer, Thoughtworks

"Guarding Poop. That was my job for an entire summer at NASA; the group I was with was testing storage options for human excrement in space; my job was to check up on the storage containers."
Lauren Allemen, Vice President, Global Technology & Operations, Bank of America

"We loved the stories about the 40 tampons a day or something really high like that that NASA thought Sally Ride would need in space."
Microsoft Engineers Melina Sparks & Meghan King

Joy Dunn, the Senior Manager of Dragon Manufacturing Engineering at SpaceX, gave a talk at the conference that inspired the crowd to make dreams a reality.

"I've been a space nerd my entire life. I grew up building rockets at the age of five," said Dunn, who plans on being an astronaut herself.

Plants, mousetronauts, a 3D printer, and - as Dunn pointed out was probably the favorite payload - real ice-cream - are just a part of what SpaceX has delivered to NASA astronauts onboard the International Space Station.

HOW TO BUILD A CAREER AT NASA

                                       

Exploration is, of course, a key part of NASA. 

Did you also know there are thousands of open tech projects at NASA? 

Building all of the equipment needed to make those missions happen, as well as developing ways to manage all of the massive amounts of data we are now collecting from all of those missions in a way that is useful is also key.

That means a team of engineers from a variety of disciplines is needed to make those projects happen.

Find your fit in the NASA Family:

NASA Careers