I think it’s impossible to be a person of color and a woman and not think about the fact that your community is marginalized and disadvantaged. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I can contribute to changing that.
When I was a student I thought I didn’t really have a lot of time to do anything to give back and make a difference, but in my senior year something clicked for me. Growing up I didn’t have any role models in engineering, nor did I see any examples of people that looked like me in engineering. This made me realize that just my presence in this field makes a difference, and the more visible I can be to people like me, the better. That is why it was important to me to become a TA for introductory engineering courses during my Master’s program, and why I am moving to Cape Town to work as a civil engineer building a sustainable technology center in a community disadvantaged by the legacy of apartheid.
Related spotlights
Adrienne Propp
PhD candidate
Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering
I never planned to become a mathematician. I liked math growing up because it made sense to me – plug this number into this equation here, and you’ll get an output that follows some predictable logic.
Read Adrienne Propp's story
Lara Weed
PhD candidate
Bioengineering
I was always interested in how the world worked, and looking back now, I can see my interest in performance optimization developing over time.
Read Lara Weed's story
Sebastian Fernández
PhD candidate
Electrical Engineering
I was born in Cusco, Peru, located at an altitude of 11,000 feet in the Andes, where we lived with my extended family until I was 2 years old.
Read Sebastian Fernández's story