Years ago when I joined Boeing, I read an article written by Dr. John Tracy, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and one of the Executive Council members at the company. The article pointed at the importance of diversity in business and in it, I learned about John, his Hispanic heritage and that prior to pursuing his PhD, he was a math teacher. Many years later after reading the article, I have the privilege to sit down with this great man and ask him about his role models. Before we start, I wanted to share with you briefly, some of John’s accomplishments.

In this especial edition for Borinqueña we interview Dr. Dianne Chong, a mentor of many engineers, managers and executives, an outstanding role model and one of the stars at the Boeing Company. It is impossible to measure the impact of someone like Dr. Chong in a career devoted to the advancement of the aerospace industry because her visionary ideas are not only found in the products, they are also found in the minds, mission and goals of so many of us that benefit from her wisdom. She has served on the Board of Trustees, is a Fellow of the American Society of Metals (ASM) International and in 2007 was President of the society. In fact she was the first woman to be president at the Society which was established in 1913.

Greetings!

I had an interesting conversation with Ivy Deliz, a Borinqueña and Computer Programmer who works for NASA building computational platforms used by planners of space missions.

Marvi: When and how did you decide to work in computer science?

It is 9:00 AM, I get a call from the school saying: “Please come to pick up your child who is not feeling well and is throwing up”. My place of work is 45 minutes away, I call my spouse. “Can you pick up Sofia? She is not feeling well” I say. My spouse is in the middle of presentations with her students. We calculate together what is less damaging: to cancel my day meetings which can be postponed or to cancel the student presentations with more complicated logistics. We decide is better to postpone my meetings, I move all the meetings and jump on the road. I call the doctor for an appointment and we go from school, to home, to the doctor in less than 30 minutes.

When talking to scientists in industry and academia, I always ask: “How is it that you got involved in Research? What inspired you to follow a path as a Scientist? When did you decide that you would continue a PhD?”  While an interest in Science and Math typically starts early on in school and prior to college, the passion that propels many of these individuals to pursue a PhD stems from transformational research opportunities. Many times, the answers to all my questions converge into: “it was that summer research opportunity that inspired me to dream higher”. My life as an engineer and scientist and my motivation were not different.