From Our Founder…

From Rebecca Keiser:

 

It is funny—I have written many blogs for my bosses, trying to replicate their styles so I can write in their voices, but I have never written a blog about myself!  It is wonderful to now be able to do so, because I am writing to tell you how excited I am by this new blog site and by our soon-to-be-expanded Women@NASA website.  I took on the responsibility of being NASA’s representative to the White House Council for Women and Girls about 18 months ago, and one of the first goals I had was to develop a way to highlight the incredible women we have here at NASA and their stories.  Luckily, Nick Skytland, our opengov guru, was there to make the vision into reality, and he did an fantastic job.  Mamta Patel is now taking on the role and she is already implementing great ideas like this new blog! 

 

I often get asked, “why highlight just women on a website?  By highlighting just women, aren’t you feeding the stereotype of women being different and making a problem where one does not exist?”  Well, if you look at the numbers, NASA is 34% female.  However, in scientific and technical areas, NASA drops to 21% female.  In professional and administrative fields, NASA is 62% female.  Only 26% of NASA executives, both in technical and non-technical areas, are women.  I could go on, but I believe that, number one, there is still a need to promote all types of diversity at NASA so that NASA reflects the richness of the United States as a whole.  That means diversity of gender, background, ethnicity, mindset, and everything else that Mamta mentioned in her blog.  Diversity of people promotes diversity of ideas and therefore greater innovation, and innovation is what NASA should be about.  So, I am so proud to highlight the women of NASA and their amazing diversity of backgrounds on our website, and I am so pleased that we are expanding the site to include even more women and their stories.

 

Please do think of posting a blog to this site with your thoughts.  We want to encourage innovation through your participation!