U.S. Women in STEM

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U.S. Women in STEM - Australia 🇦🇺 will welcome you

A lovely woman asked me to help spread the word that U.S. Steministas are welcome in Australia. At first, this felt like a tough thing to write about. Because a brain drain of these amazing women will set the U.S. back so far…but you know what…FUCK THEM ALL. They’re actively trying to erase the legacies and deny the rich contributions U.S.women have made in tech, math, engineering, medicine, medical research, astronomy, chemistry….the list of fields shaped by our women is MILES long. So, STEMinistas, here are places that DO value your work and WANT you. Know of more? Leave details in the comments, help a sister out ;) AUSTRALIA 🇦🇺: Australia offers Innovation Visas because they recognize that “ Global competition for talent is intensifying. That is why Australia is working to attract the best and brightest to our shores to help grow a stronger economy.” GERMANY 🇩🇪: Germany’s Opportunity Card allows skilled non-EU residents to enter the country to find jobs. BRI...

NASA’s chief scientist was a women - a kickass one, at that

On March 12, 2025 NASA announced that it is eliminating the Office of the Chief Scientist. Dr. Katherine Calvin, a climate science expert, has held the position of chief scientist since2022. The New York Times, in its coverage of this “reduction in force,” unfortunately just barely touched on the significance of eliminating an office dedicated to nonpartisan, evidence-based research. They said not one word about this administration’s impact on the career of yet another U.S. woman in STEM. So, introducing Dr. Katherine Calvin. From her NASA bio (as of 3/12/25), in case it, too is erased in the coming days: Dr. Katherine Calvin is NASA’s chief scientist, a position she has served since her appointment on Jan. 10, 2022. As chief scientist, Dr. Calvin advises agency leadership on the agency’s science programs and science-related strategic planning and investments. She also has served as senior climate advisor, where she provided recommendations for the agency’s climate-rel...

Women in STEM Lit - Meet an HEIC!

If you have a daughter interested in STEM, we hope you’ll introduce her to “Up Periscope,” a beautifully written and illustrated story about Raye Montague, the engineer who revolutionized how the U.S. Navy designed its ships. Raye wrote code that reduced the design process to 18 hours and 26 minutes versus two years. Now that’s a real change to government efficiency! The book’s publisher, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, writes about Raye’s story: “Girls like Raye Montague weren’t supposed to like math or science, or go to engineering school. But tenacious Raye had a plan, one that eventually took her all the way to the US Navy. There, she was assigned an impossible task: to come up with a single computer program that could design every part of a ship. It had never been done before—but Raye’s groundbreaking program revolutionized the way ships and submarines were built, and set her on a path to become a pioneering figure in naval engineering and the navy’s first female program m...

Disobedient women are the best kind

Well-behaved women seldom make history.* At a time (2025) when American women’s hard-fought contributions in science, technology, and mathematics are being systematically erased… Introducing Dr. Deborah Swackhamer (1954-2021), an American chemist, environmental scientist, staunch advocate for integrity in science — and 2018 recipient of an MIT Disobedience Award . Dr. Swackhamer earned her PhD in Oceanography and Limnology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. Her main area of study was the transport of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in lakes. According to the University of Illinois, PCBs are a group of manmade chemicals, widely used pre-1977 in the United States in hydraulic fluids, lubricants, and plasticizers. The primary company that made PCBs in this country was Monsanto. In 1979, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of PCBs because of health effects caused by exposure, which include cancer, infertility, and neurological disorders. As an environmen...

Makes sense that the brains behind GPS is a woman right?

Who doesn’t rely on GPS these days? Three little letters that represent a very complex series of mathematical calculations. The foundation for today’s Global Positioning System was created by a pioneering Black mathematician, Dr. Gladys West. We are sharing the story of Dr. West not just because she’s a badass U.S. Woman in STEM. Dr. West was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Hall of Fame in 2018, because she did her pioneering GPS work while serving as a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Weapons Lab. She is one of only TWO women inducted into the SMPHF since it was founded in 1990. This, despite what we now know to be hundreds of women engineers, mathematicians and “computers” who powered much of NASA and NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) work from the 1930s to the 1070s. So, introducing Dr. Gladys West, mathematician and mother of GPS. Dr. Gladys B. West was born in Sutherland, Virginia, in 1930. After graduating at the top of her high school class, s...

The First Black Women in STEM in the National Inventors Hall of Fame

In 2022, Marian Croak and the late ophthalmologist Dr. Patricia Bath were inducted into the National Inventors of Hall of Fame. Almost 50 years after the founding of the NIHF, they were the first Black women to receive this honor. Almost 50 years. Introducing Marian Croak and Patricia Bath. Engineer Marian Croak has worked on advancing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies, converting voice data into digital signals that can be easily transmitted over the internet rather than using traditional phone lines. Her work has furthered the capabilities of audio and video conferencing, making it a practical reality in today’s world. In 1982, Croak began her career at Bell Labs (later AT&T) with a position in the Human Factors research division, looking at how technology could be used to positively impact people’s lives. She subsequently went on to work on network engineering, where she contemplated the potential of digital telecommunications. Rather than use a traditional phon...