I am always in awe when I look back on the past nine years and think about how I got to where I am now. For starters, I found Higher Orbits purely by happenstance. There was an odd chain of events and a couple of “What are the chances?” moments that led to me attending my first Go For Launch! (GFL) event. To understand all the micro-choices that led to where I am today, we need to start at the beginning.
In the fall of 2017, I was a freshman at Mesquite High School in Gilbert, Arizona, a school that wasn’t in my designated school zone but that I was attending because my mom had taught there the previous year. One day, in my freshman English class, we were assigned to take the College Board Career Quiz, which states: “Take this easy, 15-minute quiz to get matched with careers based on your likes and dislikes.”
My top three suggested careers that populated as a result of this quiz were the following:
- Park Ranger
- Law Enforcement
- Aerospace Engineer
I took this list, completed my English assignment, and moved on with my day, really not giving the quiz results a second thought. A few weeks later, my school was having Spirit Week, and one of the themes was “Career Day,” where students were encouraged to dress up as the future job they wanted. I thought back to the quiz results and said to myself, “I don't quite know what an engineer is, but aerospace sounds pretty cool, I guess.” So, I put my hair up in space buns, threw on a shirt with the iconic NASA meatball logo on it, and headed out to school, not knowing that this outfit was going to change the trajectory of my life.
It was because of this outfit choice on Career Day that my freshman geometry teacher approached me and asked if I liked space. I responded with something along the lines of, “Yeah, space is pretty cool. I like looking at the stars and enjoy sci-fi movies.” He then informed me that there was a camp being hosted on our school’s campus in the spring that had to do with space and science and that he’d get me the information so I could look into it. I brought this information home to my parents, and fast forward four months, I ended up spending a weekend back on my campus attending my first Go For Launch! Gilbert event.
That event quite literally changed my life. I showed up on the first day without a clue as to what I was going to spend my weekend doing, and with all the anxiety in the world, I stood up and introduced myself to a room full of people I had never met before. I shared with the room that I am a fifth-generation Arizona native, have a long history of showing livestock, and play lacrosse. I even said that maybe I’d be a professional lacrosse player one day. Little did I know that that first introduction, which pushed me out of my comfort zone and had my palms instantly sweating, would be the first of many speaking opportunities presented to me thanks to Higher Orbits.
Throughout the next few days, I got more and more comfortable. I was put into a group with nearby students, all of whom were boys, and I took the lead on research for my team’s
experiment idea. During the event’s lectures, I was on the edge of my seat, soaking in as much information as I could about aerospace and STEM. From listening to astronaut Frank Culbertson talk about his time in space to engaging in conversations with local professionals from Orbital ATK and people in different science-based careers, I was absolutely hooked. I stayed up late each night working to make sure our presentation was as professional as possible and that we, as a team, had met all the requirements for our proposed experiment.
The last day of the Gilbert GFL event had arrived, and I was on stage with my teammates getting ready to present our experiment idea to the judges. We had named ourselves the Saguaro Snakes in reference to our Arizona roots, as all five of us were born and raised in the Grand Canyon State. As I introduced myself to the judges, I made sure to include the fact that my family and I have a long history of involvement with agriculture and farming in Arizona and that this background helped guide me and my teammates toward basing our experiment around growing plants in space.
We ended up being selected as the winners of the event and later went on to become the overall series winners as well. This meant that our experiment was going to become a reality, and with the help of Space Tango, AIAA, Orbital ATK, and Southwest Airlines, my family, my teammates, and I flew out to Wallops Island, Virginia, in November 2017 to witness our team’s experiment being launched to the International Space Station. Not only was I able to witness the Antares rocket launch from Wallops Island carrying my experiment, but I was also selected as the student speaker to present on NASA TV at the What’s on Board pre-launch press conference. At the age of 15, alongside Higher Orbits founder Michelle Lucas, I presented to the audience what my experiment was and why it was being conducted on the ISS.
This was the beginning of it all. I knew right then and there that this was the world I wanted to be a part of; I wanted a future in aerospace. I transferred schools and began taking high school-level engineering courses. I joined my school’s after-school STEM club, and each year I returned to the Gilbert, Arizona, GFL event. With each passing year, I became more and more involved with Higher Orbits. I took the mantra “You can’t get it if you don’t apply” very seriously throughout my time in high school, and because of that, numerous doors were opened for me as a young woman interested in STEM.
I became the inaugural recipient of Higher Orbits’ Space Camp scholarship, which led to a week filled with unforgettable memories and friends that I am still in contact with to this day. I was one of five Higher Orbits students selected to represent the United States at the International School of Science in Sydney, Australia, an opportunity that has yet to be topped. In 2018, I created a small social media page where I started sharing my story and experiences in STEM and became a proud student ambassador for Higher Orbits.
When it came time to start thinking about college, I knew I wanted to study aerospace engineering. Right before the pandemic started, I was in Denver, Colorado, helping Michelle operate a Higher Orbits table at the 2020 Aerospace Day at the Capitol, sharing the impact this organization has on students with others. While in Colorado, I decided to tour the University of Colorado Boulder’s campus and take a look around its aerospace engineering building. I
instantly fell in love. From the campus to the people to the city of Boulder, I knew this was where I wanted to be. I knew that Colorado was where I belonged.
I started attending CU Boulder in the fall of 2020 as an aerospace engineering major. Classes were all online, the city was still partly shut down, and campus was a ghost town. It was hard to navigate, but I still knew deep in my soul that this was where I belonged. As the world started opening up again and fewer masks were being seen out in public, I applied to be a student speaker with Higher Orbits at AIAA’s ASCEND conference in 2021. I was selected and found myself on a plane headed to Las Vegas, where I sat on stage with fellow past GFL students and shared my journey in aerospace with conference attendees.
This was my first networking opportunity that felt impactful and real. At this point, I was a sophomore engineering student, and thoughts of internships and jobs were looming over me. This conference gave me the chance to see just how vast the world of aerospace was and that there were countless ways I could apply myself and my degree.
I was later able to apply all the lessons I learned and the networking skills I gained while attending ASCEND at the 2022 Aerospace Day at the Capitol, where I volunteered once again to help run Higher Orbits’ table at the Colorado event. It was there that I spoke to several local Colorado businesses that had some level of involvement with the state’s booming aerospace industry. Thanks to the confidence and experience I had built up from years of involvement with Higher Orbits, I was able to land my first engineering internship in Denver with a company I met that day.
This internship was where I found my passion for manufacturing and hands-on work. From that summer onward, I knew I wanted to apply my aerospace engineering degree to a manufacturing-specific role. The following summer, I landed my second internship as a fluids manufacturing engineering intern at Hermeus in Atlanta, Georgia. The summer after that, I ended up back in Denver as a manufacturing programs intern at Beehive Industries, which led to me accepting my first job out of college as an associate manufacturing engineer with Beehive. I now spend my days as a hardware owner for parts that support the creation of additively manufactured jet engines here in Colorado!
While it’s easy to sit here and type, “I landed this internship...” and “I was presented with this opportunity...,” none of these achievements would have been possible without my time with Higher Orbits. This organization is so much more than just the two- or three-day event high schoolers can attend. So much of who I am today is rooted in the confidence and presentation skills Higher Orbits and Michelle taught me throughout my time in school.
Higher Orbits have always pushed me to reach for my goals. They constantly remind me that I belong in aerospace and have a place in this industry. I have the ability to hold my own in a room full of people with significantly more experience than me thanks to the traits I developed because of this organization. I found my passion in life, I found my people, and it all started with that NASA shirt and messy space buns.
