Immigrant of the week: Diana Trujillo, NASA Aerospace Engineer
Diana Trujillo is a flight director for NASA’s Mars Perseverance. This is a remarkable achievement for any scientist or aerospace engineer. Even more remarkable is that Ms. Trujillo overcome significant trials to come to the United States and gain the education and experiences that led her to this historic leadership position. CBS News provides an inspiring profile of her story.
Trujillo credits her immigrant heritage with motivating her to seek opportunities that would not have been available in her home country. She migrated to the U.S. from Colombia as a teenager with only $300 in her pocket and no knowledge of the English language. She initially worked as a housekeeper to pay for college and says of the experience that she was grateful for a job that let her buy food and find shelter — all opportunities that would have been scarce in her home country. At the University of Florida, she excelled in math and found inspiration in a magazine article about female astronauts and chose to major in aerospace engineering. She was the first Hispanic immigrant woman to be accepted to the NASA Academy. She finished her undergraduate education at the University of Maryland, where she was part of a team focused on robots in space operations. She then became one of the few women and only Latinas to join NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab that collaborated on the robotic arm that will collect rock samples on Mars. In 2014, she was appointed Mission Lead and featured in the 20 most influential Latinos in the Technology Industry.
Outside of her planetary missions, Trujillo says her personal mission is to increase the number and visibility of Latinos in STEM. She believes this will change perceptions amid scientists and traditional families that limit the career ambitions of their daughters. This personal mission influenced her decision to participate in a discussion of the movie Hidden Figures and to be host of NASA’s first-ever Spanish language broadcast for a planetary landing on a show “Juntos perseveramos” or “Together we persevere” on YouTube (February 18, 2021).
MHC (H/T Dan Kowalski)