This #BlackAtNASA Trend is Out of this World

Who else is so inspired by the #BlackAtNASA trend? Recently, Black employees have gone viral for posting their headshots at NASA. Black people are extremely underrepresented in STEM making up only 9% of the STEM workers in the US. At Girls Who Code, we’ve seen firsthand the impact positive representation can have on our students.

Check out how these Black women are making major waves at NASA:

Mia Brown attended Texas A&M University and got her B.S. in Computer Engineering, minoring in math and cybersecurity. Brown currently works on the Robotics Flight Control team for the International Space Station. She also previously worked at Dell Technologies in cybersecurity.

Alexandria Perryman graduated from Full Sail University with an Associate of Science. Perryman was previously on academic probation but ended up graduating with honors and later worked for NASA as an Audio Engineer, and won an Emmy for this work in 2019. Perryman has amassed a TikTok following of over 300K where she inspires other women in STEM to overcome obstacles and retells her story of going from academic probation to working at NASA.

Mejean Cline is a Software Engineer and Configuration Management Analyst at NASA. Growing up, she dreamed of becoming an engineer but put off attending school for financial reasons.

After having kids, motherhood inspired her to pursue her dreams of science and tech. Mejean struggled to balance raising kids while keeping up with school. She would often have to bring her children to class with her and experienced financial struggles and homelessness while in undergrad.

However, with the support of her university, she was able to persevere and graduate with a B.S. in computer engineering from the University of Houston. Mejean currently works on the Station Support Computing team, which updates and supports all of the computer systems on the International Space Station.

Way to change the face of tech! Want to learn more about women in STEM? Subscribe to our newsletter for more tech, culture, and #STEMspiration.