5 Black STEM Women Who Make Her-story
For Black History Month, who are you celebrating?
Please rounds of applause to ALL underrepresented women for graduating with STEM degrees in a system where these women receive only 12.4% masters degrees and 6.8% of doctoral degrees (NSF NCSES, 2019).
The first two black women I want to give all the snaps/props/claps/respect for being part of this dire her-story include women whom I studied alongside:
- Alyssa Bowker MA in biology from The College of William and Mary (2014), currently working at BIOIVT as a mergers and acquisitions analyst to elevate the life science project spaces with her high-level communication skills. She currently resides in Indiana, near where she grew up and where she believes her voice and vote can make the most social impact.
- Krystal Cunningham, Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from UCLA (2019) currently working at Raytheon as a Sr. MultiDisciplinary Engineer to create innovation with excellence thanks to her brilliant coding and characterization skills. She currently resides in California, far from her childhood in Jamacia, and where she recently authored a novel “STEM Century: It Takes a Village to Raise a 21st-Century Graduate” (amazon link)
MORE rounds of applause to black women in STEM her-story that inspire my journey:
3. Dr. Nola Hylton (1957- )– a femtech innovator and chemical engineer who grew up in New York, studied chemical engineering at MIT, and earned a PhD in applied physics from Stamford in 1985. She spent much of her career focused on inventing and detecting breast cancer biomarkers using mammography and MRI technology. She now serves at University of California San Francisco as a Professor of Radiology and Director of the Breast Imaging Research Group and saves the lives of women all around the world thanks to her scientific contributions.
4. Mary Elliot Hill (1908-1969)– one of the earliest black women to earn a masters degree in chemistry in 1941 from University of Pennsylvania. She was known as both an analytical and organic chemist who used UV spectrophotometry to track chemical reactions such as ketene synthesis. Her work understanding this polymerization process contributes to revolutionary applications in photolithography, medicinal chemistry, and next generation materials. She is a coauthor on over 40 publications, but never listed as a senior author on any of them despite her undoubtedly innovative and intellectual prowess.
5. Lyda Newman (~1885- ?)– a patented inventor of a synthetic bristled hairbrush who was the third black woman to obtain a US patent (#614,335, link here) and who did it at only 13 years old! She was born in Ohio and lived and worked as a hairstylist mostly in New York City and some summers in Newport, Rhode Island. Very little records exist on her life outside of her advertisements for work and her leadership roles in the New York City women’s suffragist movement. She registered for her right to vote in 1924 in NYC- yes 7 years after women earned this right in the USA- but her femtech invention impacts women with a variety of hair textures to this day (including this author’s Italian American thique hair over here)!