Variety Magazine: April 3rd, 2024
AFL-CIO / Women’s History Month
Please check out the March 2nd, 2024 AFL-CIO blog post here!
Local 695 Magazine: Spring 2024
Editorial: From the President
A year after I finished my graduate degree, I got a call. It was one of those life-changing calls. In fact, I thought it was a prank. But within a few days, my resume was polished and I was sitting in reception of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, interviewing for an unnamed show. On May 25, 2008, I shot Mission Control as JPL’s Phoenix Mars lander descended onto our neighboring planet. It was absolutely surreal and I was convinced I had peaked early in my career. Little did I know, I would continue on a path entrenched in technology change that was always pushing the boundaries of what was to come.
I have learned many valuable lessons over the last sixteen years of my partnership with the space agency, but one that sticks out from all the others is the role that fear plays when approaching emerging technology or cultural shifts in the technical space. On the one hand, feelings of fear are very organic. The idea of the unknown is unsettling and anxiety-inducing, but it’s also essential. Fear starts the process of problem solving. It is the catalyst to creativity. The two exist in an inseparable dichotomy with one another. I believe an unspoken requirement of our technical local membership is the understanding that we cannot create when we are overcome with fear, but both are necessary ingredients to a successful project.