‘It pulls us to be our best selves’: Exploring space and diversity at JPL
Women at NASA’s storied Jet Propulsion Laboratory literally danced for joy when they learned in January that Laurie Leshin had been appointed JPL’s new director – the first female to lead this center for robotic space exploration in its 86-year history. She’s a barrier breaker in an industry long dominated by white men, but one that’s also rapidly changing.
Last week, the Monitor sat down with Dr. Leshin to ask her about diversity issues and upcoming missions at the lab. The space scientist is an expert in both, coming off eight years as the first female president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, and serving in leadership positions at NASA headquarters and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
More than 6,000 employees work at this sun-drenched campus in Pasadena, California, seeking answers to big questions like “Are we alone in the universe?” On the horizon are missions to orbit Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and to bring rock samples from Mars back to Earth. Both missions are related to the search for water, and possible life. The lab also devotes more than a third of its effort to tracking and studying Earth’s climate.
Dr. Leshin, a self-described “water person,” has spent much of her work as
