Today on the podcast, we speak with Joan Melendez-Misner, a rocket scientist, science communicator, and influencer who has 14,000 followers on Instagram. When she is not making waves with her TikTok videos, Joan is a Mission Integration Systems Engineer at NASA, where she works for the Launch Services Program, managing space and aeronautical flight systems for all non-crewed and scientific missions. She works on design and operational requirements definition, hardware and software development, testing, and verification. Joan shares with Emily how she sees her role as a science communicator, how she is making STEM more accessible to people through her fun yet educational videos, and what she is hoping to communicate to others who might believe that they aren’t smart enough to be in the field. Listeners will also hear how she eventually got a job offer from NASA, what it was like starting on the team during the pandemic, and why she decided against medicine in her first year of college. Being the first one in her family to get a college degree, Joan also shares how her mom encouraged her to pursue formal education to make a better life for herself, and she emphasizes the importance of women pulling tougher and hyping each other up to break the negative stereotypes they face in male-dominated industries.
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