Wendy Okolo

Nigerian lady, Wendy Okolo has become the First Black Woman to gain a Doctorate Degree in aerospace engineering with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA).

The 30years old, Wendy Okolo who has been tagged “NASA Whizz”, is born into a family of six.
She was 26 when she became the first black woman to get a doctorate degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington.

She achieved both her bachelors degree and doctorate degree from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2010 and 2015 respectively.

Prior to this greatness, Oklolo was:
–  was a member of the African Student Society at the University of Texas at Arlington.
– she was the president of the Society of Women Engineers in the university.
– she interned at Lockheed Martin working on NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
– She worked in the Requirements Management Office in Systems Engineering and then with the Hatch Mechanisms team in mechanical engineering.
– after graduating, Okolo took up a job as a summer researcher from 2010 to 2012 in the Control Design and Analysis Branch at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

Wendy have joined many other brilliant Nigerians to put the country on map for global community to see.

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Talking about her experience flying the world fastest manned aircraft which flies from coast to coast in 67 minutes. She said: “I was like I’m sure these guys are so smart, what am I going to bring in. I went on an error in the code in the systems and I fixed it and that fixed the impostor syndrome for a while.”

Wendy Okolo is now an aerospace research engineer at the Ames Research Center, a major research centre for NASA in Silicon Valley. With this, she has also won the BEYA Global Competitiveness Conference award for the most promising engineer in the United States.

She lists her sisters, Jennifer and Phyllis, as her heroes, revealed that they taught her biology and other sciences. Therefore, encouraging young girls to pursue their dreams in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).