Meet the First Black Female PhD holder in Aerospace Engineering
Wendy Okolo, an illustrious Nigerian has become the first black woman to get a doctorate degree in Aerospace Engineering.
The 30-year-old who was born to a family of six has kicked off her career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
TUKO.co.ke understands the beauty achieved her bachelors and doctorate degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2010 and 2015 respectively. Okolo was only 26-years old when she became the first black woman to get a doctorate degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington.
While still working on her first degree, Okolo was in the African Student Society at the University of Texas at Arlington. She was also the president of the society of women engineers in the university.
According to her Linkedin account, she was an intern at Lockheed Martin working on NASA’s Orion spacecraft. 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.
During an interview with TheCabel, the trailblazer said she flew the world fastest manned aircraft which flies from coast to coast in 67 minutes.
“I was sure those 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,” she said.
Okolo has won the BEYA Global Competitiveness Conference award for the most promising engineer in the United States.
Source – tuko.co.ke
