 Hello, everyone. Welcome to our program. Special welcome to all the students and teachers that are joining us today. My name is Christy. I'm a librarian with the San Francisco Public Library. And before we begin, I want to acknowledge that we are live streaming from San Francisco, which is the unceded ancestral homeland of the Romitush alone people who continue to work, live and play here today. Thank you for being here with us for more than a month. Our library celebration of Black History Month. We want to emphasize that reflection, open dialogue, interdisciplinary education, and shared advocacy needs to take place in our communities during Black History Month, as well as all year around, something our library is committed to. Check out the more than a month website at our San Francisco Public Library for all the upcoming events happening in person and virtual. They include amazing author talks, amazing artists, awesome book list, and so much more that align with the 2022 national theme, Black Health and Wellness. This program is inspired by the Black Inventor Bookmark Project, celebrating Black excellence in collaboration with Dr. Caroline Ramsome Scott here in San Francisco. Visit your local branch and pick one up today. There are four in total coming out over the next month and so. And now I'm going to just give you a little snapshot of some of the youth centered events that are happening. Next week we have three amazing librarians and conversation about the Black joy of books and resources for youth, featuring SFPL's own Jason Hill and Rachel, and our SFUSD partner, teacher librarian Ayanna from the Tenderloin Community School. We're so excited about this, this conversation. And coming up we have Alphabet Rockers, our local Grammy nominated troop who have presented and created their first book, You Were Not Alone, so they're going to be in conversation about this book. So join us for those events. Again, check out our website for all the amazing events that are free and available at your public library. You can also find out more books by Black authors and illustrators. And with that, we're going to also forecast next month's conversation with career girls, focusing on Black joy and friendship. So that's a forecast, but here you're with us today for this amazing phenomenal conversation coordinated by Linda Calhoun. She's the CEO and founder of Career Girls. Career Girls is the largest online collection of career guidance videos focused on diverse and accomplished women. And today we're so lucky to be in conversation with Linda and for truly phenomenal innovators, inventors and changemakers of today. So thank you, Linda, for joining us. Thank you, Christy. It's wonderful to be able to present this program today. And I'm delighted to introduce our panel members. We have Afuaco, Nosakari, Igbeni Dion. We also have, thank you. We also have Elizabeth Smith. We have Cadence Payne. We have Marion Mathew. You can read their full bios in all of the program descriptions that are available online. But you know, I had the privilege of interviewing these fantastic women role models for Career Girls. And before we bring them all into discussion, I just have to share with you a sample of their videos. One of my favorite projects that I've ever worked on was my senior project at Stanford. And so before the project, I had taken a class on this thing called haptics. And haptics is the concept of the sense of touch and how you can create that sense of touch digitally. And so I became obsessed and wanted to figure out how can we create virtual worlds where you can feel the walls and feel the butterflies in the air and have these really cool virtual experiences. So I created these things called the haptic gloves. And on each of the leather straps that were on your hand, there would be a motor inside that vibrated at different frequencies. So when you moved your hand and you touched something in the virtual world, whatever point of contact touched that object would vibrate on your hand. So you'd be able to kind of pick up things and throw them and like feel it in your hands as you were navigating the virtual world. Not only was I able to take an idea and a passion of mine and, you know, bring it from, you know, a concept to a full product, but I was really able to see the power of computer science and the power of virtual reality and that we're really able to take things from our world and put people in an immersive environment in which they can see and experience things that they would have never experienced before. I have heart rate flying. I was fortunate enough to be able to be given a project on the space station. Actually, I have a couple gadgets, but they're all gadgets. I don't have anything that's, you know, like the arm because I have friends who work on the arm, but I have this thing called the modi indicator. What the modi indicator does is you have the station and it's flying and then you have the shuttle. So when the station and the shuttle come together, they both have control systems that allowed them to stay in a certain flight mode. We'll call it that. So depending upon which one is larger, when we first started, the shuttle was larger than the station. So the shuttle would maintain control and we would turn the station control off so that when it made it, the two control systems wouldn't fight each other and break the mating system. And the reason that this was kind of difficult because the station kept growing. So at a certain point, the station would have primary control and the shuttle would have to turn off and you have to build the software and the hardware in such a way that it worked that way so that you'd never break the docking mechanism. So we had two docking mechanisms which basically ended up as one, which joined the shuttle and the station. And in order for everyone to know that the modi was completed, a little red light blinks. That's my hardware. Mars is the red planet. Lots of things are happening there. There are robots. Curiosity is one that most people know about. So it's one of the rovers that takes selfies. It also sings itself happy birthday. That's adorable. It's really cute. So Mars is very exciting. There's actually a new mission called Mars 2020, which is a new rover that's a little bit larger, much larger actually than the previous rovers. So there's a project there that one of my mentors is actually working on called Moxie. So that's a project to try and make oxygen on Mars using in situ resource utilization. So using the stuff that's already there to see if we can make oxygen so that humans can breathe there. So obviously people know about Elon Musk and SpaceX that are trying to go to Mars and to try to sustain life on Mars. So it's just very fascinating to imagine life elsewhere. I definitely think that this is my personal opinion that we should start on the moon and then build bases there, prove that we can actually do it because it's a very similar challenging environment. And then from there prove that we can and even maybe set up fuel bases on the moon to fuel rockets or get food or do stuff like that just before we go to Mars. But I think getting to Mars and sustaining human life is one of the most challenging things that we'll ever tackle as a species. As a design researcher, you're more or less like a problem solver. In any situation, you can quickly assess what the needs are, what the challenges are and from there create products, create services, create programs that can help actual people. That's what I really enjoy about it is that it's not about me. I'm able to help others because of the experiences that I've had. One interesting opportunity that I had around design research was a few months ago whereby I worked with the organization Africa Code Week. And Africa Code Week is an initiative that supports young children in Africa to learn programming skills. And it was so interesting for me and really inspiring because I was actually had the opportunity to go back home to Kenya and work with the facilitators and use the tools and resources we had developed. So it was really amazing to see the work in action with the teachers, with the students. And that's basically what design research is. Always fun to revisit the interviews that I've had with these women. And I'm also glad that everyone in the audience can have a little insight into the work and projects that they've worked on. So I'm going to bring everyone into the discussion right now. And the first question I have for all of you is, you know, can you tell us about your favorite sources of inspiration? What inspires you? Oh, first. So one thing that inspires me is. I'm not sure I understand. Oh, sorry about that. So the one thing that definitely inspires me is seeing other people turn their dreams into reality. When I'm able to see my fellow entrepreneurs, women in my PhD programs who come from diverse backgrounds, bring the technology that they're really interested in to a field that that needs innovation and see successful papers, successful companies and projects that benefit the wider community. That's something that really drives me into doing the work that I'm doing. Thank you. Yeah, I can actually even build on that because for me, like my sources of inspiration are I would say are my, my friends are really like strong group of women who really are so supportive we share stories and we celebrate successes. And they always encourage me across the board and just seeing how they've grown over the years to pursue the thing that they're doing right now really pushes me in my work in my career. Yeah, I'm echoing echoing all those things I think having a strong support network especially in your and your friends and family is absolutely critical for maintaining you know inspiration and morale. I think I also have a like a very specific example of inspiration for me personally stemmed from the Hidden Figures movie, and people who the women who were featured in that movie like Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Von. I think personally that hit home right when I needed to. I was in. I was an undergrad at my time or at that time when it came out and I was like experiencing a posture syndrome and like questioning myself about my like fit in the field. And so like really witnessing those stories was a huge source of inspiration for me. For me, for me, it's problem solving. My expertise is in analysis of large complex systems. And my juices get get flowing. When I'm looking at the macro and the micro interactions and trying to find that one thing that create the problem and then back up from there and create a solution. That's the thing that drives me just trying to figure out what the problem is and how to solve it. You know, Elizabeth, I'm going to continue with my second question with for you. You know, you talked about this problem solving with hardware and software. What role does creativity play in that you know how do how do you bring that into, you know your met with your imagination and creativity with something like creating hardware flying. So I have to start with the word team work. For me, I'm a true engineer everything is numbers and analytics but you got to have another enough people. Sorry, but you got to have enough people in the room that have different points of view and have different capabilities. And once you start bouncing those ideas off of each other. If you're listening, you can hear that coming through, and then you add on top of each other's ideas. You throw what we call throw it up against the wall to see what sticks, but as you all work together as the team works together and as you begin to understand and know where you're focused. And that's where the creative creativity really lies is within the team one person does not have all the answers and everybody brings their perspective and their experiences to the table. And that's where you really, really, really get the job done. Thank you for that answer and you know what was coming through loud and clear from your response Elizabeth is how important it is to have that mutual respect for everyone at that table so that you can actually hear. You know, if we go I want to bring you into the discussion, specifically to talk about the role of trial and error in that invention and creativity process. Yeah, so I'm, I mainly study artificial intelligence and the name of the game for artificial intelligence is truly trial and error. You kind of design these really complex mathematical systems that are, you know, approximating a function. And then you, you know, try to get some data and train that model, and you're testing different model types and different parameters and most of the time, especially just in any computer science project. You're going to fail the first time and so being resilient and understanding that you have to find, you know, multiple ways that didn't work before you can find that one way that does work. And when you do find that one way that does work maybe it's your 100 try, you may have done something super innovative and super important. Thank you. And Kate. Oh, Marian, I'll start with you. As a design researcher collaboration, you know, is key in the work that you do. And I just want to know if you can share some insights on what makes a successful or what you look for, and a successful collaboration partner. Yes, I'm having a collaborator and a partner in these projects that I'm involved in is very critical, because I spend like a lot of cost functional teams. And it's important like on the early onset to determine you know what is our vision what is our goal. And as long as we are aligned in terms of having a shared vision in pursuit of what we're trying to achieve. And that's when I believe that's what makes a successful collaborator. And it's at that point, once that is determined early on is when we can come together, bring someone different ideas, and on, and even just pivoting on what Elizabeth said in terms of like teamwork and just like bouncing ideas of each other. That's where the magic happens. Great. Thank you. That respect and listening piece coming in again. And can you tell us more about your vision for a moon station or a colony. What could life be like for us humans on the moon. Yeah, so a lot of people are really interested and really excited about expanding kind of human presence off planet. And I think like what was mentioned in my video is that I think personally you know very very personal bias pin in here is that we should start with the moon. So somewhat because it's easier but also because it is an excellent first stepping stone towards, you know, expanding our species into the solar system and pushing kind of the bounds of humanity and our technical capabilities. I have recently shifted my interest though to be a little more Earth centered. I'm very passionate about climate change monitoring and mitigation techniques. Our Earth is kind of going through it right now just because of some of the decisions that we've made as a species. So I do think that focusing on on Earth first is definitely my personal, I guess next step, especially like in terms of my interest in my career. However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that, you know, by expanding our species and going to the moon and pushing our technical bounds we are also, you know, creating new inventions and new innovative, you know, techniques and technologies that are going to benefit humanity. So I think that we should we could definitely focus on both. I'm going to choose to focus on the earth. But I support those who are doing stuff. Great Elizabeth, you want to come in on this question. I'm here to tell Candace that I think she's a visionary because that's exactly what we've been doing for on space station in the space station program was preparing ourselves to move out away from the earth and the gateway program which is our child program is actually in the process of creating what I call a mini station that will be station keeping at the moon, as well as they are developing procedures and hardware to create a moon base for me and man moon base in preparation to go tomorrow so you're such a visionary that was great. Thank you. Yeah actually had a class here I think my second year of grad school where we looked at LOPG the the Lord, the winner orbital platform gateway. That's I think that's the acronym, which is the mini space station that you were talking about and we were trying to kind of come up with ideas for potential landers from that so it's really cool. I mean, all of you are visionaries and I appreciate you, Elizabeth calling that out. And, you know, one of the things, and this is a question for the entire panel, you know what gives you that confidence to experiment and try out these new ideas. And, you know, how do you handle it when something doesn't turn out the way you planned and you know so give us some tips for our audience on, you know, being resilient. I'd like to kick that off. Basically springboarding on Waco's if Waco's comments earlier, regarding how many times it takes to get it to work. But what I really want everyone to try to focus on is that in this area of science, if you become as engrossed as I have, you need to understand your worth. When you're surrounded by a bunch of scientists and nerds as yourself, you may have a tendency to take for granted your capabilities. And the one thing you need to understand is that you have real worth and that your concepts and the things that you're able to conceive and put into place. And that's the kinds of things that not everybody can do. So, know your worth. Yeah, and I'll just piggyback on that a little bit. So, one thing that I really struggled with at the start of my research career was feeling that everything that has been done has been done right there. It's so hard to outdo the grades, you know, we see all these amazing papers and these groundbreaking algorithms that have changed the game of computer science, artificial intelligence and just engineering in general. And it's not like how can I even, you know, contribute to that. But one thing that really helps me is understanding that they paved the way and, you know, made that initial foundation and if you understand that foundation deeply, the things that you can do can be so much greater than what they've done because you have so many more resources and so understanding that we're placed here in a time where, you know, technical advancement is, you know, very advanced right but there's so much more that we can do for our environment for our community and the applications that we can now apply all these amazing algorithms to are essentially endless and being able to tap into those new applications is really important. Yeah, I just want to echo like, I, I don't know, I have a saying that I tell people so I work with nanosatellites or CubeSats their spacecraft that are about the size of a loaf of bread. They're pretty novel still basically trying to mimic what the larger like bus size spacecraft do but in a shoebox. So I notoriously tell people that CubeSats will hurt your feelings. They often fail they're really grumpy. Sometimes they get to orbit they work for maybe a day and then they die and you don't know why. So there's just like a lot of things that can go wrong and like, it's okay to like feel things when when they don't happen the way that you want them to happen obviously we all want our experiments and our hardware to work and to get good data. That's what like that's everyone's dream that's why we're doing it right but like not to take it personally when it doesn't because the things that we're doing and the things that we're trying and the ways that we're trying to push humanity is it's really really hard stuff. So not taking it personally and still understanding that even if you do things and they fail you still have impact. For me in my research work and also as a product manager, like early onset one thing we always have to do is like define a plan like what are we what are we aim to achieve. And 90% of the time it really doesn't happen as expected. And you know and it's not anyone's fault it's just you know what sometimes that's just how things happen. And so, you know, you just have to always take every challenge as an opportunity. And also I think it's also like a shift of mindset to understand that you know that that your knowledge that not everything is going to go as is, but then appreciate also your own journey because it's not going to go very seamlessly, but then appreciate all those times maybe that that took you on a detour and then what can you also learn from that, and that really pushes you now to you know, see even things happen, even better than you actually expected it. Oh my goodness this is amazing content on an advice for anyone watching on how to stay the course when things don't turn out maybe as you originally planned. Of Waco, I'd like to have you tell us more about some of the new projects that you're working on. Tell us about your latest innovation. Yeah, so my latest innovation is related to a startup company that me and my sister started. So it's called here intelligence and we use artificial intelligence algorithms specifically computer vision algorithms to automatically color match and size lace front wigs for women. And so you would think that you know lace front wigs are something that needs artificial intelligence but it's really a difficult process for black women and any woman who actually suffers with hair loss and just wants to go to a salon you have to wait weeks for an appointment sometimes when you've got to this long you have to wait hours to get there right. Wait hours for the stylist to get to you and then you sometimes don't want to piss off the stylist because if you make them mad and they're ruined your hair and then you go home and you're not satisfied right but we're really trying to find a solution that allows you to stay at home. Take some pictures if you don't feel confident going outside because you know suffer from hair loss. Just take some pictures at home. We'll create that beautiful look for you and then it's directly to you and what actually powers that is artificial intelligence algorithms so we actually went out and collected a novel data set and develop some algorithms on top of that new data set that gave a really awesome baseline to really support women in their journey. And so it's just exciting for me to be able to use what I love which is artificial intelligence and computer vision to really help women who you know are in the stone ages when it comes to beauty you know a lot of products for men and other fields are very technologically advanced and I really think that it's time that women's beauty healthcare and you know fashion in general really has a technical evolution. Wow. Thank you for the work that you're doing that regard. You know I can speak for I think women all over who are really grateful that you're applying that intellect and talent in this new career. Elizabeth, you've recently retired, but my question is, and after a very successful career, obviously, you know what advice do you wish you had been given at the start of your career. Well, you have to understand me at the start of my career. There was nothing I couldn't do. That was just me. Nothing too big, nothing too little. The world was my oyster. I had achieved my dream. My dream was to become an engineer. And during the time that I came through, when you said you were going to be an engineer they thought about the locomotive. And so I always had to explain myself, but with that actually two degrees because I'm a dual degree student, a dual degree recipient, with those two degrees in hand, the world was my oyster. The one thing that I've learned along the way is to be mentored and to mentor others. Those are the two most significant things that any person can be involved in and can do for someone else. I'm meeting here. Thank you. Amazing, amazing answer. cadence. You obviously could do anything. Tell us why did you decide to focus on aerospace. I don't have like a cliche story of like, oh, I saw a rocket launch when I was four and then like since, you know, I didn't have that story. But one thing that I love to do when I was like a kid and I still loved it's like my favorite pastime is to go stargazing. I love, I don't know, the stars are beautiful. I'm from Kentucky and we don't have a lot of like pollution. So me and my friends used to like throw blankets down in a field and like stare at the stars and talk for hours. And it was just like always so beautiful. And then I learned one day that I could actually like study that as a career. And that was just like the coolest opportunity that I'd ever heard of. And so I decided to actually do it. Even though like I ended up taking a path that's not necessarily, you know, I'm not an astronomer and an astrophysicist. So I'm not directly looking at the stars. I'm providing hardware that allows people to, you know, study things that are in space. And so like that kind of motivation from just like my love of the universe, just developing that love for the years has kept me going and kept me inspired to be in these fields. I also love the earth now, which is why I'm transitioning to doing more earth science stuff. Awesome. I love that visual of you and your friends stargazing. And Marion, my question for you is that aha moment when you knew that the work you are doing was the right path for you. When did that happen. Yeah, that actually happened quite recently but then I'll tell like a brief story what led to that actual aha moment. So when I was 17, so I'm from Kenya, so I studied in Kenya. And my teacher in high school was like, you know, told the students put together like a vision board of what you see yourself doing in future. And so in my vision board like vehicles or plastered all over it I was like imagine myself building vehicles designing vehicles. So in Kenya like that, that vision sometimes was not really possible because we in Africa in general, we don't really manufacture vehicles that type of scale so over time. I must say that dream kind of did diminish and I was like maybe that's not possible you know I'll figure out something else fast forward. I got a job at Riven Automotive and that's where we now and we do build vehicles electric vehicles and so it was just like wow coming from that girl who was in Kenya to now in the US working for an automotive company I'm like wow it's like it's happening so I think for me that's what it happened. Thank you. I love that you were able to share that story with us. I have a question from our audience, and it says, when will humanity achieve full AGI software. I don't know what that means does anybody know what that means. It's going to be like AI. Well, they, it says full AGI software. Okay, so maybe that's too inside baseball, but thank you. So, another question I have for you is, can you talk a little bit more about the role that mentors have played in your careers. And so this is your opportunity to give that shout out to any impactful mentor that really can help you on your way. Whoever wants to start. So I, I do the thing where I have multiple mentors at all times. I think that's honestly like really important because a lot of, you know, getting different perspectives from people who are at different phases and different sectors of the fields, kind of allows you to take your own path. There's no straight path you shouldn't like aim to follow someone else's path verbatim. I'm just throwing that out there but I don't know I've had a bunch of mentors like an undergrad I had Dr. Pinoody who kind of like saw saw something in me and like allowed me my first internship opportunity at MIT's Haystack Observatory which then like transitioned into me getting another set of mentors that then encouraged me to go to grad school and now I have another set of mentors who like keep me on track for my projects and my career goals. And I don't know I just think like having a really diverse set of people that you can pick their brains and ask some questions even if you like hold the email someone you're like hey I just want to talk to you about your life. It's surprisingly easy to get people to talk about their lives. And I think that leads to a great opportunity for you to actually get mentorship and just to hear, you know, other people's experiences. Yeah, I can also add to that. One thing that I've realized about mentors is that not everyone who is senior to you as your mentor and you really have to find the people that are going to help you along your journey. I think that a lot of times people want you to kind of follow in their footsteps and want you to, you know, do the things that they did in their career to get to where you're going but you know cadence was mentioning having multiple mentors that's so important because, you know, having multiple people's perspectives that allow you to forge your own path is really the goal of like when you're having your own mentor not copying somebody's path or wanting to be like somebody because you have to understand that you can never be like anybody else. And it's really up to you to decide what you want and use this resources you have which can be mentors to get there. Definitely agree on both those points. For me, I particularly like for me where mentorship was really key was early on in my career. As mentioned, so there was a point at which I wasn't too sure if my journey in automotive would actually happen, especially when I was in an undergrad in my professor Dr. Kamau Gashige, who was a professor of mechanical engineering that was my department at the University of Nairobi. But he was able to like a group of students he actually supported us to like really think about not just your typical, you know, engineering type of path but really think outside the box in terms of making developing projects, going into robotics and for us it was like wow this is all very new to us coding and and so that really that time with with him and those group of students that time was like, and his advice and and and his support really helped me to really, you know, think outside the box and be like, Hey, you know, maybe there's actually more of them maybe I should push myself to actually look outside and see what other potential opportunities could be there so it was really he was really pivotal pivotal point for me at that point. Elizabeth. I was very fortunate to come along. During a time as a young engineer when my senior management had daughters who were breaking into the professional field as well. And they had their daughters coming home with their experiences as you know being the first of the second woman. And they poured a lot into me as a result of that. They decided that they will provide to me the things the kinds of things that their daughters weren't getting so that they could kind of compensate for the lack of support on their end and give me that support so I greatly benefited. There were several several several senior level engineers at NASA that did that for me. And I'm very grateful. That's wonderful. You know, another question that came in from the audience kind of touches on this, this notion of imposter syndrome it's, you know how do you overcome the feeling of not knowing enough in your field. Anybody want to speak to that. So, working on space station. I had the opportunity to to work on something that didn't exist and had never existed before. So we were all as a group roping in the dark. I mean I hate to see it that way but that's kind of the feeling. The way you overcome that it's just with hard work. You do your research you read you dig you ask questions, you try things you fail you start over again, you just keep moving. The one thing that can overcome that is just more understanding more discussion, more trial trial and failure and trial and baby steps. Don't be upset when all you get is a baby step. That's better than nothing. And then you take that and put it back into the pot, stir it again and start over. That's the whole point of engineering and I'm an engineer and I'm sorry, but that's my that's my from my viewpoint. Please don't apologize that's awesome advice. Yeah, I just want to like echo that super quickly and that I think the feeling of not knowing everything is never going to go away because it's impossible to know everything. But I think like as long as you stay inspired and motivated and excited about what you're doing. You can mitigate that feeling to the point where you're like okay well I don't know everything but I do have tools now to like work towards that understanding and build that muscle like that so that I can know things and can apply myself, but like you're not going to know you're not going to know much when you're just getting started but you still have to get started you still have to keep going so that you can build that. Can I just add that early on in my career someone told me something which has stuck with me when it comes to imposter syndrome so I remember at one point. Someone like in senior leadership was having a discussion with her and I was like one of the only female engineers at that time at that company. And we were just having conversation and I was just like you know sometimes you know I feel a bit subconscious about like you know when I go out in the field and maybe people undermine me because I'm young and the only woman. And she reached out to me and she was like you know what everyone else is also trying to figure it out it's not just you. So if you ever feel like oh I don't know and everyone else is like better off, everyone is also thinking the same thing so it's not just here so always remember that and also it helps calm me down too. Yeah one thing that really helps me when dealing with imposter syndrome is understanding that you know even if you have the same exact knowledge as somebody else, your experiences are different, and you will never ever ever write the same exact research algorithm, same paper as that person, you might come up with the same solution, but it will be in a different way. And that kind of gives me a little bit of comfort because I can always learn more but nobody can be me nobody can bring my experience to the table. And because of that I will always have something unique to bring. One of those unique experiences, you know one thing I always want our audiences to understand and when they get a chance to be around amazing role models like yourself is what skills or interests or talents from your childhood, you know, what did little Elizabeth cadence of Fuego and Marion do that you're still doing now in the work. I actually start off with this which might be a little bit embarrassing but when I was in middle school, I was not allowed to have social media and social media back then was my space right and so if you can remember what my space was those little profiles and you could look and feel of that and so because I wasn't allowed to have it I didn't really put like pictures of myself, or I would like edit the pictures in a weird way see what it was me and so I learned HTML CSS web design web editing photo editing all those things that I was doing to customize my my space profile. It's crazy because I still do all of those things today. And even though I'm not a graphic designer or editor. People always come to like hey, can you help me fix this picture can you help me do this because I've learned all these cool old school ways to do things and you know being able to build off of that and the software of today. It's a skill that I never realized would come so in handy in my field right now skills I love it if we can. I was more of a set of like soft skills that I learned. So I cheered for nine years, I think I turned for nine years and I was also like heavily involved with like all different kinds of like social clubs. When I was in middle and high school. So I think that like really, like the whole like performing in front of a group of people and really helps like my ability to like be outspoken and to like speak up when like things. You know, like I'm excited about things to like actually, you know, have the confidence to kind of project. And then also like the whole like being involved with clubs and things taught me like teamwork and then like organizational skills and leadership skills. I think like all those soft skills combined like really helped shape the engineer that I am today, especially in terms of like project management and like being a system engineer and like kind of monitoring multiple facets of different teams. Those skills are like, and like so so valuable like would. Yeah, very proud of those. I can also talk about when I was younger, I think for me it comes around like problem solving. When I was younger, I would take apart like families, electronics, like TV and back then we used to have like the CRTs. I'll just like open them up and I didn't know what was going on but I was just very curious all the time just trying to figure out like what's going on in this what what is all this circuitry. And over the years obviously like I'm getting into engineering that really helped me to learn more about hardware and software and even today in my work as a product manager you know problem solving is key and so when I think about I'm like over time that's really what developed and was really neat in me. Elizabeth. I can definitely echo the tearing things up scenario. I got in trouble a lot because I kept taking everything apart. And I'm the only girl in the family of boys. And I'm the youngest, and they really wanted a early girl, but they got me. And even at elementary school, I was really able to work in a science centered in elementary school. And I was very vocal in terms of understanding and discussions and helping other students understand and so fortunately or unfortunately I've kind of been a nerd my whole life. But yeah, it was that wanting to know how things work and not taking no for an answer. That was kind of me. And, and they told me I was really bossy. I mean, there's a great thing. I loved having you all sort of go back to your childhood and bring it up to today. You know, we're really at a point where it's the last question and this is a lightning round. Moon or Mars. Both. Of Waco. Moon. Marion. Don't say moon. I'm Elizabeth. Oh, I think you froze. Oh, no, you're moving moon or Mars. She might be having some technical difficulties. I'm sorry, I couldn't hear. Oh, I said moon or Mars, both. As we discussed earlier, the moon base is in preparation for Mars. So yeah, we're going to we're going to do the moon and that's going to be an what in space terms is a short term being three to five years. Maybe four, but three to five, and then all of that is in preparation for what we call the space which for us is Mars because it's the closest thing to us but yeah both. And ladies, that's it. That's our last word. I want to thank each of you for sharing your journey with us and our thanks to the live and recorded audiences for joining us to learn about black innovators and inventors, making their mark. Thank you. Well, Linda, we want to thank you and ask you the question moon or Mars. Moon. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Amazing women for sharing your story talking about your journey today being role models to our students here in San Francisco and beyond. It is such an honor to host this program. If you love this program, it'll be recorded so check our YouTube channel at the library is share it with all your friends make sure they know about these amazing women. And our tech check earlier this week Linda share she's like I have the best job, and I see why she gets to take time and interview and meet and uplift these amazing women doing incredible things all around America and beyond so thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us and check our calendar for upcoming events our next one with career girls is celebrating black joy and friendship on March night so tune in. Thanks everyone have a great day.