 Hello and thank you for joining us today at Washington Circle. We're live at the U.S. Department of State in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C. just steps from the National Mall. I'm your host, Mary Evans, Academic Exchange Specialist in the Western Hemisphere Fulbright Programs Branch in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. There I currently manage our Fulbright exchanges with Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Paraguay. I'm delighted to be with you today and with our very special guest, Margo Lee Shetterly. She's the author of Hidden Figures, The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. She's also the founder of the Human Computer Project where she's gathering stories of women working at NACA and NASA in the early days of aeronautics and the American Space Program. So thank you so much for being here with us today, Margo. Thanks, Mary. And so before we jump into the conversation, I wanted to give a special shout out to those watching at viewing parties around the world, along with those who have joined us today in studio. So say hi. Hello to those of you joining us in El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, Canada, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Cote d'Ivoire and Djibouti. We have quite an audience today out there. So thank you so much for joining us. I'd also like to give a special welcome to the Greensboro Virtual Book Club in North Carolina and to the many alumni that participated in the Hidden No More International Visitor Leadership Program Exchange that brought 48 women scientists and engineers to the United States just last month. You're looking forward to your good questions. So as a reminder, you can type into the chat box below the video player or use the hashtag Ask Margo Lee Shetterly on Facebook or Twitter to join the conversation. And if you're in the studio with us today, please make sure that you say your name, where you are from, and what exchange program you participated in before you ask your question. Okay? All right. They said okay. So Margo, I know that you shared this story many times over the past few months and a year and a half. And you mentioned it in the prologue of your book, but it would be great if you could give us, if you could share a bit about the idea behind Hidden Figures or when the idea to write this book came to you and how that process sort of unfolded. Sure. But first, I just want to say, you know, I live some time in Mexico. So I just want to say, especially a toro mis amigos en la ciudad de Mexico, muy buenos tardes. So I actually, and I was living in Mexico. My husband and I spent some time living there when Hidden Figures came about. And what happened is we had gone home to Hampton, Virginia, where I'm from, where my parents still live. And we were visiting with them over Christmas in 2010 and ran into one of the women that I had actually known, she was a Sunday school teacher and someone in the neighborhood but somebody who had worked at NASA. And my dad was sort of talking about her and the work that she had done. And by extension, this group of women who'd worked as mathematicians and mentioned Catherine Johnson and the work that she had done on calculating the launch windows for the early Mercury missions. And just a very matter of fact, my dad's a scientist and he sort of like takes these things for granted, as many of us did there in Hampton, Virginia. And my husband couldn't believe it. He was like, you know, this is amazing. I have never heard the story I didn't read about in the history books. And so for me who grew up there, it was a moment of saying, you know what? I knew these women. I didn't really know the story. I'm curious about it. I should know more. Like this is where I came from, where I grew up. And that was really the moment that sparked what became Hidden Figures. Yeah, well, that's great. And I'm sure that throughout your research, because I know you spent, I think it was at least three years, right, that you spent just starting the research for the book. Just, yeah, just the research period was really from 2010 to almost 2014, the just very intensive research period. Right. So you must have uncovered quite a bit. And so one thing that we're curious about is how you settled on the four sort of main protagonists that you did, thinking of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Christine Darden, and Catherine Johnson, of course. So how did you decide on their stories? That's a great question. It was really a very evolutionary thing. I had known the story of Catherine Johnson. I think a lot of people who grew up in Hampton or who had some affiliation with NASA had probably heard her name. She's been somewhat well known because of that affiliation with the astronauts for a long time. But it was really through the first conversation I had with Catherine Johnson that I heard the name Dorothy Vaughan. Dorothy Vaughan was in the very first, that first year that NASA started recruiting Black women as mathematicians. And I hadn't heard her name. My father actually hadn't heard her name. He was just starting his career when she was retiring. But Catherine Johnson spoke so highly of Dorothy Vaughan. And that was when I first realized that there was this segregated Black mathematicians group, these Black women. And so that sent me off in one direction. And Mary Jackson was another person who I did know of. And I do remember she had worked with my father. And then so really it was this evolutionary process of finding people who in a lot of ways could stand in for this group experience. The thing that was so exciting about this story is it didn't have to be just one woman who had come. It was like this group of Black women, they were part of this larger group of women from all backgrounds. And they had come in during World War II by and large. And they had done very well over time. But I needed to find those people who could represent the stories that I wanted to tell, the advance of women in computing, the space race, civil rights, the growth of the airplane industry. All of those things I wanted to be able to tell, the desegregation of education. And those four women were able to do that. Right, no, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think something that you've said before and that really resonated with me is that it's one thing to sort of be the first or the only. But it's not just about that. It's something about being a part of a group that sort of continue to do those things. So no one can dismiss and say, oh, it was just that woman. Exactly. But it's this whole cohort that was moving through and doing all this. No, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. So we have one question that's already come in from Waleska Aldana Segura. So she's a Guatemalan alumna from the Hidden No More IVLP, the International Visitor Leadership Program. So she's particularly interested in the balance that you strike in the book between highlighting the computer's abilities as mathematicians, but then also the thousands of everyday challenges and obstacles they were confronting at the same time. So her question is, how did you strike that balance in the book? How did you decide how much of each to include? And in particular, Waleska would like to know, what did Catherine Johnson think of the way you told the story and of that balance? Well, I thought it was really important to show the entire people, the entire person. I think a lot of times, particularly with scientists, we see them with their science identity. And we think of them as these geeky, unsociable people who are locked in the lab for hours and don't have anything else to do. These women were married, they had children, they were part of a community. They were leading Girl Scout troops. They were leading Girl Scout troops. It was really important to me to show all of their identities. They really inhabited that. They had very close ties, obviously, to the black community. They were very proud as women. They had a lot of outside interest. They were interested in music. Catherine Johnson was a great bridge player. I think all of those things are what make them compelling. And I think also what make them great role models, accessible. They didn't have to be just Einstein, this lonely scientist. And really, Catherine Johnson and her family were wonderful from the very beginning of sharing their stories and participating, not just with me, but also with the filmmakers once the movie got underway. And speaking of role models, we actually had another question that had come in already from another. It had no more alumna, Carolyn Doll. She was the Swedish delegate to the program. So she was curious about ways that we can address sort of harmful stereotypes. So she saw the story that the book tells as holding up role models, like you mentioned, that expose these negative stereotypes for what they are. But she's curious. She wants to know if through your research or even through your own personal experience, if you've come across other effective means of fighting against sexism and racism. Well, before I started working on this book, I really had no idea how powerful storytelling is, as a means of compelling or persuading people to a point of view. My first job was as an investment banker. And so writing the book and imagining these women and what it was to be the first woman, or the only woman, or the only black woman, and a room full of very hard-charging men, I was like, ah, you know what, I've been there before. And I know something, obviously not anything close to what those women experienced. But I knew something of what they had gone through. But I had always felt the way they did that being really good at your job, being not taking no for an answer, doing all those things that were taught to do, I think, nowadays to move ourselves forward and to advocate for other women. I think those things are all absolutely necessary. But also telling the stories. And if you're in a situation, thinking about this as a story, a situation, and people seeing competing points of view, and really trying to compel people through the power of story, I think that's really effective. Right, no. And we actually have something in our bureau called the Collaboratory. And they've been working on some different storytelling initiatives to do storytelling training for us here at the department so that people who've been on exchanges like the audience we have here today or those watching can be able to more effectively say, this is what my experience was, this is why it matters, and just help people to see it, to have some more buy-in in these types of exchange programs that we have. So the power of story is very real. Very real. And if you're here for any length of time, Story District in DC is also a great place to hear some good storytelling. But anyway, I'd like to give a shout out very quickly to the Girls Steam Club hosted by the American Space in Manila in the Philippines. The girls are currently reading Hidden Figures. They're meeting with Steam experts, and they will be watching this episode of Washington Circle together later. It's like middle of the night there right now. So I'd like to go right now to a video question we received from a member of the group and a student at Manila Science High School. Hi, I'm Patricia Perez from Manila Science High School in the Philippines. And I'd like to ask, how far has equality gone from within the context of the book of the present? And is it enough to match the legacy left by these four women? Yeah, so this is Patricia Perez from the Philippines, and she's curious to know how far has equality gone from within the context of the book to the present? And is it enough to match the legacy of these four women? Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you, Patricia, and everyone there in Manila for staying up so late to watch and tune in for us. Your question is great. The fact is there has been so much progress since the time of Dorothy Vaughn and Catherine Johnson and Mary Jackson. And obviously segregation, the fact that women, not just in their work lives, and their legal lives, for example, have so many more rights than those days. So I think we have to remember that there has been so much progress that's happened. At the same time, we have to recognize that there is still a lot of things that we still need to do. I mean, the Google memo issue from two months ago, however long, about women and women's capabilities in science technology. We're in a place where women were the dominated, basically, early days of computing, and that has gone away in terms of percentages. So we've made a lot of progress, but obviously there are still a lot more progress left to be made. Sure. And I wanted to ask one quick question about that, because I know that you're also the founder of the Human Computer Project. And so I've done a little research about that before meeting with you today. And something that you said about it before that I thought was really interesting is that part of the reason you're cataloging these stories isn't just to have a catalog of them, but you said there were so many women in math and science and engineering at that time, and maybe we can use some of the lessons from the Human Computer Project to inform the present or to inform the future. And you kind of alluded to that in your answer. So can I ask really quickly, how is that project going? And do you feel like you're, I mean, do you have any plans for how you want to share that information? I mean, if you find out some things that could really, I think, inspire girls and young women to pursue those careers. Yeah, I mean, like you said, the real point of that project was to come up with hard numbers. We talk about women and their historical participation in STEM fields, not just to have anecdotal evidence, but to have hard statistical evidence. And I'm hoping things for hidden figures, the book, are slowing down finally, hopefully enough to the point where I can really turn my attention to that and moving that forward. I think a lot of it will get done right now. It's just, it's like a little startup. Yeah, but it's long-term, it has to be a collaborative project just because there are so many people who are tapped into different sources. I was just on a panel with the author Liza Mundy, who wrote a book about the Code Girls, Women Coding in World War II. Here's another group, huge group of women doing cryptology analysis, technical fields, starting in World War II that we didn't know about. So I think that really making the connections between these different people, both technical people and historians, who know those stories, I think that's the way that we're gonna get a full picture of what women have done, particularly in STEM fields since World War II. Yeah, and I noticed that you have a hashtag that you use for that, which is the I look like an engineer. Yeah, that's actually not my hashtag, but it has been, I think since 2015, has been trending on Twitter and it's great because, again, we talk about hidden figures. Hidden figures is really about blind spots and about who looks like an engineer, scientist or mathematician. And if you go to Twitter and you look at that hashtag, I look like an engineer, you see women of all backgrounds from all over the world talking about the amazing work that they're doing in STEM fields. Yeah, no, and so we'd like to encourage everybody if you feel up for it, please. If you're in the STEM fields and you wanna take a photo and share it and say I look like an engineer, we would love to see some more photos coming in because of our conversation today. So hopefully- Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Yeah, it'd be great, so thank you. I think we'd like to take a question from our studio audience. So is anyone interested in, yeah, we've got one in the middle there, I think. Hi, my name is Amanda Thilett and I'm from Denver, Colorado. And I completed a Fulbright in Leipzig, Germany during 2015-2016. And so my question relates to the process of writing the book and how you really made sure to make sure that the stories of these four remarkable women were accurately represented. And then kind of your role in helping to make sure that this was then kind of parlayed into the movie as well. Right, so, well, the documentation of the book at the research phase of the book was really fascinating. And I just loved every minute of the research. I spent a lot of time in the national archives, NASA archives, magazines, newspapers, the black newspapers were particularly helpful for me. And obviously a lot of time collecting oral histories, not just with the women, with their families, but the engineers who worked with them, other people who worked at NASA or the NACA at the same time. And in terms of your question about the movie, I was a consultant on the movie and was an executive producer, but was not involved in writing the screenplay. But really was just an incredible experience to see, to have worked on the story, turn the story into a book and then to see it take on this entirely new life in a different medium. So it's been quite an interesting few years. Thank you. We had a question that came in from our viewers online. It's Hema Manzanaris, who's from Nicaragua. She participated in Hidden No More as well. And she asks, are there any female authors that inspired you to become a writer? If so, which ones? And do you have any authors that you would recommend, besides yourself, of course, for a young aspiring writer? Oh my gosh, there's so many different, oh my God, there's too many writers to mention. Toni Morrison is an amazing favorite. I mean, although she's fiction, it's her beautiful words and just the way she creates an entire world that you step into. I just, I really love that and really wanted to be able to do that in the book. Barbara Tuckman, she's a historian who writes a lot about World War I, like a very kind of real politic, I guess, kind of historian. But she's another one whose research methods are just astonishing, the lengths to which she went to get the details right in her books, I think are a real model. But I mean, we could have an entire different show just talking about great writers and how they inspire us. Yeah, well that's true, as an English major, I agree. There's something that I read that you said in an interview with The Muse, with Jezebel's The Muse. And it had to do with the time that you spent writing the book. You spent a lot of time in Mexico working on it. And you said that I think the distance from your own country helps you see things more clearly. And I thought that was really interesting, especially considering the people we have watching today who have spent maybe days, weeks, months, even years away from their home countries. And so I'm curious, I know you were speaking specifically about the context of writing that book, but what do you think? I mean, do you think that that could be expanded? What did that distance really do for you? And what do you think it can do in general? I think there are a couple of things. One, very specifically for me, not being in that very immediate crush of American life and American media, and really being caught up in everything that was happening in the United States, meant that I could take kind of a time machine and travel back to the United States of 1943 and 45, and to do it through the documents and through the stories of the women, and really immerse myself in that life without the intrusion of the modern American life. So that was really, just in terms of the writing and thinking, that was a real gift. But I think also in terms of perspective, I think when you live outside of your country, you get two different perspectives. One is that you get to see the things that are very specific to your country in a different way. You know, there are things that you don't know about being an American and this thing that it means to be an American when you're there that you can see when you're not. The other thing is that you also get perspective on the transcendent and the understanding of, well, this is the same thing that happens in the United States. It's going on in Mexico. It's going on in France. You know, I mean, these things that are very similar. Like the commonality of human experience. The commonality, absolutely. And I think that the combination of those two things and really sharpens your powers of observation. And I think it sort of gives you an ability to empathize with other people and thus to empathize with the people that you're writing about. I think that's what happened for me. Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, that's sort of what we believe in primarily here is that these people-to-people exchanges, right? That those relationships that are formed end up having the ability to transcend all kinds of barriers and borders. You know, both ones that might be social or mental, but also like the physical and political borders that we have. Absolutely. So it's powerful, so thank you for that. It looks like we have another question that came in from our online audience. We have Nana Saleh from Indonesia. She was also a participant with Hidden No More, so we have a lot of those ladies tuning in. She says, I am a scientist and I work for the Indonesian Youth Academy to promote scientific literacy to school-aged children. Can you tell us more about the Hidden Figures Children's Book you will be launching in January of 2018? Yeah, so one of the things that's been so great about Hidden Figures is that this appeal that the story has had to people of all ages. So the Young Readers edition, which is really for kids like eight to 12, let's say. I almost checked that one out from the library by mistake. Oh, well, you know, that's okay too, right? But that came out in December of last year and that has been really wonderful. But the point of this book is to take it down one more level in terms of age groups. So it's a picture book. And beautifully illustrated by an author named Laura Freeman and it really tells the story. It's the same story again, the same characters, but just putting it in a format that will be most appealing for the youngest readers. So I'm really excited about it. I think that having these women to be role models for particularly for girls, not just girls. I mean, I think, you know, I've met a lot of boys who have found these women to be very inspiring, but particularly for girls at that young age and planting the seed that this is something that they might be able to do or want to do at that age. I'm so excited about it. Yeah, there's an anecdote in the book about Mary Jackson and her son where she's doing the Derby with him. And she says, you know, we have to sort of get the kids when they're at that right age. We have to get them when they're young. When they're young, because right around the time they start saying, no, I don't want to do math. I don't want to do science. It's too late. Yeah, it takes a lot to recover once they've sort of turned off from that interest. It takes a lot more energy to turn them back around. Right, right. Well, that sounds good. That sounds like the book's hopefully going to do that. I think we have time for another studio question. So we'll get the microphone to you so everybody can hear. Hi, I'm Krista. I am a sophomore undergrad at George Mason University and I studied in India through NSLIY. I grew up about 20 minutes from Hampton, Virginia, and being a mixed girl who went to a school that was built in 1954, your book really reminded me how much every opportunity I've had is predicated on the work these women did. And so I wanted to ask you, what advice do you have for my generation and our progeny as to how we should ensure that this progress of equality continues with the same fervor that it has for the past few decades? Yeah, I think one of the things that we have to remember is that history does not move in a straight line and all progress has to be nurtured. We really have to look at the progress that we've made in the past and to remember that it takes a lot of work to keep things moving forward. I think that is really important. One of the things that I think is really a key, and I think this is something that we saw with the women that I saw in the book, is that they had the power of networks. When there was a job opening, they passed it through their social networks and they found the next person to come and take a seat there. They did a lot of networking, not just in their churches and in their schools, but they went to conferences. They really saw this as a group effort. And so I think that taking a page from that playbook and saying it's not good enough just for me to do well and to do well in my career, but what I have to do is make a commitment to tutoring or to reaching out to younger people in their career or learning from older people in their career, like building this community. I think that is, it seems to me, one of the things these women did and one of the most effective ways to preserve progress and to keep moving forward. Yeah, thank you. Looks like we had another question come in from online. We have Geeta from Connecticut who asks, can you shed light on STEM education working for or with underprivileged girls? So she wants to work to empower Indian girls in particular. You know, one of the things that's really been so exciting to me as I've been on this hidden figure's journey is that there are so many groups now that are out there with that same mission. They want to empower girls wherever they are in the United States and India and different countries, particularly girls that maybe don't have that access, who don't have the resources, whose families maybe are struggling just to send them to school. So I guess I would say the internet has been this great leveling influence and if you do a search, you will find both national and regional and local groups that are doing that. The Girl Scouts, for example, have an excellent program encouraging girls to work for STEM. So there are so many groups out there, I think it's just a matter of plugging in to what they're doing, seeing the ones that are having great successes and maybe getting in touch with them and see how you can take that model local and adapt it for the circumstances there where you are in India. Yeah, that's great. The Viewing Group in Brazil, so I guess we have a group in Brazil too, how exciting. They're asking, so speaking of these programs that are trying to work for women and girls in STEM, we have this international visitor leadership program which brings people from other countries to the US generally for about three to four weeks and they get to travel around. Often they might be here in New York, sometimes in California, other states as well on all kinds of topics but we have this one hidden no more that's been designed based on the book and everything that's happened from that and so they're wondering how does it feel to know or how did it feel to know that your book has inspired this exchange program that there were these 48 women that came to the US as part of that? I mean, what does that feel like as an author? It's overwhelming. You know, it's overwhelming enough to see the response here in the United States but to know that this movie has been screened in more than 100 countries I guess. The book has been translated into 16 languages. It is really an honor. It is just wonderful and surprising but the thing about it is it tapped into something that was already there and I think that's really an interest in these kinds of stories and to see that women were there all the time. Women were there, they were doing the work, they weren't getting the credit but they were doing the work and I think it's sort of like people getting their hands on a story they've always wanted to read and they've always believed to be true but now there's proof. And now it's not just hidden figures, it's code girls, you know what I mean? There's so many stories and I think now that we are tuned in to the fact that we've missed this, now people are saying, okay, what else are we missing? How do we get on top of it? What doors do we open and what lights do we turn on so that we get the whole picture? So that is really, really exciting to me. And I happen to have read that Hidden Figures is not just sort of a standalone book, that it's actually a part of a trilogy. Is that right or it's been conceived of as one part of three, focusing on stories of other African-Americans during mid-century life in the US? That's right. Okay, that's all you've divulged as far as I was able to find. But is there anything more that you could channelize us with today, maybe a little bit of a preview for this exclusive audience? Well, I am just in the early stages of working on the second of these books which have to do with entrepreneurs, media entrepreneurs, the same way these women got their work identity through science, this group also, same period African-American protagonists, are entrepreneurs and business people and that was my first work identity, I guess, really as a finance and entrepreneur person. So I'm just trying to carve out enough space to write and really move that forward. And the third book has an international focus, so I'll just leave it at that. Okay, well that's good, that's good. World exclusive here at Washington Circle, you heard it here first. I think we have time for another studio question if there's any one who'd like to ask. Sure, we've got one here, just wait for the microphone. Hi, my name is Raymond Chappetta from Pennsylvania and I studied through the NSLI program in Tajikistan. Can I explain really quickly what that is? Because I think, Certainly. Yeah, so the National Security Languages Initiative, Nesli is what we call it here. And so it's designed to have students who are maybe learning lesser or more uncommonly taught languages in the US. So something like, we have everything from Chinese, Arabic, something that might be more common to things like Urdu and I think in Farsi and different things. And so you were in Azerbaijan, is that what you said? Tajikistan. Oh, Tajikistan. So you were studying Farsi? Yes. Okay. So thank you guys, thanks for telling us. And I currently in DC I work with science policy. And I was curious if you know, there's anything exciting or that stands out to you in terms of encouraging science either here in the United States or maybe also abroad. You know, I think that, I mean, I personally think it's really exciting the initiative of going to Mars and that after so much time, you know, the moon landing was in 1969 and I guess the last, I think the last Apollo mission was in 71, but it's been a really long time since we've had that kind of exciting space, you know, program. So I think that that's something that's really exciting to me. But you know, there's so, I mean, we're living in the world of the future now in a lot of ways. The technologies that are coming to the fore whether it's artificial intelligence or CRISPR, which I think is really this, you know, gene, basically. Oh right, the gene splicing thing, right? Yeah, the gene splicing thing. I mean, it is like, it is such a fascinating world that we're living in in terms of science. And really, I think the challenge will be the social issues of figuring out what do we do with those technologies? How do we implement them? What are the, you know, these are not cheap initiatives, where do we find the money? You know, and if we fund going to Mars, what does that mean for your language study program? For example. So, but I think the thing that all of these things have in common is that they're really interesting. They're fascinating and science gets a bad rap is being really boring and really hard. And you know, honestly, some of the most exciting moments of the 20th century and before have come from science, from scientists and engineers. And if we could kind of show that to not just kids, but the general public, then, you know, I think that a lot of the effort to get people into STEM fields would have a tailwind. Yeah, it's almost like, I guess, in October Sky, wasn't that the movie or the book that talked about? Yeah, the Hoverhicken book. Yeah, and the space race. And just sort of how there was that, when you sort of had that thing to rally around, right? When there was that exciting goal to reach toward, that that sort of- Let's all work together. Yeah, there was like a groundswell of people being interested in German. Thank you for your question. We had another question come in from online. This is from Talibah Sun, an English language fellow in Colombia. She comments that real feminism to her is all of the things that you are actually doing and have done. So she's curious about what you think about the concept of feminism, perhaps nowadays in Latin America, maybe have some insight into that from your time in Mexico too. Yeah, what are your thoughts on feminism? That's kind of a big question, but we'll try to tackle it. I know, yeah. It's just like, okay, yeah. Well, as long as I don't have to answer, right? Yeah, well, I mean, honestly, the thing that Hidden Figures was about for me was really humanizing, you know? And I think that the feminism, it's a way of asserting, it's saying that, you know, I am a full human. I'm a female person, but I am interested in my work. I want full rights, you know? I mean, all of these things, right? I want the same things that you want, that all of us want essentially, you know? I think that's what that is, it's saying, you know, I am going to inhabit my full humanity and I'm gonna fight to do that because I am a human, you know? And so for me, you know, going to Latin America, living in Mexico was really interesting because there were some ways in which, you know, as like professional American woman, you know, I felt like, wow, there's still a lot of things that need to change here. But then there were things in which you said, wow, you know, we really need to take a lesson. You know, there was a female presidential candidate in the last election. You know, I met a lot of, you know, very powerful female politicians. And, you know, so I think that, you know, and again, kind of going back to what you learn from living outside of the country is that you have this very, you're sort of born into one way of seeing the world from, you know, because of where you come from. But then when you live in a different country, you see how people take the same ideas and the same aspirations and put them into practice in a different way. And so that's, you know, that was, it was interesting for me to be an entrepreneur and a business person living outside of the United States and learning from that. Yeah. And I was thinking about this too. I think there's something about feminism, and I guess I'm cheating, because I am going to answer the question, that has to do with choice and the freedom to make a choice, right? About what you're going to do for your career or if you're going to have a credit card or those sorts of things. That you have the choice. Yeah. That somebody has not already made that choice for you. Made the choice for you, right? And I know that there are moments in the book where the different characters sort of choose things like family. They make a choice to move or to not move to Houston or something like that because they say, no, I'm choosing family in this case or we want to stay here. We want to do this. And I noticed that when you write about it, it's, I mean, it's just, that was the choice that they made. And it's almost feminist in a sense that they got to be the deciders of whether or not they would make the move in a certain sense. I mean, what do you, did you notice that when you were writing? I mean, I think sometimes I just really appreciated the way that you said, and then they said, nope, we're going to stay in Hampton because this is where our family is. And that's important to us. So I don't know. I think that, I think that was true. I mean, one of the things that was definitely true for the black women is that this job in particular, I think for all women, but especially the black women, it opened up an income that transformed their family's lives. And they were like, okay, we are going to keep these jobs and, but they still had to manage all of these other, like there was never, I think, I don't know that they saw it as a decision because this is the best thing for my family and my future and my community. We're going to move forward in this direction. But I think also, and this is another reason why I wanted to tell the story as a group story, is that when you look at just that one person or when you see it just as you, when you think about just your story, then I think it creates a lot of pressure. You're like, am I doing the thing that's right for me or for my family, for other women, for the cause, whatever. The weight of the world. The weight of the world, it is. But if you see yourself as a part of a group of people who are all, have the same idea, but are maybe putting it into practice in different ways, then maybe that takes the pressure off a little bit and you can find, maybe your role isn't to be the first female CEO of whatever company and if your failure, if you're not, but maybe the role was to step back and to nurture these other people or you know what I mean? Or if it is to be that first person, to find the people around you to make it possible. So I think that you're right. It is about choice. It's about seeing the big picture and figuring out how you fit in to advance that progress and this humanizing project that we're always at work at here. Well, because I know you mentioned Dorothy Vaughn. I mean, she sort of ended up, instead of taking a promotion, I think she started working to bring more. Mary Jackson. Oh, was it Mary Jackson? Yeah, exactly. No, no, no. Yeah, you're totally right though. No, Mary Jackson. To bring more Black women in and support them sort of in their careers. Yeah, yeah, all the women in fact. She topped out in her career. She'd worked very hard to become an engineer and but she at the very end, she said, you know what? I am going to human resources and that is the best use of the last part of my career at NASA. Which is really, you know, I mean, I think anybody who has ever been on the fast track and wanted it so badly and worked for it and, you know, blood, sweat and tears for it to say, you know what? I have to close that door and do something else. Like the guts and the courage and the generosity that it takes to do that, you know, really makes Mary Jackson just like one of my favorite all-time people in history. And it's just, I think it's in the epilogue even where you get to talk about that and how that didn't really get as much development. But it was probably one of the more inspiring parts for me of saying, you know, I'm going to do this sort of for the greater good to not just my own personal advancement. But for, yeah, because this is, you know, because this is, that was her mission. And the role changed, but the mission did not change. It's a good way to put it. We actually have a question from a 12-year-old boy, Yafif, who's watching at a viewing party in Nicaragua. So he wants to know a little bit about Dorothy Vaughn's childhood. I guess that is pretty interesting, especially because she was the first. So she would have been born, I think, the earliest in the 20th century, right? Yeah, of the women that I wrote about. Yeah. She was born in 1910. And she was born in Kansas City, Missouri. And then her family moved to West Virginia. And I, you know, one of the great moments after I got to know her daughter, her daughter gave me a picture of her when she was 15 years old. Oh, wow. You know, just absolutely beautiful, but also very kind of confident and serene personality. And, you know, she was another person who, like Catherine Johnson, was very talented, skipped two grades in school. Yeah, she was a math whiz. She was a real math whiz. But she was also an independent spirit, you know? So Catherine, I mean, Dorothy Vaughn, after she left college, you know, she went and she had one job. She went to Wilbur Forrest College in Ohio. She took a job as a teacher in Illinois and the school closed down. It was during depression. She took another job in North Carolina. She ended up in Farmville, Virginia. So she was also somebody who was sort of fearless for that time, like picking up and going places was a real part of her nature. I'm pretty far, too. I mean, especially back then, it wasn't easy to cross that distance. That was really far, yeah. And to travel that distance by herself as, you know, someone even two years younger than the rest of the people in college. So, you know, so I think she was somebody who was exceptionally smart from a very young age, but also a really intrepid person. Yeah, very cool. We have one last question coming in from our viewing party in Ottawa, Canada. So they ask, what do we do next collectively as we think about the digital divide and how to bridge that gap? So the digital divide being participation, especially in marginalized communities? Well, I think what's really exciting is how more accessible and less expensive digital technology has become. And so if you think, you know, even 10 years ago or 15 years ago, you know, maybe you had to have a computer or a laptop and a really expensive internet connection. And now people get online through their phones and it's really remarkable. I mean, you could shoot an entire movie, build a website and broadcast, you know, the movie on the website, basically all through your phone. I mean, it's just remarkable what you can do. But I think there are still institutions that are very committed to bridging that divide. Libraries, for example, you know, in communities where maybe people can't afford to just say, hey, I'm gonna, you know, go to Amazon and buy a new computer or whatever, are giving people access. So I think, you know, a certain amount of public and community support for those, for access, you know, for making sure that people have access, not just in the most privileged zip codes, but, you know, all across our country and around the world. But I think that, you know, there are a lot of social entrepreneurs who are also trying to make that happen. Yeah, yeah. And we're gonna try to squeeze in one final question from Twitter. So, Wilson Carranza asks, what attitudes from the three women do you think we should all imitate in order to succeed? Ah, well, they had so many amazing qualities. I learned so much from them. They never took no for an answer. So if any of you have seen the movie and you saw the scene with Katherine Johnson, you know, fighting over and over and over and over again, asking to get into the meetings, the research meetings, that was true, you know, that was true. And I think that her desire for knowledge and to be in contact, in close contact with those engineers and the information was greater than her fear of the rejection. Or her fear of them thinking that, you know, she wasn't good enough or because she was black or because she's a woman, she didn't deserve it. You know, her curiosity always triumphed over that. And that's something, I think that was really true for all of these women. It wasn't that they were without doubt. You know, it wasn't that they didn't have moments where they said to themselves, you know, can I do this or should I be here? But at the end of the day, you know, they had done the homework, they had worked as hard as they could and they felt they belonged there. And because of that, they pushed and they insisted. And then once they got into those rooms, they really worked to bring the other women along with them. Yeah, great, thank you. It looks like we're gonna be wrapping up for today. So I wanna give you one more opportunity. Is there any final thoughts that you would like to share with our audience here, with those watching around the world? I mean, we have people from so many different countries. So now's your last chance if you have any final thoughts for them. You know, I just wanna say thank you. I am so, I mean, I really, I lose the words for how excited and amazed I am at how far this story has traveled and how many people have embraced it as their own. And so wherever it is that you guys are watching, I just wanna say thank you, you know, from Hampton, Virginia, which is where I'm from, which is where the story takes place. You know, the story started there and it is branched out all over the world. So I, you know, I really wanna say thanks and thanks to all of you for the great work that you're doing, moving forward and advancing the cause of equality for women and science. Yeah, great. Thank you again for being here with us today. It's been a real pleasure for me and I know for everybody who's been watching. Thanks, Mary, it's my pleasure to be here. And I'd also like to thank the viewing groups around the world who participated in today's chat. We had audiences in San Salvador, El Salvador, Santiago, Chile, Bogotá, Colombia, Medellín, Colombia, Caracas, Venezuela. I get to use my Spanish. I love it. Monterrey, Mexico, Mexico, in Managua, Nicaragua, in Ontario, Canada, in Kabul, Afghanistan, in Manila, in the Philippines, in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, in Duboges, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Djibouti. And last but not least, the Greensboro Virtual Book Club in North Carolina. Oh, and Kosovo, apparently. Yeah, there you go. That's awesome. So I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today, but please keep the conversation going. You can like us on facebook.com slash international exchange alumni. You can visit us on our website, alumni.state.gov. And as always, you can follow us on Twitter. The handle is at exchange alumni. And please make sure when you're using any of these sites or social media to use the hashtag hidden no more. So thanks again for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you next time here at Washington Circle.