Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech via NPR.org.
Dajae Williams identifies herself as a NASA engineer, educator, and creator. Indeed, she’s all three. She’s also busy, driven, and talented.
Williams hasn’t wasted any time during her, relatively, short time in the field of engineering. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. She was a member of the National Society of Black Engineers of which she would serve as chapter president. She earned a full-ride basketball scholarship and played on the Missouri S&T Women’s Basketball for a while.
However, she eventually made the difficult decision to lose her scholarship when she was offered an internship at Anheuser-Busch as “her coach wouldn’t allow her to do both.” But Williams kept working toward her education and career goals. She attended community college for a year and earned internships at other major companies such as John Deere, Toyota, and Apple. Eventually, she did return to Missouri S&T, graduating with honors in 2017.
After graduating, she landed an internship at NASA, which turned into a full-time job as a manufacturing engineer. She describes herself as the “dopest NASA engineer you’ll ever meet” because “I’m not your typical NASA engineer. I stand out like a sore thumb with my big curly afro, Air Jordan 1s, and my gold chain. I challenge the status quo by representing the culture no matter what...So the world will know we are present and capable of anything.”
A lot of people’s stories may have stopped with the prestigious job, but Williams isn’t done yet. She’s on a mission to make math and science more accessible to students of color through music, particularly hip hop music. For her Listen Up Education brand, she has created a series of music videos that make learning concepts like the quadratic formula and the scientific method, fun (and catchy).
“I make it my duty to show students that learning can be cool and that there are successful engineers and scientists that look and think just like them,” she said on her website.