Professional of the Year
▸ When Kathleen Jolivette first joined The Boeing Company in the early 2000s, she had little in common with her fellow interns. By the time she arrived at Boeing, Jolivette had spent eight years in the U.S. Army, already started a family, and obtained her undergraduate degree. “I was in my late 30s.” says Jolivette. “I always joked about being the oldest.”
But being the oldest intern wasn’t always a laughing matter. “I used to worry because my peers who were my age were far ahead of me at the company,” she recalls. “I would get frustrated and think, what could I have been or done by now if I had just started earlier?”
It’s not a question Jolivette asks herself any longer. Today, Jolivette is in charge of Boeing’s Mesa, Ariz., facility, where she oversees 4,000- plus employees and is responsible for the company’s Apache and Little Bird helicopter programs. It’s a crucial role, but getting there has been anything but a straight and easy path for Jolivette, the winner of this year’s Professional of the Year Award.
For Jolivette, moving from a youth spent on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota to a highly successful career at one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated companies is a story of persistence and hard work, qualities she says she learned by watching her mother. “Her work ethic was unreal,” Jolivette says about her mom, who worked as a nurse’s assistant. “I don’t remember a day when she missed work — she would have to be really sick. She raised my siblings and me as a single mom, and she always talked about furthering and improving myself.”
Jolivette took that advice to heart and joined the U.S. Army directly after high school. It was a transformative experience, not only because she was stationed in both Germany and St. Louis — moves that broadened her perceptions of the world dramatically — but also because it taught her how to be a leader. “In the military you find that leaders lead first through humility and also by example,” she says. “That applies to me today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our essential workers come in to build aircraft every day. That’s not something I would ask of them if I wasn’t also willing to do it myself.”
Today, Jolivette is in charge of Boeing’s Mesa, Ariz., facility, where she oversees 4,000-plus employees and is responsible for the company’s Apache and Little Bird helicopter programs.
Jolivette’s leadership tutorial continued after she joined Boeing. For four years she served as the chief of staff to the president and CEO of Boeing’s Defense, Space, and Security business. It was a job that required traveling around the world and working closely with other high-level company executives. “I got to see how business strategies were developed and executed, different leadership styles, talent development, and what it takes to run a business, all of which is directly related to the work I do today,” she says.
Throughout her career Jolivette has been committed to helping other Native people pursue careers in STEM. Not only is she a member of AISES, Jolivette also donates time and money to the Native American Heritage Association and served as the executive sponsor of the Boeing Native American Network business resource group. Since taking on her position in Mesa, Jolivette has actively sought out opportunities to engage with local tribes, including getting Native students excited about careers in STEM.
Through mentoring, volunteering, and financial support, Jolivette has a pretty simple mission. “It’s all about how can you make it easier for young people to be successful,” she says. “Not everyone needs to struggle and find their path the hard way.” Part of making things easier for young students is simply making them aware of what’s possible. As a young kid growing up on a reservation, Jolivette says she really had no clue about how to tap the resources necessary for college or the business world.
All those things can be learned, particularly when there are mentors and organizations willing to help. But one thing Jolivette says needs to come from within each aspiring student is a vision for what they want to do and the persistence required to achieve it. “There’s always a temptation to work for a while and then say you’ll go back to college later, especially if you have small kids,” she says. “But the payoff for finishing school is much greater than you can imagine. You have to stay focused and do it no matter how hard it seems.”
Most Promising Engineer or Scientist
▸ Though she didn’t know it at the time, Dr. Serra Hoagland’s upbringing put her on a path to becoming the only Native woman with a PhD to work for the U.S. Forest Service. Growing up in Placerville, Calif., a small town west of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Dr. Hoagland just knew that she wanted to be outdoors. “My biggest thing was to finish my homework and go outside — that was my goal for the day,” recalls Dr. Hoagland, this year’s winner of the Most Promising Engineer or Scientist Award.
But the pathway Dr. Hoagland has followed from being an outdoor enthusiast to a PhD in natural resource management and research, and occupant of a unique position as Forest Service liaison to Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, Mont., hasn’t been entirely straight.
In fact, Dr. Hoagland, who grew up far from the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico, began her undergraduate career pursuing her love of math at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. But at the end of her freshman year, when Dr. Hoagland found herself on academic probation and struggling with an advanced calculus class, she made a strategic decision to switch her major. “I thought back to my roots and realized how much I loved wildlife and animals as a kid,” she remembers. “I am so grateful I found wildlife and ecology because it is the foundation of who I am at the most basic level.”
The past decade-plus has proven just how correct Dr. Hoagland’s instincts were. After graduating from Cal Poly, she earned a master’s in environmental science and management from the University of California, Santa Barbara, before graduating from Northern Arizona University with a PhD in forestry in 2016 and joining the U.S Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in January the following year. It’s a position that requires Dr. Hoagland to wear many hats. She spends part of her time in the field doing research, particularly on spotted owl habitat — knowledge that she shares with tribes to help guide their wildlife management.
Another aspect of Dr. Hoagland’s work is aimed at pinpointing wildlife-related research questions that would benefit tribes. In fact, she is involved in a first-of-its-kind tribal assessment that will guide future Forest Service research and development. Dr. Hoagland was also asked to submit a proposal to work on the Indian Forest Management Assessment Team, which develops a report every 10 years to improve how tribes manage their forest resources. Past reports have been written exclusively by non-Natives.
Dr. Hoagland is involved in a first-of-its-kind tribal assessment that will guide future Forest Service research and development.
Though impressive, Dr. Hoagland’s credentials — which also include membership on the Intertribal Timber Council and the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, as well as in a litany of scientific journal articles she has authored and edited — are only part of her story. What’s arguably more impactful is how she is using her experience and expertise to cultivate Native students interested in natural resource management and research.
As the only Forest Service employee to have a duty station at a tribal college, Dr. Hoagland spends countless hours mentoring and advising students, working with research assistants, facilitating job searches, and helping students attend seminars and conferences and win scholarships. “I’m there to serve as a support and role model. But I’m not just a cheerleader — I want to push students,” she says. “I think setting expectations that are realistic and watching them succeed and push ahead is when you start to see that confidence and pride and honor swell. My philosophy is to help them push those boundaries and make that next step.”
Dr. Hoagland sees her cultivation of young Native scientists as an important part of instilling critical Indigenous teachings in natural resource management. “I think it’s a step toward fulfilling our tribal sovereignty,” she says. “We need to have more Indians in leadership positions making decisions and acknowledging a relationship with the land and using practices we have built over millennia living on the landscape. When environmental management is backed in tradition, long-term stewardship and maintenance of our resources is possible.”
For young Native students, there’s another big upside. “In times like now with COVID, there are more people trying to relocate to smaller rural towns and work from home,” she says. “The demands on natural resources will increase. We are also facing climate change, wildfires, and invasive species. The positive thing with forestry and wildlife management is that it all means job security.”
Technical Excellence
▸ When Laura Smith-Velazquez was eight years old, her parents got her a telescope. The dark sky over Dorr, Mich., made for the perfect laboratory for Smith-Velazquez, an especially curious child. “I was fascinated with the sky,” she recalls. “It was so beautiful and I had so many questions.”
While space intrigued her enough to want to be an astronaut — which may happen if she is accepted into the Mars One program — Smith-Velazquez wanted to know everything about, well, everything. Though money was always short, her parents splurged on encyclopedias, which their daughter read from cover to cover, along with just about any other book she could get her hands on. “I became a massive bookworm,” says Smith-Velazquez, this year’s winner of the Technical Excellence Award.
Arguably, though, the most important lessons of Smith-Velazquez’s young life came from watching her parents and listening to her grandmother. “My grandma told me Cherokee stories about the Milky Way, and she built airplanes during World War II, which got me interested in aviation and space,” she says.
When she was 11, Smith-Velazquez’s dad got his GED and went on to pursue his college degree, which he received when he was 40. Though Smith-Velazquez’s mom never graduated from high school, she is well-read and worked her way up to becoming a quality control engineer. “My mom is such a strong woman and the sort who would say, where there is a will there is a way,” she says. “She provided such support to me at a young age.”
In many ways, Smith-Velazquez’s education was enhanced when she tagged along with her dad to Grand Valley State University and had to find ways to amuse herself while her father was studying or in class. Dressing up skeletons in lab coats and poring through college textbooks in the campus bookstore were favorite diversions.
Smith-Velazquez’s early fascination with space and aviation ultimately led her to pursue a degree at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. Money was so tight that she had to cajole a ride with a fellow student (whom she did not know) with just $20 in her pocket and a duffle bag of necessities from the dollar store. “I survived that first year eating off my roommates’ plates,” recalls Smith-Velazquez, who worked full time through college and was able to cobble together enough student loans to augment what she earned to pay for school. “It was a hard time, but it was an opportunity and I worked hard.”
Smith-Velazquez helped to implement an improved wave propagation algorithm that can be incorporated into a modern flight deck to allow pilots to plan and modify where (or even if) sonic booms hit the ground.
The strength and persistence her mom taught her helped Smith-Velazquez obtain her BS in aeronautical science with minors in aviation weather– meteorology and aviation safety–aircraft accident investigation. She also earned commercial pilot and aircraft dispatcher certifications. Smith-Velazquez went on to earn an MS in human factors and systems engineering and began her career at Northrop Grumman.
It may sound like Smith-Velazquez has the kind of expansive education and training that are relevant to more than one position. But her recent role as a senior systems engineer-cognitive scientist for Raytheon Technologies/ Collins Aerospace combines all her education, experience, and interests. “I used everything I went to school for,” she says. For the past six years, Smith-Velazquez has been working on making commercial supersonic jet travel commonplace. A big reason the fabled Concorde disappeared from commercial aviation is the noise pollution it generated — sonic booms just aren’t popular on the ground.
Along with NASA, Smith-Velazquez helped to implement an improved wave propagation algorithm that can be incorporated into a modern flight deck to allow pilots to plan and modify where (or even if) sonic booms hit the ground. “Pilots can use the technology to manage where their sonic boom goes, and if you can fly without the boom, you can enable the world to be smaller because jets can fly so much faster and over land,” she says. For instance, supersonic flight could trim three to six hours from a 16-hour journey between Asia and North America.
In many ways, Smith-Velazquez’s role was the natural destination for a precocious little girl who wanted to know everything about everything. “I’m the 20 questions girl,” she says. “[My work at Collins Aerospace] is a very creative form of engineering. I had to do validations and constantly evaluate my assumptions and update everything — a dream job.”
Helping Native students find their dream jobs in STEM is also a passion for Smith-Velazquez. A member of AISES since 2007, Smith-Velazquez is active in her Indigenous community in Baltimore, looks for mentoring opportunities, and speaks publicly about her own journey. For the past three years, she has been the Native American Affinity Group Lead for the Society of Women Engineers. “Being a Native American and a woman in science and engineering means you really need a support group. You’re a minority of a minority,” she says. “That’s what these groups do, and I try to help.”
