How did you become interested in STEM?
I always enjoyed being creative, and building things, even as a kid. I loved to jump into projects, building toy airplanes, towers, and parachutes out of things I could find around the house. I also grew up helping my dad and mom around the house, in our rural homeland. In addition to doing yard and household chores, my brothers and I helped build fences, sheds, porches, and even the foundation for our own house. I think this hands-on work with my parents helped to develop me into a design thinker, a practical planner, and a creative doer.
Who were your mentors?
My parents were my first mentors and role models. Both of them were the first in their traditional Navajo families to pursue higher education, and both ended up in a STEM field. Navajo was their first language, and they didn’t learn English until elementary school. My mother became a high school math educator, and my father a civil engineer. They always made me believe that college was going to be part of my educational path. Because of them, I always set my goals high, and challenged myself to make them happen.
What advice would you give to students?
Dream bigger! I spent so much of my time as a student and young engineer not thinking that I could achieve as much as I have. If you asked me when I was a young boy in my small hometown if my dream was to be a NASA engineer, I would have said “no”. I never understood that this kind of career, this kind of dream, was open to me too. Don’t limit your dreams to what you see in front of you. Dream big, work hard, and as you jump from one opportunity to the next, you’ll reveal your own abilities and your full potential.
Anything else you’d like to share?
I am currently working on NASA’s efforts to determine if Mars ever once hosted life. I was the lead engineer for creating and delivering drill bits for the Perseverance Rover, which landed on Mars in 2021. Perseverance will use these drill bits to grab rock core samples from an ancient lake-bed on Mars, so that we can save those samples in tubes, and eventually pick up and bring back to Earth its next Mars missions.
I am now working on the Mars Sample Return Campaign to send two more robotic missions to Mars to grab those sample tubes, and bring them back to Earth. We will study those rock samples here on Earth, and hopefully determine if Mars ever once hosted microbial life! I am so proud to be well ingrained in this NASA effort, contributing to efforts on the forefront of our scientific knowledge.