RCA RECOGNIZES WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT IN THE WIRELESS INDUSTRY

Join us for our Women in Wireless series!

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Welcome back to the RCA Women in Wireless series!

This year we plan to bring inspiring and engaging women to each session as a guest speaker, and will kick off with Cheryl Giggets.

Cheryl has 37 years of experience in management, and 33 years experience in the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, specializing in Public Safety Communications and E-911 Services for local, state, and federal government.

After working over 15 years in national A&E practice and 10 years in global A&E practice, she founded CTA Consultants where she serves as Principal Consultant on city/county systems, multi-jurisdictional regional systems, and statewide systems across the United States.

CTA’s primary mission is Communications Technology Advancement in publicsafety and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)education.CTA team members execute this mission by giving their timepersonally and professionally to the public safety community and STEMinitiatives.CTA corporately executes this mission by investing 100% of our netprofits, over the life of the firm, to first responder essential training and STEMeducationinitiativesthatencouragefutureinnovation.

Cheryl will share with us the challenges and successes of starting her own business, roadblocks she may have encountered in her years in wireless, and advice she has for those embarking in this industry or discerning their climb to leadership.

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Dr. Maha Achour is the founder, CEO, and CTO of Metawave, which has developed a technology to revolutionize the future of wireless communications and radar sensing while lowering the cost and complexity for 5G connectivity. The company's technology leverages adaptive meta-structures and artificial intelligence for unique beam steering antennas for the global telecommunications and automotive radar markets, enabling users to get access to faster networks and near-instant connectivity.

Achour is a graduate of MIT where she studied wireless communications and theoretical physics. Before founding Metawave, Maha served as CTO of Rayspan, where she commercialized the first

Metamaterial antennas and RF front-end subsystems for the cellphone and WLAN industries.

She also pioneered the first Free-Space Optical systems for last-mile connectivity and led various DARPA projects in wireless MIMO and Optical devices.

In a recent interview, the advice she'd give to her 18-year-old self was "Don’t search for opportunities —

instead, learn, observe and dare to ask the 'first simple question''".

She's known for her expertise in developing an idea from concept to product, delivering industry-leading technologies, building teams and companies. She is one of the 2021 "10 Best Women Entrepreneurs to Watch" as published by Silicon Review. The World Economic Forum placed Metawave on the 2020 list of Technology Pioneers.

Emily Calandrelli, known as The Space Gal, is on a mission to get girls interested in STEM. The host and producer of Wonderlab on Netflix, former host, and producer of Xploration Station, and a correspondent on Bill Nye Saves the World, Calandrelli is committed to changing perceptions of what it means to be a woman in science. And, as she says "...there aren't enough female science geeks in fiction", she also has co-written a series of YA books based on Ada Lace.

Calandrelli is a graduate of MIT with an M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics and an M.S. in Technology and Policy.

The 2020 winner of the RCA Vivian Carr award, Calandrelli received her amateur radio license in 2011. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @TheSpace Gal or watch one of her several TEDx talks.

Helen Campbell, a wireless operator, and student at Hunter College, received her license as one of the first wireless operators and was immediately recruited by the newly formed National League for Women's Services. NLWS was created in 1917 in conjunction with the Red Cross and in anticipation of the entrance of the United States into the First World War. The object of the NLWS was to coordinate and standardize the work of American women along lines of constructive patriotism. The NLWS promoted the efficiency of women in meeting

their every-day responsibility to home, to state, to nation, and to humanity. The slogan of the organization was "for God, for Country, for Home."

The ceiling smashing, pioneering woman in wireless, Anne Chow, is President of AT&T Business. Of her appointment, Chow said, "With breakthrough technologies like 5G, businesses around the world will be poised to transform and disrupt their own industries." Chow is the first woman to hold a CEO position in AT&T Business, the first woman of color to garner a CEO title in the history of AT&T, and is the highest-ranking Asian American at AT&T. She leads an organization that serves nearly 3 million business customers in more than 200 countries and territories and

she's responsible for the AT&T communications system used by first responders. A veteran AT&T executive, she has an ME in electrical engineering from Cornell and earned her MBA from the Johnson School at Cornell.

"In her nearly 30 years in the industry, she strove to 'break the bamboo ceiling' by succeeding in non- traditional roles that spanned direct and indirect sales, to operations, to P&L management," AT&T Business said in a statement about her appointment. "She created one of AT&T's fastest-growing Employee Networks - AT&T Women of business - which has 4,800 members across 27 countries."

Chow says that encouraging women and girls to pursue careers in STEM is at the top of her agenda. She said, "There's still much work to be done to break the 'glass ceiling' for women in leadership positions and in particular large P&L and client-facing roles. Additionally, there are studies showing companies that have more women in the C-suite are often more profitable. There's no doubt in my mind that men and women alike should embrace diversity and inclusion and champion the advancement of women in leadership roles and STEM fields."

As Cotton said in 2017 when named to the Hall of Fame, "Satellite communications is an unsung part of many networking solutions and the industry tends to think of itself as being marginalized. I look at satellite connectivity as something that drives business for our partners and customers."

Kay Craigie, N3KN, is a volunteer and leader of extraordinary achievement. It's unusual for a non-profit volunteer leader to be at the same organization for nearly 30 years and when Craigie stepped down as ARRL President in 2016, she had served for 3 terms as President, been a volunteer official since 1986, and had been active as an examiner and in other roles since being licensed in 1983.

As President, she represented the ARRL at the Radio Society of Great Britain's 100th-anniversary observance, led the ARRL delegation at

two International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Region 2 conferences, and was part of the teams at Friedrichshafen and Tokyo. She also signed the first formal agreement between the ARRL and the Boy Scouts of America and led the ARRL during the 100th anniversary of the organization in 2014.

In an interview with ARRL, Craigie said that she finds amateur radio still relevant, even in an era when technology seems to be advancing at lightning speed. "University students in scientific and technical programs get the point of amateur radio and see how it fits with their career plans and their talents. Very bright students are just not getting licensed but are getting active."

During her tenure as president, Craigie led ARRL initiatives to expand the adoption of amateur radio, codify rules and deepen ARRL's involvement with disaster relief on a national level.

Dr. Katherine J. Duncan is the 2021 President of IEEE-USA. She specializes in the development of novel nanomaterials for next-generation communication systems. Duncan received her Master of Engineering in electrical engineering with an Optics Certificate (minor) from Stevens Institute of Technology and doctorate degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is currently serving as a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the U.S. Military Academy West Point. She joined the U.S. Army Communications- Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) in 2009, where she serves as a Senior Research Scientist. As a researcher, she has coordinated research projects focused on the development of novel nanomaterials for next- generation communication systems. She has authored and coauthored several scientific and professional papers, related to materials synthesis, antenna development and far field power transmission. Dr. Duncan has demonstrated executive leadership experience that spans industry, academia, and government.

Dr. Duncan is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of IEEE HKN. She served as Region 2 Director, on the IEEE-USA Board of Directors, MGA Finance Committee, and many other IEEE volunteer capacities.

Limor Fried, AC2SN, was named by the Internet of Things Institute as one of the 25 most influential women in the IoT Industry.She founded the open-source hardware firm Adafruit from her MIT dorm room in 2005.The company now employs over 50 people.She was the first female engineer to appear on the cover of Wired magazine, and was named Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012 by Entrepreneur magazine.(Sources:Dec. 2016 QST, page 69; www.adafruit.com)

Andrea Goldsmith is the first woman to win the Marconi Prize since its inauguration in 1975. The Stanford professor and inventor won the 2020 Marconi Prize for her work in information and communications research. She has gifted back her $100,000 honorarium to start an endowment to fund technology and diversity initiatives.

Goldsmith won the top honor in engineering and wireless in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of adaptive wireless communications, breakthroughs that have helped improve the cellular and Wi-Fi services billions of people rely on daily. The Marconi Prize is the flagship award of the Marconi Society, a global foundation dedicated to continuing the legacy of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio.

Upon receiving the award, Goldsmith commented, "The honor is particularly meaningful to me in this moment in time, when our information and communications technologies are enabling our universities, companies, and the entire social ecosystem to function in a suddenly all-online world, as well as calling attention to the critical importance of digital inclusion.

In announcing the award, Vint Cerf, a former Stanford professor who helped lay the foundations for the internet, said, "Andrea has enabled billions of consumers around the world to enjoy fast and reliable wireless service, as well as applications such as video streaming and autonomous vehicles that require stable network performance."

Without Margaret Hamilton’s work on Apollo 11 team, the Moon landing might not have ever happened. The portrait of her was created in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing. "Margaret at Moonlight". The

1.4 square mile portrait used 107,000 solar panels,

Credited with creating the term "soft engineering", Hamilton started her career in software development at MIT's meteorology department, where she developed the first weather prediction software. She joined the Apollo team in 1963 where Hamilton and her team developed software for the command module and lunar lander, helping systems eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish important ones, communicating those tasks to the astronauts.

After leaving the Apollo program, Hamilton developed Universal Systems Language (ULS) and founded and became CEO of Hamilton Technologies, which promotes the use of ULS to eliminate system errors.

The Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, Jenean Hampton, is licensed radio amateur K5EIB.She received a degree in industrial engineering, and served seven years in the U.S. Air Force as a computer systems officer, writing and testing software.In 2015 she was elected to the office of Lt. Governor of Kentucky, the first African-American woman to hold statewide office in Kentucky.(Sources:www.ltgovernor.ky.gov;Dec. 2016 QST, page 70; )

Many know her as the founder of GreatCall, where she led the development of the Jitterbug phone for boomers and seniors. In 2018, GreatCall was purchased by BestBuy for $800 million. Prior to Great Call, Harris founded Subscriber Computing, which led to the first prepaid cellular service. Earlier in her career, she launched both tech incubator Dyna LLC and Cellular Business Systems, which produced the cellular industry's first billing/CRM system. Earlier, in 1981, while at ICS, she developed “Life Page” and developed and led the largest single city paging system in the world.

Named an RCA Fellow in 1987, Harris was the first female inductee into the Wireless Hall of Fame. She founded the Wireless History Foundation in 2008. The same year, Fierce Wireless named her “Top U.S. Wireless Innovator of All Time”, she won the ATHENA Pinnacle Award as well as the Stevie Award for “Best Overall Innovator of the Year”.

The Jitterbug phone from her company, GreatCall, was named in the New York Times top 10 great technology ideas of 2006, was a finalist in Yahoo’s “Last Gadget Standing” in 2007, and a Reader’s Digest “Top 100 Products”. GreatCall won the American Society of Aging’s Award for “Best Small Business” in 2008.

Hopper believed that the major obstacle to computers in non-scientific and business applications was the dearth of programmers for these far from user-friendly new machines. The key to opening new worlds to computing, she said in a 1983 interview with "60 Minutes", was the development and refinement of programming languages - languages that could be understood and used by people who were neither mathematicians nor computer experts. It took several years for her to demonstrate that this idea was feasible.

She was a big believer in mentorship, once saying, “The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, ‘Try it.’ And I back 'em up.”

At the age of 79, Hopper retired as a rear admiral. She was the oldest serving officer in the U.S. Armed Forces. That same year she went to work as a senior consultant in public relations at the Digital Equipment Corporation, where she worked up until a year before her death in 1992. After her "60 Minutes" interview, Hopper was promoted to Commodore. Combined with her other title, she was buried with full military honors as Admiral Hopper in Arlington National Cemetery.

Brilliant, gorgeous, and determined, Hedy Lamarr is one of the most interesting inventors in the history of wireless. At the height of her success as an actress Lamarr, bored by the Hollywood party scene, turned instead to her lifelong interest in science, spending her evenings at the drafting table in her house. She said, "Inventions are easy for me to do. I don't have to work on ideas, they come naturally."

Committed to helping the Allies, she focused on improving torpedo accuracy and thought radio guidance would help, but only if jamming could be prevented. She saw that signal hopping would frustrate jamming efforts. This led to her invention, patented with co-inventor (and music composer) George Antheil, of frequency hopping. Known now as spread spectrum radio and the precursor to secure Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, the Navy brass at the time rejected the invention. Some say that happened because they resisted an invention coming from a female actor and a composer. Later resurrected by Sylvania engineers, a version of the technology appeared on U.S. Navy ships in 1962 and was first used during the Cuban missile crisis. Her estate and heirs, by the way, have never seen a dime from her patent.

Spread spectrum was not her only invention, others included modifications for the supersonic Concorde airliner, a new type of stoplight and a fluorescent dog collar. Learn more about Lamarr's life and accomplishments in the many books about her, with one of the best being "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World", by Richard Rhodes. The 2017 movie about her, "Bombshell", is available on all streaming platforms. WIRED, Forbes, and other leading business publications have all run profiles on Lamarr.

The woman described in the Radio Nerd blog as "...a badass in radio history", Mary Texanna Loomis, was the first woman in the U.S. to found and run a radio school. The Loomis Radio School was founded by Loomis in Washington D.C.in 1920. In 1927, she wrote a radio textbook called "Radio Theory and Operating for the Radio Student and Practical Operator" recognized as one of the most comprehensive books of the time on that subject.

Loomis was founder, President, and the Lead Lecturer at the school, teaching up to 15 hours a week. Graduates -- mostly men -- either received a radio license or studied 4 years for a broadcast engineering degree. As she commented, "My whole heart and soul are in this radio school."

Loomis launched the school after learning she was related to Dr. Mahlon Loomis. An inventor, he conducted the first known occurrence of wireless aerial communications, a full eight years before Marconi was even born.

Reporters who visited the radio school reported that every wireless apparatus being used was constructed by Loomis herself in an on-site workshop. "No man," she commented, "can graduate from my school until  he learns how to make any part of the apparatus. I give him a blueprint of what I want him to do and tell  him to go into the shop and keep hammering away until the job is completed. I want my graduates to be able to meet any emergency or mishap that may arise someday far out on the sea."

Fluent in French, Italian and German, Loomis saw the school as fulfilling her patriotic duty in the early stages of WWI to educate, in her words, "...young men who have grit and want to get there!"

She retired to San Francisco in 1938 and lived in the famous St. Francis Hotel until her death in 1960 at the age of 80.

As mobile radio technology evolved, so did the digital world of media. In 2001, RadioResource was rebranded as MissionCritical Communications and RRMediaGroup.com was launched.

Over the next two decades, online news and information continued to become more mainstream as postage and paper costs continued to rise. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, online news and digital products emerged as the preferred platform, at which point Nelson-Shira converted RadioResource Media group’s family of products to digital.

RadioResource Media group is now in its 35th year and Nelson-Shira says "I am eternally grateful to every customer, employee, advisor, reader, and vendor who contributed to our success."

Nelson-Shira serves on the board of the Communications Marketing Association (CMA), a wireless trade association.

The land mobile industry has long recognized the many achievements of Ellen O'Hara. O'Hara has been in the industry since 1980 when she joined GE as a product manager in the mobile communications division. She was also with Ericsson GE in marketing management and then moved on to join Motorola as a Vice President and General Manager, where she stayed for nearly 13 years, with responsibility for systems and products in LMR.

After being with EF Johnson as President and COO, with responsibilities that included overseeing P25 products, she became President of Zetron. She served as Chairman of the Board for Zetron and now serves on the Board of EF Johnson Technologies.

Interviewed in 1925, she said, "I think wireless telegraphy is a most fascinating study and one which could very easily be taken up by girls, as it is a great deal more interesting than the telephone and telegraph work, in which so many girls are now employed."

A female entrepreneur who started her career as a community organizer in Sao Paulo has gone on to create a wireless product designed "…. for connecting us when the grid is down." Daniela Perdomo is the co-founder and CEO of goTenna, founded in 2012 in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, when she saw the devastation that storm wreaked on the cellular networks. In an interview with Fast Company, she said, "I was just sitting there thinking, we don't have Wi-Fi, we don't have phone service. We have these phones on us that are supposed to be communications devices." Perdomo was involved in

several software high-tech start-ups before co-founding goTenna with her brother.

Focused on "bottom up" wireless architecture and off-grid communications, goTenna, launched on Kickstarter in 2016, offering a low-cost device that pairs with people's smartphones to let them send short bust messages without traditional cell service or internet connectivity.

goTenna is considered the global leader in mobile mesh networking, with customers including California Fire, U.S. Special Forces, Texas Task Force 1, Google, the Government of Sweden, and over 150,000 consumers.

Dr. Ada Poon is an associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.Her recent article on optogenetics (using light to control cells in living tissue) “A New Kind of Wireless Mouse” in the IEEE Spectrum describes some interesting research using laboratory mice.Dr. Poon enjoys solving problems that require an interdisciplinary system view, from theoretical studies to efficient implementation.Currently, she is researching the wireless delivery of power and data to medical implants, the limits of utilizing polarization in communication systems, and applying mathematical concepts to RF/analog circuit architectures.

Dr. Poon was born and raised in Hong Kong.  She received her B.Eng degree from the EEE department at the University of Hong Kong and her Ph.D. degree from the EECS department at the University of California at Berkeley in 2004.  Her dissertation attempted to connect information theory with electromagnetic theory so as to better understand the fundamental limit of wireless channels.

Upon graduation, she spent one year at Intel as a senior research scientist building reconfigurable baseband processors for flexible radios.  Afterwards, she joined her advisor’s startup company, SiBeam Inc., architecting Gigabit wireless transceivers leveraging 60 GHz CMOS and MIMO antenna systems. After two years in industry, she returned to the academic world and joined the faculty of the ECE department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Since then, she has changed her research direction from wireless communications to integrated biomedical systems.  In 2008, she moved back to California and joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.
 She is a Terman Fellow at Stanford University.  She received the Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2010 and NSF CAREER Award in 2013.  (Sources:  IEEE Spectrum Dec. 2016, page 26; www.stanford.edu; and various Internet sources)

Dr. Maryam Rofougaran emigrated from Iran to attend UCLA in 1987, holds more than 250 patents and is the co-CEO and founder of Movandi  Corporation.

This is her second startup, her first, Innovent Systems, which provided low-cost Bluetooth and Wi-Fi system-on-chip (SoC) systems, was acquired by Broadcom in 2000. While at Innovent, her team developed the wireless standards and integrated the functions on SoC to slash size, power requirements, and cost of wireless implementations. Her team has developed wireless radios for Bluetooth, WLAN, GPS, FM, ZigBee, NFC, and Combos, Cellular 2G/3G and 4G, Femto, Microwave backhaul, and 60 GHz WiGig devices. She says of her work, "It gives me great satisfaction to know that billions of people are using devices based on our technologies and patents to improve their lives."

Movandi, under her leadership, is working to revolutionize millimeter-wave networks and enable the next generation of 5G and multigigabit connectivity.

A public advocate for women in technology and science, she believes that "Women in leadership roles at technology companies can be role models for girls and young women entering the field and can show them that they, too, can build successful careers."

If you are one of the 35 million people who subscribe to SiriusXM, you can thank Sirius Satellite Radio co-founder Martine Rothblatt. Sirius was born from her long-time passion for the potential of satellite technology to, in her words, “…unite the world in a way that we would  care enough of the earth to stop polluting it, and  we would care enough about each other to stop all wars.” Before founding Sirius, Rothblatt had already successfully launched PanAmSat and WorldSpace and was the CEO of Geostar.

Rothblatt graduated from UCLA with an MBA and a JD, with a focus on telecommunications policy law. At the law firm of Covington & Burling, she represented the television broadcasting industry before the FCC in the areas of direct broadcast satellites and spread spectrum communication.

In 1982, she left the law firm to study astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park, but was soon retained by NASA to obtain FCC approval for the IEEE C band system on its tracking and data relay satellites and by the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Radio Frequencies to safeguard the radio astronomy quiet bands used for deep space research.

She co-founded Sirius in 1990, at a time when only AM and FM frequencies were commonly used. A self- proclaimed “radio geek” with a broad understanding of the technological, legal, and business aspects of launching a satellite radio system, she saw the potential for a service that would let people listen to radio wherever they had a clear view of the sky.

In 1994, motivated by her daughter being diagnosed with life-threatening pulmonary hypertension, Rothblatt’s career took a turn. She entered the world of the life sciences, founding United Therapeutics, which sells five FDA-approved drugs to help people with that disease. She has become a well-known voice for medical and pharmaceutical innovation.

In 2013, Rothblatt was the highest-paid female CEO in America, earning $38 million and her net worth of $382M ranks her at the highest levels of women entrepreneurs. In 2010, Ben Gurion University of the Negev award her an honorary Doctor of Sciences degrees for her accomplishments in satellite communications and biotechnology and in 2017, North Carolina State University conferred her an  honorary Doctor of Sciences degree.

A pioneer in many technologies and disciplines, including the quest to extend human life, explore space and find practical applications for AI, one of her many interviews, this one from a Forbes 2018 Women’s Summit. To learn more, search for her TED Talks and numerous video and written interviews and articles in business and technology publications like WIRED, Forbes, the Washington Post, and others about her remarkable career and life.

There are several notable women in the broadcast industry, including two women, both named Kate. One is making broadcast history today and one made it 90 years ago. On March 29, 2021, Kate Scott becomes the first woman to ever call a regular-season NBA game. She was joined by Mary Murphy and Kerith Burke on a special all-female broadcast team.

Before the dawn of broadcasting, women were frequently hired as wireless operators, so it was not a surprise that women's voices were heard as announcers and program hosts in the early days of broadcast radio.

In broadcast entertainment, 16-year-old Nancy Clancy was billed as the youngest announcer in 1935, but  Sybill Herrold led the way in 1912 when she became the first on-air disc jockey, playing Victrola records on an experimental radio station in San Jose.

In terms of sheer star power, though, no one compares with Kate Smith, who was already a Broadway legend when she began her first radio show in 1931. From 1937 to 1945, she had the most popular radio variety hour plus the #1 daytime radio show, Kate Smith Speaks, a news and commentary program. According to the Radio Hall of Fame, Smith's on-air appeals for war bonds topped $600 million.

The first woman to break through as a serious on-air reporting was Mary Margaret McBride. She began her radio career on WOR in NYC in 1934. When she moved to NBC in 1941, her daily audience numbered in the millions.

Susan Stamberg, well known to NPR listeners, was the first woman to ever anchor a nightly news program, serving as the host of All Things Considered from 1972 to 1986. In 1996, she was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

It was while she was at Inseego that she was named to the board of FirstNet, the independent authority within the NTIA, ultimately serving as board chair.

Currently, Swenson serves on the boards of Sonim Technologies, Harmonic, and Vislink Technologies. She was inducted into the Wireless History Foundation Hall of Fame in 2015.

E. Lilian Todd was self-taught, with a love of mechanics, and became the first woman to design and build an airplane. And, in what she called "the spirit of invention and experimentation", she started the Junior Wireless Club, which became the Radio Club of America.

Thanks to RCA member Joe Milano, Todd's achievements were recognized by the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and, as of 2020, she is included in the Aviation Pioneers exhibits.

While Todd was denied permission to fly her own plane because she was not a male pilot, that history has been reimagined in the 2013 award-winning film "Miss Todd". As the filmmaker, Kristina Yee describes it, "'Miss Todd' is the story of one young woman who dreams of flight in 1909, just as the whole of mankind is learning how to fly. Her passion is tireless, but in this era, she has more than gravity holding her down."

E. Lilian Todd’s life has also captured the imagination of several artists. Here is a link to the film, “Miss Todd”. A children’s book inspired by the film is available at this link. Captivated by the life story the RCA founder and airplane designer, pop star Elizaveta created a music video version of her rendition of the beautiful and haunting song "Icarus" using highlights from the animated film about Todd's life.

West helped program the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC) for Project 29V, which established the motion of the planet Pluto relative to Neptune. In 1978, West was project manager for SEASAT, the first earth-orbiting satellite designed for remote sensing of the Earth's oceans, which led to the GEOSAT satellite that created highly accurate computer simulations of the earth's surface.

West continued her education throughout her career, earning a second master's degree in public administration in 1973, and at 70 years old, she completed in Ph.D. in public administration.

At 91 years old, West continues to speak to elementary students about the importance of studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Kathy Winter rose through the ranks of Motorola, working in various engineering roles, gaining expertise in mobile, wireless, and automotive technologies at Motorola before becoming a GM at Intel, heading the Automated Driving Solutions Division. She is at the forefront of reimagining transportation and the role of the internet of things (IoT).

She recently said, "The key is not just the smart cars or smart things. It also requires connectivity to the data center or cloud

-- an 'end to end' solution that must be flexible, capable of providing analytics, intelligence and be cost-effective."

When asked for her best advice when mentoring other women, she said, "Be confident in your work and your role. Be prepared and know you are prepared. When you enter a conference room, don't take a seat against the wall. Know that you are there for your contributions and deserve a seat at the table."

She believes in exposing girls and young women to engineering and STEM in grade school, adding that if that exposure waits until college, "...it's almost too late."

Dr. Mary Ann Weitnauer is the senior associate chair for Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).In 1989, after graduating with her doctorate, she became the first female faculy member of Georgia Tech’s School of ECE.She is the director of the Smart Antenna Research Laboratory, is the author or co-author of more than 190 academic papers, and holds 23 patents and invention disclosures.She is a senior member of the IEEE and is currently associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.She has also served on numerous committees at Georgia Tech including Vice President for Institute Diversity.(Source:Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Winter 2016, page 88)

Women in Wireless is a mentoring and educational group founded by Laura Marriott and Connie Wong, with branches throughout the U.S.

The Women of Wireless Communications is a new organization that came out of the LMR side of wireless.

The Women's Wireless Leadership Forum is a volunteer group for women in wireless communications primarily functioning to support women in their careers.

Women who belong to these organizations know that everyone succeeds when we work together - join them!