Sylvia Acevedo

Sylvia Acevedo was born near Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. As a young child, her family moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico. She was active in her own local Brownie troop as a child, where she was encouraged to pursue her scientific interests in school, despite receiving discouragement from the school's faculty.[11] In 1979 she earned her B.S. at New Mexico State University studying industrial engineering, and would later go on to attend Stanford University, becoming one of the first Hispanic students to earn a Masters of Science at the school - in systems engineering.[12] In her memoir, "Path to the Stars," Acevedo revealed that it was stargazing on her first Brownies Girl Scout trip that ignited her interest in science.[7]

Shortly after graduating from New Mexico State University, Acevedo began working for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a rocket scientist, developing programs for the Voyager 2 and analyzing data from the probe. She eventually left NASA to attend graduate school. During her time at Stanford, she worked at IBM as an engineer to help pay for her tuition. After graduating, she joined Apple as a technology executive for the Asia-Pacific region.[11] She has also worked in an executive capacity for Dell and Autodesk. Under her tenure, the Girl Scouts introduced a series of badges in robotics, coding, engineering, and cybersecurity.[13]