Bianca Vasquez
Founder & President
Bianca is studying mechanical engineering at Santa Barbara City College. She was born in Los Angeles, California. As a Latina in STEM, she is passionate about promoting and advocating for diversity. She is a 2019 NASA Community College Aerospace Scholar and a 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration AnitaB.org scholar. This summer she will be working at Virgin Orbit as a propulsion-engineering intern.
Hermelinda Cordoba Gemartino
Vice President
Hermelinda was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California. At age 15, she began taking classes at Santa Barbara City College while in high school to get a head start on transfer requirements and get a better understanding of a college schedule workload. She believes women should have resources and networks in male dominated fields to encourage each other to continue pursing their aspirations with a strong support system behind them.
In her free time, Hermelinda enjoys spending time with her horse, writing, running and eating.
Naia Butler-Craig
Chair of Student Chapters
Naia is a first-generation college student and a current graduating senior at Embry- Riddle Aeronautical University with a major in Aerospace Engineering (concentration in Astronautics) and a minor in Computational Mathematics. For the past two summers, she has worked as a systems engineer intern at NASA Glenn Research Center in which she investigated CubeSat nanosatellite technology. Following the completion of her bachelors, she will matriculate into the Georgia Tech Aerospace Engineering PhD program with specialty in Electric Propulsion. She plans to earn her doctorate in aerospace engineering and become an astronaut.
Najma Warsame
Chair of Professional Chapters
Najma Warsame was born in Mogadishu, Somalia and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She graduated from Augsburg University with a Bachelors in Computer Science, and a minor in Communication studies. Najma currently works for U.S Bank corp. as a Jr. Application Developer. She is also a professional makeup artist for MAC Cosmetics. When she is not practicing her coding skills or doing someone's makeup, she enjoys spending her time kickboxing, hiking, and watching scary movies.
Nicholas Coletti
Treasurer
Nicholas Coletti believes diversity in STEM is incredibly important because different walks of life bring in different ideas that lead to many unique solutions. He is a mechanical engineering student at Santa Barbara City College. When he is not studying, he works part time as a paraprofessional at an elementary school. As a substitute teacher and occasional babysitter, he sees the importance of influencing young minds about the endless possibilities of a STEM education. Nicholas will be interning at NASA JPL this summer.
Team
Corrine Rojas
Corrine is a researcher for the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission working in the camera instrument team (LROC) at Arizona State University. Her research focus is lunar geology, spacecraft operations, and creating all kinds of maps, especially 3D lunar terrain maps. She recently graduated with a B.S. in Geography and Geographic Information Science. She was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ to loving immigrant parents from Mexico. In college, she was a Shirley G. Schmitz Foundation Scholar, participated in an ASU-funded start up DemocraSeed in which she mentored high school-aged kids in a rural AZ town about creative problem solving issues in their community, and interned at Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the Curiosity Mission Operations team.
Jessica Brito
Jessica Brito was born and raised in Chicago, IL. She is currently a student at Maine West High School and aspires to major in Mechanical Engineering when going to college. She has never been afraid to be the only girl in her STEM classes but she has witnessed firsthand how many females are deterred from choosing the path of STEM. Nonetheless, she has used her voice to shine a light on what it’s like to be a young female student in a male field. She has volunteered at High Jump Chicago, a tuition-free academic enrichment program that serves motivated 7th and 8th grade students from families of limited economic means, since graduating from the program herself back in 2014. In her free time she enjoys building a high-speed race car with her after school club that will be on the Illinois Derby track in April.
Bavley Mobarak
Bavley Mobarak is an Egyptian-American currently pursing a Computer Engineering degree. Growing up in a low-income household has allowed him to view the world from a different perspective and decide that his way of making a change in his life would be by first becoming the first in his family to pursue a STEM career. When he is not in school, he spends his time volunteering for his local community in Los Angeles, handing out food and blankets to the homeless during the holidays, helping local donation banks sort through donated items, and by visiting the housing for children’s hospitals to spend time with the children receiving treatment and to deliver positivity that they will get through it as he spent a portion of his childhood in their position.
Ryan Bez
Ryan Bez is currently studying computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He is an advocate for women's rights and diversity in STEM. He strongly believes that a diverse network of friends and coworkers leads to a more enriched life, more success when tackling problems, and better solutions that help more people. He is a 2016 NASA Community College Aerospace Scholar and was awarded a 2018 Undergraduate Research Scholarship where he studied plasma physics in the PISCES research laboratory at UCSD. In his free time he enjoys concerts and video games.
Rigo Lopez
Rigo Lopez is a first generation Latino from South Los Angeles. He currently attends University of California, Irvine and is studying political science. He plans to be a paralegal for LGBTQ rights and other similar causes. As he grew up in a prominent Latino community, he did not view himself as a minority until he went off to college and truly felt out of place. Growing up fascinated by astronomy and related sciences as a young kid but seeing the lack of women and minorities in the fields has caused him to deeply care about advocacy for this matter.