Joining Patrina on the podcast today is her good friend, NASA Aerospace Engineer, Sheila Wall. Among her many accomplishments, Sheila was one of the structural analysts on The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument, and she was also the lead structural analyst for the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System. Sheila is the lead structural analyst for the L’Ralph instrument for the Lucy mission which will launch this year. Today, she shares her thoughts around STEM and a number of other interesting topics with Patrina and her listeners.Their conversation begins by reviewing how these two great friends met, and then Sheila provides a fascinating account of her journey from childhood to becoming an Aerospace engineer and joining NASA. Along the way, she and Patrina discuss the similarities and differences in their upbringing, Sheila’s enviable demeanor, a typical day for her at NASA, and the inspiration that she received and now offers to others in her role. Sheila also offers some ideas for encouraging more children of color to pursue a STEM career and the challenges involved in this, while highlighting the importance of a positive attitude towards challenges and being champions of one another. The interview concludes with Sheila sharing what brings her joy these days, and her sage advice for aspiring scientists. Educational and inspirational, Sheila’s words here today cement her position as a role model for others in determining their goals in life and persevering regardless of any obstacles that may arise.Episode Highlights:

• Sheila and Patrina’s friendship
• Sheila’s journey to becoming an Aerospace Engineer for NASA 
• The similarities and differences in their journeys
• A typical day for Sheila at NASA
• Their shared admiration of Dr. Mae Jemison
• Sheila’s ideas for guiding more children of color into STEM occupations
• Sheila’s determination toward challenges and achievement
• The importance of being champions of one another
• What brings joy to Sheila these days
• Sheila and Patrina’s nieces
• Sheila’s advice to young, aspiring scientists

Quotes:“There are not a lot of women of color in this aeronautical engineering space, science, technical engineering, math space.”“If they can do it, I think I can do it too.”“If you do not make this degree, in my mind, you will be poor the rest of your life. And that could not happen.”“I am so impressed with your, like, there is no plan B, this is what we're doing, because I've got goals, I have things that I want and need to accomplish. And this seems like a sure path, so we're going to make it happen.”“You do carry yourself with an incredible air of confidence. There's no arrogance, there's just a really nice self-assuredness that I've always really liked about you.”“Everything just worked out really, just seamless, just beautiful. I love my branch - that's the group of people that I work with - I love my boss, which I call my branch head. I'm still in the same branch.”“In Wright-Patterson, like, I actually had someone that was assigned to train me and they refused.”“I'm able to tell them if the design is sufficient or not…I create mathematical models so that I can assess the design before it's built.”“My results have imagined these tests so well where a couple of times I'm shocked myself.”“It's just excitement over just the years of work and you know, many late nights and all that.”“No design is perfect the first time.”“I try to just live my life and make myself present.”“If I can do it then you can do it too.”“I liked your point early about moving outside of your bubble and not limiting yourself to your bubble or your community.”“I have now this expanded horizon and I get to actually choose what my sphere of reality contains based on what I want to decide it contains, not what somebody else imposes on me.”“Find the study group where you aren't the smartest, you want to learn from some other people.”“Why would you want to be in a group of people who are actually a drag on you? And I do think that that can be a challenge in the black community in particular, because you know, we get accused of ‘crab in a bucket syndrome’.”“You have to be your own motivator.”“Hurt people hurt people.”“There's so much trauma in our community that sometimes we unknowingly inflict that trauma on one another. And so that, I think, informs my desire to support us in being more conscious, being more intentional, and paying more attention on purpose to how we're showing up, how we're treating ourselves, how we're treating others, and just how we're moving through life so that we're doing it in a way that honors the highest and greatest good in ourselves and others.”“What brings me pure joy is giving back to my mom.”“It's a natural human thing to sort of compare ourselves to others, right? And the scale was so much smaller when we didn't have the internet.”“If we just give ourselves that patience to really take time and learn…because if we give ourselves that time, we will learn eventually.”“Give yourself great patience. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with others, be patient with your journey and trust that all things are working for your highest and greatest good always and in all ways.”Links:Joyfully You Life homepageJoyfully You Life InstagramJoyfully You Life FacebookJoyfully You Life TwitterJoyfully You Life linktree