Introducing the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship Substack
We have a Substack! It’s part blog, part mailing list, and all about empowering Black Excellence in Aerospace. You can check it out and sign up to receive future posts in your inbox here. For now, here’s our first Substack post in its entirety!
Welcome to the new Substack page for the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, a nonprofit dedicated to improving Black representation in the space and aerospace industries! Formed in 2020 in honor of the late trailblazer Patti Grace Smith, PGSF arranges paid summer internships for Black college students seeking their first experience in space or aviation. Additionally, PGSF fellows – all undergraduate students – each receive scholarships, professional mentorship, and networking opportunities.
PGSF is now using Substack to provide people with a way to sign up for email updates regarding our progress. As an organization, we are thrilled to be entering our fifth year and seeing the program positively impact the space and aerospace industries. As of this summer, 141 students have completed fellowships with PGSF. Our LinkedIn feeds are filled with “Patti” alumni accepting return offers from their host companies, which fills our hearts with pride and joy.
On top of this, our application window for the Class of 2025 opened in August, presenting another opportunity for Black undergrads in all majors interested in working in the aviation & space industries (PGSF is accepting applications until Tuesday, October 1 at 11:59 PST. Apply here.). As we prepare for our forthcoming Class of 2025, we want to use this space to reflect on recent milestones.
PGSF officially became an independent nonprofit in July 2023, establishing ourselves as a 501c3. We formed as an offshoot of the highly successful Brooke Owens Fellowship in 2020. After a while, though, it became clear there would be benefits to establishing ourselves as a separate entity. The fellowships have overlapping host companies, which created some confusion among supporters. PGSF and BOF continue to work together and support each other in our mutual efforts to make the composition of the aerospace industry more consistent with that of the country.
PGSF Class of 2024 Patties at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.
As we have for the past few years, PGSF and BOF held an in-person summit together in Washington DC providing fellows an opportunity to meet with industry leaders and policy makers. Our action-packed summit kept fellows busy with a variety of experiences that included:
Engaging with leaders from NASA and industry, including former NASA administrator Charlie Bolden, at Lockheed Martin’s Global Vision Center.
Visiting NASA’s Goddard Space Center, where they saw the Nancy Grace Roman telescope in production and conducted speed mentoring rounds with agency leaders.
Meeting with the White House’s National Space Council, hearing from former JWST program director Gregory Robinson, and visiting relevant Smithsonian museums.
This year PGSF expanded our leadership team to include AJ Bekoe, the first alumni of the program to join our all-volunteer executive committee. An aerospace engineering graduate from Syracuse University, Bekoe was hired at BAE Systems Inc. Space & Mission Systems (SMS), the company she interned at as a fellow, returning as a space systems engineer. Bekoe is an active member of the National Society of Black Engineers, and led a panel of aerospace professionals, including PGSF graduates Ciara Ortiz and Dunsin Awodele, at NSBE50 in Atlanta.
PGSF graduates Ciara Ortiz (left) and Dunsin Awodele (right) joined PGSF executives Caleb Henry (center left) and AJ Bekoe (center right) at NSBE50 in Atlanta.
May was a big month for PGSF alumni. Brandon Wells and MK Mitchell got to represent the organization and experience weightlessness via a parabolic flight made available through one of our hosts, the Aurelia Institute. Two more Patties participated in the historic Blue Origin flight of Ed Dwight, NASA’s first Black candidate astronaut from the 1960s. Lastly, in August one of our co-founders, former astronaut B. Alvin Drew, was appointed to lead NASA’s Space Sustainability Strategy within the agency’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. At PGSF, we are excited to see our fellows and volunteer leadership team making waves in their fields, and will highlight their contributions on this blog. Subscribe to stay informed, and thanks for reading!