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!

Today, we as a society have progressed greatly. Dwight’s recent flight is an example of how people are working to correct the failures of the past. On May 19, Blue Origin, a private space company, launched Dwight on its own New Shepard Rocket, sponsored by Space For Humanity, a nonprofit. Dwight achieved his long-deferred dream at the age of 90. This was a fantastic event, yet it also highlights the need to be more proactive and deliberate about progress as a society, particularly for today’s aspiring Black youth. Put frankly, there are still too few African Americans participating in our space sector, be it as astronauts, rocket scientists, satellite engineers, or other vocations.

I see this plainly at industry conferences. Among thousands of attendees, I see at best a few dozen Black participants. Among hundreds of speakers, the number who are Black shrinks to the single digits. At smaller events, sometimes I am the only one.

The Patti Grace Smith Fellowship is pleased to announce the selection of 29 students to participate in our award-winning program that connects the United States’ leading aerospace companies with talented Black students.

The Class of 2024 Fellows hail from 17 colleges and universities spread across 13 states and Puerto Rico. Each Fellow has earned a challenging summer aerospace internship, as well as a scholarship worth thousands of dollars, a pair of personalized mentors, and more.

The Patti Grace Smith Fellowship Executive Team is excited to announce the addition of a new executive team member, Juanitta “AJ” Bekoe.

AJ is an outstanding alumna of our program, completing her internship with Ball Aerospace in Boulder, CO during the summer of 2022. Since that summer, she has remained an active member in our alumni community by increasing our social media presence, coordinating alumni participation at NSBE events, and volunteering to support the summit coordination team. AJ’s voice and presence will not only represent the increasing alumni base, but will also bring a fresh perspective to the day-to-day operations of the Fellowship.

We are now accepting applications for our Class of 2024! We hope that you will consider applying yourself, if you are eligible, and that you will spread the word to every undergrad in your life who is considering a career in aerospace! Our application deadline is October 15, 2023.

We designed this program to provide the most critical elements to get our Fellows' careers off to a great start.

1️⃣: Paid, awesome jobs at a leading aerospace company or agency. Our Fellows work with rockets, satellites, space stations, rovers, drones, airplanes, and more.

2️⃣: One-on-one matches with two incredible individual mentors; one at the very top of the career ladder, and another just a rung or two ahead of our Fellow.

3️⃣: Community, in the form of a cohort of like-minded, talented peers who also come from an underserved, underrepresented community.

Read on for more information about the program, its context in the aerospace industry, and the application process.

The Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, a nonprofit dedicated to improving diversity in the space industry, is pleased to announce the appointment of Caleb Henry to our executive team.

Mr. Henry succeeds retired astronaut Col. B. Alvin Drew, Jr., (USAF, Ret.), who co-founded the Fellowship in 2020 with the goal of lowering barriers for extraordinary Black students to enter the aerospace industry. Now in its third year, the Fellowship has served as a gateway to the space sector through internships, jobs, personalized mentors and more.

Mr. Henry is the Director of Research at Quilty Analytics, a boutique research firm focused on the satellite and space industry. He previously worked as a journalist for SpaceNews and Via Satellite, where he wrote about the commercial space sector for global audiences.

Executive Teams from the Brooke Owens Fellowship and Patti Grace Smith Fellowship announced today that Ginny Randall will join their teams as Operation Director, the first full-time paid position for both programs.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) and Patti Grace Smith Fellowship (PGSF) program announced an expanded partnership to bring three students to Washington, D.C., to participate in the 24th Commercial Space Transportation Conference (CST). In memory of Patti Grace Smith’s commitment to encouraging young women of color to pursue aerospace and STEM careers, applicants for the CSF/CST scholarship were limited to PGSF fellows and applicants. Three outstanding women were chosen:

Thirty-nine undergraduate students hailing from twenty-six colleges and universities across the United States, have been selected as the newest recipients of the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, the award-winning program that connects the nation’s leading aerospace companies with talented Black students. As part of the program’s rigorous selection process, each member of the program’s Class of 2022 has earned a challenging summer internship in the aerospace field, in addition to receiving a scholarship worth thousands of dollars, a pair of personalized mentors, and more.

“Buy One, Give One” has come to commercial human spaceflight, and we are one of the first recipients! A generous donation from Dylan Taylor, who flew to space on December 11, 2021, will allow us to hire our first full-time employee, who will help lead the Brooke Owens and Patti Grace Smith Fellowships into the future!

Aviation Week and Space Technology, viewed by many as the most prestigious publication in the global aerospace industry, ran a beautiful 58 article about our namesake in their May 31, 2021 issue. With the generous permission of the Aviation Week team, we’ve reproduced that article here in its entirety.

Today, the Brooke Owens Fellowship and Patti Grace Smith Fellowship were selected to jointly receive a $1 million grant from Blue Origin’s Club for the Future. This generous donation will allow the two programs to continue working to make the aerospace community more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive, in particular by inspiring, recruiting, and training talented women, non-binary, and Black students into the workforce.

Space Foundation, a nonprofit advocate organization founded in 1983 for the global space ecosystem, today announced that Patti Grace Smith has been selected as the recipient of the 2021 General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award — the highest honor bestowed by the organization. As a public servant, Ms. Smith was a champion of private space travel whose regulatory work, leadership and advocacy helped open new worlds of opportunity for the exploration and development of space.

The Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, a non-profit program helping bring long-overdue diversity to the US aerospace industry, has announced its inaugural class of Fellows. 43 Black undergraduate students – each currently enrolled in the first or second year of a bachelor’s degree program or in associate’s degree program – have earned their place in the Class of 2021 after a fair and rigorous three-round selection process in which each candidate was thoroughly vetted by a group of aerospace industry professionals, rising star early career employees, and corporate employers.

Black students interested in aviation and space exploration now have a new pathway to a successful aerospace career in the form of a new program called the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship. Announced for the first time today, the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship will provide extraordinary Black undergraduates with paid summer internships at many of the nation’s leading aerospace companies and non-profits, along with both executive-level and near-peer mentorship, a vibrant community of like-minded Black students and professionals, and cash grants of approximately $1,000 to go towards work or school or expenses.