OUR HISTORY

We were already in the process of preparing the annual Brooke Owens Fellowship Diversity Report when the horrific and infuriating murder of George Floyd happened.

The injustice of that tragedy — and the stories of far too many others that have continued to happen since — gave extra urgency to our never-ending quest for improvement and our underlying mission of moving the needle on diversity, inclusion, and equity for the whole aerospace industry.

Looking through the data of that report, we made several linked observations: a) that much of our hard work to achieve intersectional inclusivity is working; b) that there is still room for improvement; c) that we must act vigorously to make that improvement, and d) that by sheer fact of numbers, the improvements that we can and must make — that we are making — at the Brooke Owens Fellowship will not be enough to impact the industry as a whole. Simply put, we wanted and needed to think even bigger and to aim even higher.

After a good deal of conversation, soul searching, and research, we hit on the idea of creating a brand new Fellowship program.

We thought that we could borrow and adapt the Brookie model and apply it to a different but related challenge, focusing on racial equity rather than gender equity. Between the Brooke Owens Fellowship and the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, we've had 7 successes in 7 attempts with the fundamental Fellowship model, so we know it can work — and we thought the combination of matched employment, living wages, strong mentorship, industry exposure, grand challenges, and an incredible new community could serve the community of Black and African-American students just as well as it has served the Brooke Owens Fellowship and it community of women and gender-minorities. So, we set out to create a new program.

The idea has now been debated, vetted, and improved upon by a large community that is overwhelmingly composed of people of color, including a wide spectrum of Black and African-American aerospace industry leaders, mid-career professionals, early-career professionals, educators, and undergraduate students. They've helped us craft the program and set it up for success.

Through their work and ingenuity, we'll ensure we steer clear of the specter of 'separate but equal,' and develop a program that is just as well-designed, well-respected, and well-run as the Brooke Owens Fellowship itself.

Along the way, our founding team came together. From the initial conversations on the Brooke Owens Fellowship team, we first pulled together the team of Will Pomerantz (Brooke Owens Fellowship co-founder and the first person to advocate the idea that became the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship) and Khristian Jones (a 2019 Brooke Owens Fellow). In the following weeks, we added Alvin Drew and Tiffany Lockett. In the future, we hope to empower Patti Grace Smith Fellowship alumni to take on leadership roles in this program, but for now, the program is run by its four volunteer founders.

We quickly agreed on the name of the program. Patti was a beloved leader in the aerospace industry, particularly in her role as the head of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. In addition to her incredible aerospace career, Patti's unbelievable personal story as one of the students who integrated the public schools in Alabama during the height of the Civil Rights Era is all too relevant today. Patti was also a dear friend of and mentor to Brooke Owens, the namesake for our first Fellowship program. Patti and Brooke were both stolen from us by cancer within a few weeks of each other, a deeply cruel combination. Although Patti has been honored in a few ways (particularly by AAS and CSF awards named in her honor), we saw an opportunity to help her name find a new meaning and a new community, just as we did for Brooke.

We’re grateful to Patti’s family — Doug, Gene, Joyce, Simone, Wilma, and the rest — for allowing us to honor Patti in this way, and for sharing so generously of their memories of Patti.

The Patti Grace Smith Fellowship was announced to the public on October 6, 2020. It is run as a 501c3 not-for-profit organization via the Brooke Owens Fellowship.