I always wanted to be an astronaut

Photo courtesy of SpaceX

On Saturday May 30, along with much of the rest of the world, I watched the NASA SpaceX launch from my home with my family. This is so exciting!” my six-year old whispered to me, tightly gripping my hand, as we counted down to zero. 

As we watched in awe, NASA astronauts were launched into space from American soil in a commercially built and operated American crew spacecraft, for the first time ever. I was overcome with a flood of emotions: from anxiety for the safety of the two astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, to an immense amount of pride at the inspiration and ingenuity of engineers, to an acute feeling of wonder. 

And as we watched the Crew Dragon spacecraft conquer physics and without hesitation trace a carefully calculated path into orbit toward its destination 250 miles above earth, I also felt a symbolic flame ignite a spotlight of hope inside me that I haven’t felt for a very long time. I felt hope illuminating the tragic darkness we are immersed in back here on American soil: shadows cast by COVID-19, palpable tensions over blatant systematic racial inequity, crippling economic hardship, and polarizing political dialog only really serving to usher in more darkness. 

I felt this feeling of hope because I knew deep down that if even only for a moment -- as a voice from SpaceX’s launch team bid the astronauts on a safe mission: “Go NASA. Go SpaceX. Godspeed, Bob and Doug!” -- people everywhere could feel united in immense pride, inspiration, wonder, and perhaps even hope. 

Why is this important? It serves to inspire that we can also set a carefully calculated course into lightness fused with achievements that give us all a sense of unity and pride -- based in the knowledge that through our inspiration, creativity and investments, we are making our world a better place.

Put another way, if we can make the investments of our ingenuity, resources, creativity and capital to follow our inspiration to return to space, I know we can also thrust our energy into making life better for all of us all back on earth. We can social distance and wear masks while our scientists find a vaccine. We can chart a course that brings back jobs. We can make changes from our hearts and to our legal system that reinforce the fact that all lives matter equally.

We can invest in innovation because that is an investment in hope—through cures, dialogue, collaboration, and speed to solutions. But more importantly, it needs to inspire the next generation, as well.

This is all very personal for me, at one level because I always wanted to be involved in space exploration. My father was an optical engineer who created lenses for magnificent innovations such as the Hubble Space telescope. To me, the engineers and scientists were superheroes, able to conquer or harness the laws of physics and do what generations before us couldn’t. With that, I pursued my own degree in Electrical Engineering, contributed to research around multi-core architectures, and started my career working on a communication satellite.

At another level, this is also why I’m so proud that my career has taken me to work at Cisco. From a technology perspective, Cisco has had a role in space exploration for many years. For instance, the Cisco Low Earth Orbit (CLEO) project showed the aerospace industry back in 2005 that commercial IP technology is space worthy. This was followed by the Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) program that built a radiation-tolerant IP router for satellite and related spacecraft. As another example, in 2009, Cisco partnered with NASA to develop an online collaborative monitoring platform called the “Planetary Skin” to capture, collect, analyze and report data on environmental conditions around the world.

But my pride working for Cisco doesn’t stop there. Through its Bright Funds, Cisco also supports organizations working against racism and discrimination in their many, destructive forms – helping to make a difference amongst Cisco employees, our communities and across the world. In addition, recently Cisco’s CEO Chuck Robbins announced an additional $5 million to be provided to Bright Funds, along with other groups such as Equal Justice Initiative and Black Lives Matter – investing in those working hard to help bring us out of this darkness.

In other words, the awe and immense impact of the NASA SpaceX launch doesn’t have to end when Bob and Doug return safely back to earth. NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program is planning to land the first woman on the moon by 2024. And, there’s the mind-bending vision of Elon Musk to send one million people to Mars by 2050 via launching three Starship rockets every day and creating a lot of jobs on the red planet.

But also, inspiration, creativity and investment needs to continue by all of us to help make our world a better place -- in whatever capacities and passions that drive each and every one of us. For myself, outside of work, I’ve always sought to pass my love of science and technology on to future generations by teaching coding to under-privileged middle school students, being President of the Graduate Women of Science and Engineering, speaking regularly to Girl Scouts/Girls Who Code, and sitting on the Steering Committee of the Tech Challenge, as well as speaking at data and innovation conferences.

How can you map your passions and capabilities to improve the world we live in today?

And what part can you play to inspire and prepare our children to battle the most difficult challenges yet to face humanity? This will unfortunately not be our last pandemic. Natural disasters are increasing in frequency. Global warming is real. The lack of empathy and ignorance rooted in generations of cultural bias that fuel social injustice won’t dissipate over night. Who will help us counter these, without hesitation charting carefully calculated paths to a safer and more just world?

Our children who wonder, that’s who. The ones who ask “Why?” and “How?” The ones who believe – and innately know – that people can be superheroes.