Visuals
Social media doesn’t have to be about sales or self-promotion. It doesn’t have to contribute to a constant stream of “new.”
It can teach and expose us to overlooked voices and visuals from the past. Forgotten figures and little-known quotes serve as inspiration for social media content I have produced.
Ever driven a hybrid car to shrink your carbon footprint? You can thank Annie Easley for that. One of the original "human computers" performing complex mathematical calculations at NASA, she later became a programmer, developing code used in early hybrid vehicle batteries.
Easley began her career when coding was still considered clerical work primarily done by women. As computers became more sophisticated, she used her skills to design new technologies.
How are you levelling up your skills as technology changes?
Ursula K. Le Guin was once called "America's greatest living science fiction writer." Sci Fi writing, like other STEM-related fields, remains largely male-dominated. Le Guin's writing tackled themes of gender, politics, environmental science, sexuality, and futurism; using her perspective to bring new dimensions to the genre.
How do you bring intersectional perspectives to your work?
Bessie Coleman was rejected from every flight school she applied to as a black woman in the US. So she taught herself French and was admitted into France's Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
She became the first black person to earn an international pilot's license, and the first black woman to hold a pilot's license in the US. With structural racism and sexism working against her dream of becoming an aviator, Coleman saw herself as a role model, encouraging more people of color to train as pilots.
How do role models shape our perception of what is possible?
Patsy Takemoto Mink was the first Asian-American woman elected to US Congress. Patsy led a coalition of legislators to pass the landmark 1972 Title IX legislation prohibiting gender discrimination in higher education.
Patsy envisioned a world without discrimination and worked to build that world.
How do you envision your workplace?
Dorothy Arzner was the first woman to direct a sound film and first woman to join the Directors Guild of America.
Arzner is also recognized as one of the first openly queer directors, never hiding her sexuality or identity. She directed films with multi-dimensional female characters, launching the careers of actresses like Katherine Hepburn and Lucille Ball.
In an industry still dominated by men, Arzner knew her place was in the director's chair.
How do you persist in your vision when others doubt you?
NASA scientist Valerie Thomas managed image-processing systems for #Landsat, the first satellite to send images back to earth.
Valerie became interested in science after reading "The Boy's First Book On Electronics" as a little girl. It's a good thing she was able to see past that title to aspire to be an engineer herself.
How do we find inspiration from those that do not reflect us?
Lisa Ben was an editor, author, and songwriter. Launching her career as a journalist, she is credited with founding the first magazine written by and for the lesbian & bisexual community, Vice Versa. Later, she wrote songs about her experiences as a gay woman.
How do you create something new for audiences that have been underrepresented in media?
You've probably heard "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results." Ironically, this quote is misattributed over and over again to Albert Einstein. Next time you hear it, you can point out that actually Rita Mae Brown wrote that :)
How do we speak up to correct false information that has been repeated time and again?
Shirley Ann Jackson was the first African American woman to earn a doctorate from MIT, and first to be awarded the National Medal of Science.
How do we keep moving up, when we aren’t sure what “up” looks like?
Patricia S.Cowings, NASA aerospace psychophysiologist, was the first African-American woman to be trained as an astronaut and her pioneering research minimized the effects of space sickness.
Wouldn't want to be trapped in a space shuttle with a bunch of space sick astronauts! Thank you, Patricia.
Pioneering oncologist Jane C. Wright’ research contributed to modern chemotherapy.
Whether it be a major project or groundbreaking research, the contributions of individual team members are often overlooked in favor of a single visionary or leader. But addressing complex problems takes complex teams with diverse skillsets. Dr. Wright's work transformed cancer patient outcomes.
How do we shift from valuing singular visionaries to the collective work of teams?
Jessie Maple. Ever heard of her? You should. She is the first unionized camerawoman, having fought for civil rights for African-Americans and women in the film industry.
Maple's film, Will, is recognized as one of the first feature-length films directed by an African-American woman. Representation matters both behind the camera and in front of it.
How do we encourage more people to tell stories that haven’t been told before?
Actor, comedian, author, and the first black woman to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards (EGOT), Whoopi Goldberg has made a career out of being herself.
Good mentors and role models (like Whoopi) show us that it's ok to bring your whole self to work.
Bobbi Gibb, first woman to run the full Boston Marathon. "This is an AAU Men's Division race only," read the rejection letter Bobbi received in 1966, "women aren't allowed, and furthermore are not physiologically able." This rejection didn't stop the lifelong runner. Bobbi snuck into the race and ran all 26.2 miles in 3 hours, 21 minutes, and 40 seconds.
What "prejudices, misconceptions, and so-called reasons," are keeping underrepresented individuals down?
Marie Van Brittan Brown was not only a nurse, but she also invented the first closed circuit TV system (otherwise known as CCTV), the basis of modern security systems.
Van Brittan Brown's technology transformed public and private security, but her role as its inventor is often overlooked.
How do we go beyond our “career” or “industry” to realize our ideas?
Edith Wharton, novelist and first American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize
Edith warns us about the "habit of having habits."
How are you fighting against unhelpful habits (like the gender pay gap or unconscious bias in the workplace)?
Irène Joliot-Curie said "The farther the experiment is from the theory, the closer it is to the Nobel Prize." As a Nobel Prize winner herself, she probably knew what she was talking about. A chemist and daughter of Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
How do you go beyond theory, beyond what others say can and cannot be done, to achieve what you want?
Mary Anderson, inventor of windshield wipers (have you ever driven in the rain without them? Not pleasant). When she tried to sell her idea to auto manufacturers, it was rejected for being of "no commercial value." Eventually, wipers caught on, but without due credit to Anderson.
How do we persist amidst rejection?
Many of us are cooped up, feeling isolated while remote working in these uncertain times. But many artists and writers are accustomed to solitude as a source of creativity.
Louise Bourgeois, a French-American artist, was a mentor to fellow artist, Colette Richarme, 7 years her senior. Bourgeois mentored Richarme on the importance of solitude for creativity.
How can getting away from crowded places to support our creative work?
It's true that Maryam Mirzakhani was the first woman (and only to date) to be honored with the Fields Medal in mathematics. But she's also the first Iranian to receive this award. Her professors and colleagues remember her for her "determination and relentless questioning."
What traits do you value in your colleagues, employers, and employees?
Alice Ball was the chemist who developed the most effective treatment for leprosy in the early 20th century.
At the turn of the 20th century, there was no effective treatment for leprosy, and patients were sent to live in quarantined communities.
Ball never received credit for her work during her lifetime, but her discovery brought the first effective treatment for the disease, reversing symptoms and helping patients to remain in their communities.
When there is no cure, how can we improve the quality of life of those suffering?
Victoria Woodhull was a leader of the American women's suffrage movement, she decided the right to vote wasn't enough so at age 34, she ran for president.
In 1872, along with her running mate, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, she ran on a platform of labor reform, equal rights, and free love, the freedom to marry, divorce and bear children without social restriction or government interference.
She wasn't living in a country that represented her values of equal rights so she found allies and took things into her own hands.
How are you creating the space in which you want to live and work?
Gertrude Stein was known for hosting a salon for some of the 20th century's most influential writers and artists. She also penned "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." 🌹
With information overload a part of our modern lives, how can we be smarter about how we balance online and offline communication?
We are thinking about Chien-Shiung Wu, a nuclear physicist also known as the First Lady of Physics.
Born in Liuhe in Taicang, Jiangsu province, China in 1912, Wu excelled in mathematics, and later physics before being invited to complete her PhD in the US.
Wu, along with her siblings, were named for the phrase Ying-Shiung-Hao-Jie, which means "heroes and outstanding figures," an omen. She would go on to make significant research contributions to beta-decay and gaseous diffusion, winning the Wolf Prize in Physics.
Who are heroes and outstanding figures in your workplace and how are you recongizing them?