FWLE Honors Black History Month 2023

To salute a legacy of leadership and empowerment, we are proud to announce the launch of #WomenMakingHistory spotlight during #BlackHistoryMonth

As we celebrate #BlackHistoryMonth, we must always honor the colossal achievements of black women throughout history who have shaped black communities and made an indelible mark on American society and the world. From women’s rights to women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter and more, black women have been at the forefront of social justice and progress, paving the way for generations to come.

Vanessa Wyche

In June 2021 engineer Vanessa Wyche became the first Black woman to lead a NASA center when NASA appointed her as director of its Johnson Space Center (“JSC”) in Houston, TX. JSC is a world leader in human space exploration and is playing a key role in the next giant leaps in American excellence in space. JSC’s 10,000 employees are central to NASA’s human spaceflight missions and home to our nation’s NASA astronaut corps, Mission Control Center, International Space Station missions, Orion and Gateway Programs, and more. Wyche, a NASA veteran with more than 31 years of service, rose through NASA’s ranks, having previously served as JSC’s acting director, deputy director, flight manager for multiple Space Shuttle missions, and leader of planning teams for human missions to the Moon and Mars – among other positions. History made again as Vanessa, a passionate STEM advocate, reaches for the stars! #BlackHistoryMonth #WomenMakingHisotry #FWLE #WomenEmpowerment

Alice Ball

As part of our commitment to #WomenMakingHistory, we’re proud to honor Alice Ball. She was an American chemist who developed the “Ball Method,” the most effective treatment for leprosy during the early 20th century. She was also the first woman and first African American to receive a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, and also the university’s first Black woman chemistry professor, where she served as a research chemist and instructor. She also became one of the first Black women to publish an article in a respected scientific journal when she published, with a male colleague, a paper in 1914 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

At age 23 Ball developed a ground-breaking injectable and absorbable leprosy treatment (modified chaulmoogra oil), but she died a year later at age 24. Her proven treatment method was regrettably appropriated under his own aegis by her male graduate study advisor (then dean of the college and later president of the university), without recognition of her. Although a colleague tried to correct the record in 1922, Ball’s pioneering work was not recognized until the 1970’s. She has since been honored at the University of Hawaii and her native Seattle, WA, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (along with Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie), and by a space satellite named after her. #BlackHistoryMonth #FWLE #WomenEmpowerment