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I'm Teresa Vanhooser. I'm the Deputy Director here at the Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Alabama. I had an uncle who was an engineer for TVA, so when I was getting
close to graduating from high school, and was trying to think about what it was that
I wanted to do, he suggested engineering. It sounded like a good way to take my love
for math and take it to the next level. That's why I made a decision to go to Tennessee Tech
because they had a great engineering department.
I really thought I was going to stay in Tennessee, maybe go back towards home when I graduated.
But, my now husband - then boyfriend - co-oped with NASA. When he said they were coming to
do interviews, I thought that would be a really cool job. After they came to interview, shortly
after that I got an offer. They said we'd love for you to come to work for NASA. It
didn't take me long to say yes.
Of course, at that time, there wasn't a lot of women at NASA and particularly in the organization
and the branch that I was in. I was the only female with the exception of the secretary
that was there. I never ever felt like that I didn't belong or they didn't want me there.
It was always an encouraging? they always found ways to include me and to make sure
that they were teaching me along the way and bringing me up to speed. It was always, from
day one, a great opportunity to get to work with a lot of great engineers.
Being willing to take a risk and being willing to take on a new challenge is the first step
in moving up. It's not always going to be easy. There's always going to be challenges
throughout any job that you take on and hopefully I'll be able to be one of those people who
younger women can look at and say 'If she can do it, I can do it.' That's one of my
passions I have: around mentoring and developing people. Being a supervisor allowed me to be
able to do that and to be able to see the fruition of helping people make that next
step just like somebody helped me make my first steps.