Girls Inc. of Carpinteria will celebrate empowering women and girls at its annual Women of Inspiration luncheon on Monday, April 11 from 12pm-1:30pm at the organization’s campus at 5315 Foothill Road in Carpinteria. The fundraiser event will feature Tracey Van Houten, a rocket scientist and lead engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), as the keynote speaker.
In her nearly two decades at JPL, Van Houten had the opportunity to work on the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rover missions, an Earth Science mission called SMAP, and more than 100 conceptual space missions. Currently the Europa Clipper System Testbed Lead Engineer at NASA’s JPL, Van Houten calls herself a ‘STEMinist’ – an activist, advocate and mentor for women and all those who have been historically excluded from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields.