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Tiera Guinn Fletcher: MINORITIES IN STEM
WOMEN AND

Building a Rocket to Mars In 2016–2017, more than 60 Guinn Fletcher graduated from
MIT in 2017. She still works
percent of all STEM workers for Boeing on the SLS. She’s
were white. Almost all STEM passionate about bringing more
this in her head and included the professions had more men than girls and people of color into STEM
tax. From her father, she learned women. Fifty percent of women fields. STEM stands for Science,
how math could be applied to in STEM reported discrimination Technology, Engineering and
building structures. At 11, based on gender. Sixty-two Mathematics.
Tiera Guinn she knew she wanted to be percent of black STEM workers

Fletcher an aerospace engineer. reported discrimination based
in 2017. In 2013, Guinn on race. Meanwhile, studies have The SLS that

Fletcher enrolled at the shown that diversity can make Guinn Fletcher is
Massachusetts Institute of companies more profitable. working on for
Boeing.

322

Height in feet (98 m)
Tiera Guinn Fletcher was 21 when of the SLS
she became a rocket structural
design and analysis engineer. She • The SLS will be the
world’s most powerful
was born in 1995 in Mableton, rocket.
Georgia. Her mother was an • In 2024, the SLS is
accountant. Her father was a scheduled to send
construction worker. astronauts to the moon’s
unexplored South Pole. Technology (MIT). Starting in 2015,
When Guinn Fletcher was a little The mission will include
girl, she went grocery shopping with the first woman to go to she spent her summers as an intern
her family. Her mother asked her to the moon. for the Boeing company. NASA had

add up the price of groceries • It is scheduled to land hired Boeing to work on the Space
Launch System (SLS). Guinn Fletcher
18 as they shopped. She did humans on Mars in the began working on the SLS in 2016. 19
2030s.