(relaxed music) - A piece of grit inside an oyster transforms over time into a beautiful pearl.

So it is with Women of True Grit.

You'll hear inspiring stories about women.

Join us as we celebrate the True Grit Sisterhood experience.

(relaxed music continues) - Hi, I'm Edie Hand, founder of Women of True Grit.

I like to tell stories about women that have gone through hard things and turned them into beautiful situations.

And like the metaphor of the pearl, it only takes a speck of grit to become a beautiful pearl.

And like women that go through irritations in life to become the person they want to be.

Coming up next is three extraordinary women of NASA.

And first is Dr. Lisa Watson-Morgan.

She is the program manager of the Human Landing System.

- I grew up here in Huntsville, Alabama, and I'm an only child.

So as an only child you have a lot of time with your parents.

And so I did.

I spent a lot of time with both parents.

And my father, he worked as a graphics illustrator, actually at the Marshall Space Flight Center for contractors.

So growing up, I had this great opportunity to see some of his sketches, whether it's a capsule or a test stand or whatever he was working on.

So I would say that I was kind of inspired or maybe immersed in space from the very beginning.

And my mom, she was just a getter-done kind of person.

She never met a challenge that scared her.

She never met anything that, she just was a really tough cookie.

And was part of a startup company, and then became the manager.

She drove a bus when I was a child to help me go to a school that they thought was better, to help afford it.

So just that kind of family.

My father really is the reason I became an engineer.

And he would tell me, he said, "You're good at math."

And the engineers that he worked with out here, he said they garnered a tremendous amount of respect.

He said, "And that's what I want for you."

And so at the time I was like, "What's an engineer?"

But of course since then I learned.

Practically most of my professors were engineers, and they were very supportive.

And once I came here to NASA, yeah, Preston Jones and then Chris Singer and Dan Dunberger.

There were so many men who said, "Hey, why don't you try this?

What about this task?"

And some of it is just giving people an opportunity.

And every day, honestly, I wake up and I think, "I get paid to do this.

And I'm so grateful."

And I am.

And when I say that, I mean, I'm truly not being cavalier.

And there are days that are incredibly hard: Holy Moly, I mean, very hard.

I don't just mean from a physics and a technical standpoint, but clearly there's a lot of environmental stakeholder, and other issues that are looming.

When you look around just at the world today, and investing in space and investing in other things, there's a lot of actions and a lot of things that we have to work to make sure that we tell the complete story of why this is important.

And it's important for many reasons.

And certainly, the technologies, If you think back to Apollo, there were many technological spinoffs that occurred.

And the world, we didn't go into it with that in mind.

And yet today we're garnering many of the benefits.

And the same will happen with Artemis.

We are preparing this building-block approach to where we're preparing to return to the Moon.

We have the space launch system and Orion that they're getting ready for their upcoming, a really, really big test very soon.

And then in a year, then Orion will have a crew.

And they will do their flight test with the crew.

And then the Human Landing System will be in orbit waiting to get the crew from Orion.

And then we will ferry the crew down to the Moon, and then they'll perform their science.

They'll collect rocks.

They'll look at the regolith.

They'll put experiments out.

There's a lot that they have to do up there to prepare for additional work in the future.

And then will return.

And we're doing this with SpaceX, but we're also doing it with other providers or industry partners.

We're doing it a little differently this time too.

These are not the traditional type of contracts we've had in the past.

Because for SpaceX, in this case, they've invested some money and the government's invested some money.

and we can leverage those resources together to go further together.

And that's critically important too, that we're developing new partnerships and new ways of doing business.

And so that'll just be our first one.

And then we have more to come.

And we'll put more assets on the Moon, learn to live and work on the Moon, which will be that great stepping stone as we go to Mars.

I think that true grid is finding your voice, being able to to hear no and yet pivot and turn it into a yes later.

I feel that it's definitely, you have to have perseverance.

Because this is the long game, and you are going to get knocked down again and again and again.

And you just have to get up and you have to keep going.

Like my mother passed away when I was 17.

And so right before my senior year of high school, it was so tough.

But I talked to high school kids about that, because they're dealing with many harsh issues.

And I'm just saying, "You can overcome.

There is a new day."

And I think when you go through something like that, you're able to put things into perspective.

And it's also just a note that every day's not going to be perfect.

This is fantastic job.

There's so much red tape sometimes and so much of bureaucracy that sometimes it can be tough.

And you just have to keep your eye on the prize, keep your eye on the positivity and where you're going.

So I would say overcoming challenges is just really key, and having that right mindset.

I'm Lisa Watson-Morgan, and I'm a Woman of True Grit.

- Coming up next is Lakiesha Hawkins.

She is the deputy manager of the Human Landing System, and understands what it takes to achieve greatness.

Here she is.

- I grew up in a family that was involved in education, and they valued education.

My father was a college professor.

My mother was a high school guidance counselor.

Incidentally, my dad wanted to be an engineer.

And he came from a little country school.

And when he got to college, they told him that his prerequisites, they weren't sufficient.

And so they steered him into business, and that's how he ended up there.

But from that, he always tried to encourage me: "Hey, listen, it is not about whether or not you are smart or whether or not you're capable.

It's about going and getting the education that you need, the experiences that you need.

There really isn't anything that you can't do."

'Cause he always lamented the fact that he didn't push through and try to find a way to get into what he really wanted to do.

One of my first mentors was my grandmother.

This is about women of true grit.

I think that she was one of the original Women of True Grit.

She was a single mom of five.

And she came along with her children, and ended up in a situation where she lost her home.

And she decided that her and her children would never be put out of their homes again.

And so she took money from a box factory job that she worked.

She saved that money.

She actually couldn't buy property herself, and so she got her brother-in-law to buy the property for her.

And she decided that she was going to farm, which she didn't know a lot about.

But she decided that she was gonna get the experience that she needed in order to be able to do that.

And she was one of the first people that talked to me about ethics and about saving and about being self-sufficient, and being able to pursue the things you need to do and be able to take care of yourself.

Early in my career, I helped develop and test engines for the Space Shuttle.

And because I was in an assembly and test environment, you're sort of out in the field.

There weren't a lot of women.

Actually, in my first assignment, there weren't any women in my environment.

And I remember going out there to the test area and asking where the restroom was.

And there were no women's restrooms in the facility in which I worked.

And so we developed a system, me and the guys; they gave me a placard sign, and when I needed to go, I carried the sign with me and hung it up on the door.

And so therefore, the restroom was mine when it was my turn.

And then I took my sign down and went on about what I needed to do.

Some of the folks that I worked with were understanding.

Those who weren't understanding, we worked our way through it.

I mean, my first manager took up a pool among the folks that we worked with for my resignation when I became pregnant with my first child.

And those are the times where you think about what you're there to do.

And you kind of don't pay attention to those around you who don't understand what you're doing, believe in what you're doing, or even think that you should be where you are.

That has allowed me and set me up to be able to talk to other women who come and ask me questions about areas within engineering that they wanna pursue.

Also, questions about how to align their home and family life with their careers.

I have had a very fortunate opportunity to be able to pursue what I love in aerospace engineering, and supporting the space industry with the fact that I have an amazing husband that is a partner and supports me.

And I have two fantastic children who appreciate me.

And they tell me sometimes: "Mama, you know you did the best you could."

I get into the day-to-day of the work that we're doing, and sometimes I have to stop myself so that I don't lose track of the significant and historic nature of what we are doing.

I am the deputy manager of the Human Landing System Program, and our program is responsible for human and American's next mission to the surface of the Moon.

That's crazy to even say, right?

So I read history books.

I read books on Apollo.

And there's parallels to what the Apollo landing was.

And similar to that, Artemis is going to be landing humans on the Moon.

But just like Artemis in Greek mythology is the sister to Apollo, we will be landing the first woman and first person of color on the surface of the Moon.

I mean, that's something to take in.

And I look around, and somehow we have a team of women leaders who are leading the charge for that mission.

And so we have several hundred NASA engineers and experts across the agency, across the country, as well as contractor partners that we're working with.

And all working together in order to make this mission a reality.

And the work that I'm focusing on right now, of course, we're in execution right now for an initial demonstration.

But we are also doing things a little bit differently from Artemis.

Now, Artemis, of course, there was the planting of the flag and the words that that we'll never forget about: "One small step for man and a giant leap for mankind."

But we are going back to stay: a sustained presence on the surface of the Moon.

We're gonna stay longer.

We're going to bring more crew.

We'll be able to bring more mass down to the surface and back up again.

And we are going to set up an infrastructure on the surface of the Moon to be able to support that longer duration and more science on the Moon.

And then that is going to set us up for the next phase where we move on to Mars, and then on to other bodies deeper into the solar system.

I think true grit means acknowledging obstacles that you may face in your life.

And that may be a function of where you come from or things that you face in your day-to-day challenges.

Or it may be a function of just what package that you show up in the world in.

You acknowledge those challenges.

But because you have set a destination that you are trying to make it towards, you focus on where you're trying to go.

And then you persevere through those challenges and through those day-to-day obstacles.

Because you know that where you're trying to go is more important to you than the things you're facing on the day-to-day.

That's my intention every day when I get up, is remembering that I am trying to set the next woman on the surface of the Moon, while being a good wife and a good mother and a good community leader.

And so knowing that the challenges and the things that I face on the day-to-day, I can make it through those things in order to be able to go to my destination.

My name is Lakiesha Hawkins and I am a Woman of True Grit.

- Our final story is about Jody Singer.

She is the director of NASA's Marshall Space and Flight Center.

The first woman to hold this position.

She's also in charge of Artemis, to put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon and beyond.

You won't wanna miss what Jody's got to say.

- I grew up in a small rural town.

And I admit, that was kind of the fun heyday.

I was a little bit of an outside girl, always out with the pets and the horses and doing things.

And looking up at the night sky.

I admit it: I've always had science and the mysteries of the universe in my mind.

Loved my first telescope looking at the planets.

So that was a definite interest that I had.

And my family, my father, my sister, my mother, and all our relatives, we lived fairly close around us.

They always knew I had that special interest.

So they pushed me along to see what I wanted to do.

And never really told me that there was anything that I couldn't do.

So I came into the world thinking, "There's a lot that I want to do.

And let's see what I want to do."

I really didn't get a lot, I guess I'd say a full science bug till probably my teachers.

And it was one of those things.

I had several good math teachers and science teachers.

And they would tell me about the different things, and it really caught my interest.

I ended up being an an engineer.

But at that point in time, I didn't know what an engineer was.

So I had to learn that.

But it's just one of those things of having that experience: science, biology, having that exposure.

I just loved it.

Probably what influenced me most of becoming an engineer was one day my mother, who was a great mentor to me, asked me to shadow a gentleman that she worked with, because I was having trouble deciding what I wanted to do.

I knew I wanted to go to college, but it was a matter of exactly what did I wanna study.

So I shadowed him one day.

And he was in industrial management.

And he and I were talking about things, and I was talking about my interests.

And he said, "Hey, I think you would really like to be an engineer."

And he goes: "Besides that, when you get outta school, don't you wanna make some money?"

And I said, "Well, I would like to.

Yeah, sure.

It'd be fun to make money and have a passion for what I do."

So just kind of fast forward, I'm enrolled in University of Alabama.

And I went there, I love football season, but I also had to learn to study.

So that's one of the things that I'd still tell all the folks.

You can go to a college and you can have some fun and you can study and you can make it, but you have to put some determination into it.

And that made a difference.

And I also had a college professor that made a big difference in my life of helping push me.

I wasn't always as at the top of the class.

And that would be the word of wisdom that I would tell everybody, is yeah, strive to be your best, work hard.

But also, it's a lot of your passion and your perseverance that you put into it.

So he gave me a lot of passion and showed me the potential of what I could do.

And that made a difference.

So when things got a little tough and I wasn't sure I was gonna make it and graduate, he gave me a lot of insight that helped push me forward.

Being the director of Marshall Space Flight Center, number one, is intimidating.

If you'd asked me, I've been at NASA for 37 years, and if you'd asked me on day one, was I gonna be center director, I probably would've said, "Well, I'm kind of looking around and the odds aren't too good that I would be it."

But I would tell you, having a team, having a team that you can count on, you become family; you become true partners.

And you balance your strengths and your weaknesses.

And what that does is have a very diverse, inclusive team that you really look and say, "Hey, let's go do some impossible work today.

Let's do some things in outer space."

And it really makes a hard job, it makes it fun.

It makes it where when you sometimes think, "Gosh, do I have what it takes to get this done?

Am I the right leader?"

You look at it and you look at the team and you look at their faces, and everyone's in your court and you're in their court.

And you're there to make each other successful.

And that makes such a big difference.

It's just doing it together.

When I think about all the hard work, the dedication across the nation, making this something that is, again, writing another chapter, it's just amazing.

And I love that the program's named Artemis, which is after the female goddess.

Apollo was the male and the female is Artemis.

And she just represents that anyone can see themselves.

And being a part of putting the first woman and the next person of color on a surface that we've never been is just amazing.

And to have them be the first is just fantastic.

And then I just know it opens up all the doors to the next things.

'Cause this is just a stepping stone.

It's the first steps.

Then we go to Moon and onto Mars and beyond, and all the systems technologies that we need.

Hopefully that just inspires the next generation, the Artemis generation to make a difference.

They see the art of the possibility, making all these new changes, the new things we do, the technology that's not even invented yet.

I just think it's just gonna open up literally the world.

My family is very proud of me.

And it means a lot when they look at me and say, "Hey, do you realize you're doing that?"

Sometimes it's kind of pinch me.

But again, I know that what they see me doing, hopefully they see a reflection of how they have supported me and made a difference.

And it makes me just very proud to know that, hopefully, maybe I'll have that effect on someone else.

That's why I love to go out and talk to different schools and talk to young women and young men and the different diversities, minorities.

And just talk to them about what they can do.

And no matter what their circumstances, there's so much that can be accomplished.

And again, no one has to do it alone.

And it's just amazing that we have that opportunity.

And I'm just really overwhelmed.

I mean, it really does.

I can get so excited about it, just thinking in a very short few months, it's just amazing.

Well, to the women that are interested in a STEM career, I would first off say, "Go for it."

There is nothing holding you back in the barriers that you set.

Make sure that you're not the one setting them for yourself.

Yeah, you have to work hard, find mentors, find things that interest you.

But the biggest thing is don't cut yourself short.

Sometimes women can be the hardest critics on themselves.

And we think if we haven't done everything or everything about a job, or haven't done everything that lines you up for a certain career, then you won't make it.

And I would just say that's not true.

Yes, you have to have definitely what it takes to get into the job.

You have to have the credentials.

But it's a lot of the passion and the soft skills and your leadership skills and your passion and your love for the work that you do and the people you work with are a key part of that, as I'd call it, the ecosystem that makes it all come together.

And I would just tell 'em: "Don't give up on your dreams.

You can do anything you want."

Yeah, and over my career and into my life, there have been things that weren't as much fun as other times.

I mentioned losing my father at an early age.

I was a daddy's girl, so that hurts.

And then you think, "Well, my whole livelihood, my whole life has been turned upside down.

How will I make a living?

How will I continue to go to college?

What will happen?

But with that, it made me have, as you said, the true grit, the determination to put the hard work in, but to work and not to give up.

And that's kind of fast forwarding when I think about many of the times being the only female in the room; looking around and going: "Wow, I'm a little different than some of the other folks."

But then sometimes you look at that and you say, "Yeah, I'm a little different.

So maybe I'm the first.

Maybe I'm a little different."

There's nothing wrong with that.

It's okay.

Somebody's gotta be first sometime.

And so to me, pushing forward, having that passion, that perseverance and having that commitment makes a huge difference.

And again, just not letting your ego get in the way.

Failure does occur, but it's what you do with that failure that turns it around, that really makes a difference.

And most things I've learned have been from most of my failures, not necessarily my successes.

The successes are fun, but you do learn a lot.

And so that's kind of paying it forward.

Telling that story and really hoping that everyone else can see too.

If I can do it, they can too.

I'm Jody Singer.

I'm the center director at Marshall Space Flight Center.

And I am a Woman of True Grit.

- Thank you for joining us on our journey with NASA's Women of True Grit.

And I hope to be sharing more of these extraordinary women's stories just for you.

We are stronger together, and we're striving for better tomorrows.

I'm Edie Hand, and I am a Woman of True Grit.

♪ There'd be no sadness to cry ♪ ♪ There'd be no selfish to lie ♪ ♪ There'd be no reason for crime ♪ ♪ There'd be no empty, no why ♪ ♪ I see it when I close my eyes ♪ ♪ Peace on earth and peace of mind ♪ ♪ Let it go ♪ ♪ We have to restore this planet's soul ♪ ♪ Teach it something more than what we know ♪ ♪ Give it water, give it sun, room to grow ♪ ♪ We can build a better tomorrow ♪ ♪ There'd be no nightmares, only dreams ♪ ♪ There'd be no evil people with angel wings ♪