Georgia Tech commemorates the achievements of its women with a new permanent art installation on campus.
On March 8, Georgia Tech unveiled the new art installation Pathway of Progress: Celebrating Georgia Tech Women, located in the heart of campus near the John Lewis Student Center. There were 168 inscribed tiles presented about the installation’s inaugural honorees, and more honorees’ stories will be added annually to the 3,000 mirrored tiles. This artwork will inspire and inform visitors to campus for years to come.
The dynamic structure was created to showcase past and future Georgia Tech alumni, students, faculty, and staff who have made or will make a lasting impact at the Institute, in their field, and the world.
The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering (AE) celebrates its nine alumnae who were among the inaugural honorees, Laurie Baker, Elizabeth “Biff” Córdoba, Tiffany Davis, Yvonne Donaldson Pendleton, Lara O’Connor Hodgson, Kavya Manyapu, Jenny Moore, Anne Patterson, and Mary Wright. These pioneering women exemplify what hard work, determination and good old-fashioned grit can do. While they all followed their own path, one thing rings true for all of them, they are mavericks who boldly made their mark on Georgia Tech and the world.
Laurie Baker
Elizabeth Cordoba
Tiffany Davis
Laurie Baker (AE 1967, M.S. AE 1969)
The Early Years
Laurie Baker got her penchant for all things mechanical from her father. She always loved school and knew she would attend college because her mother regretted that she couldn’t. Aptitude tests told Baker she should go into engineering, so she researched good engineering schools. Georgia Tech struck a chord because she spent vacations in Georgia with family and heard how good of a school it was. The Florida native came to Georgia Tech in 1964.
She found aerospace engineering in a roundabout way. At first, she intended to major in math, but she wanted to do a co-op. Math didn’t offer a co-op, so she figured she’d start in aerospace and switch after the co-op. It wasn’t long before she realized that she preferred aerospace engineering. Little did she know that she would be the first female at Georgia Tech to be accepted into the co-op program. While at Tech she was active in several student organizations; she was treasurer for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, secretary of the Society of Women Engineers, and a member of the Ramblin’ Wreck Club. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Tech.
Achievements
After graduating, she relocated to Seattle, Washington, and worked as a stress analyst [where?]. She later worked for PACCAR in England and lived in for four years [doing what?], before returning to Seattle. Ultimately, she worked her way up to become vice president of PACCAR.
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Baker is currently retired from PACCAR and living in Seattle, Washington. She has stayed active with the Alumni Association and Georgia Tech.
Fun Fact: She was licensed to drive an 18-wheeler.
Elizabeth Biff Córdoba (AE 2005)
The Early Years
At an early age, Elizabeth Córdoba wanted to be an astronomer. At the tender age of nine, a “Take our Daughters to Work” visit to her father’s office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where she met astronauts and saw virtual reality simulations, ignited her passion for aerospace.
Her eyes remained skyward, and she chose Georgia Tech to pursue her degree in aerospace engineering. During her studies at Tech, she was a student researcher in the Aerospace Systems Design Lab (ASDL).
Achievements
After completing her studies at Georgia Tech, she headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to earn her master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Degrees in hand, she joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California as a systems engineer and began he journey. One standout mission was the Mars 2020, where she managed engineers who integrated the instruments for the mission’s rover, making sure it’s instruments worked together.
She received the NASA Public Achievement Medal, the JPL People Leadership Award, and the NASA Early Career Medal. She made the 2022 Class of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association 40 Under 40 as well.
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Córdoba’s dynamic aerospace engineering work continues at JPL as a principal system engineer for the Europa Clipper and the SMAP missions.
Fun Fact: Spanish is one of her other passions. Córdoba minored in Spanish at Tech and studied abroad in Spain and Mexico. She even gave a talk in Spanish at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid.
Tiffany Davis (AE 2016, M.S. CS 2021)
The Early Years
From a young age, Tiffany Davis was driven by curiosity to understand how things worked. She would dismantle electronics just to put them back together, and her idea of fun was a trip to Radio Shack. This early fascination with engineering led her to major in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. One evening, as an aerospace engineering student, she struggled with her thermodynamics homework and got to thinking about losing her financial aid. She decided then and there to write a letter to then President Barack Obama about the high cost of higher education. The letter caught President Obama's attention. He read her letter and sent a personal response. In 2015, to her surprise, he chose to travel to Georgia Tech to speak on college affordability and asked her to introduce him. It was the chance of a lifetime, and she took it. Around graduation, she retook the spotlight, with her Instagram post and #YesIAmARocketScientist. This hashtag was a declaration of her identity and a celebration of her achievements. The hashtag went viral. After earning her bachelor's degree, she continued her studies at Georgia Tech in the School of Computing, where she earned her master’s in computer science with a concentration in artificial intelligence.
Achievements
After she completed her studies, she headed to Boeing, operating commercial and national security missions as a spacecraft vehicle engineer. Davis married her passion for space and advocacy to promote STEM education in the community and founded AstroGirls, a scholarship-based program to help young girls get to NASA’s Space Camp. In 2019, Tiffany Davis was celebrated at the Black Entertainment Television’s (BET) Black Girls Rock event for her significant contributions to promoting STEM education. Her recognition at this prestigious event is a testament to her dedication and impact in the field. Like Córdoba, she is a member of the 2022 Class of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association 40 Under 40. The Latest Today, Tiffany Davis is a senior technical program manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the Satellite Ground Station Division.
Fun Fact: Davis was a track athlete, basketball player, and prom queen in high school.
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Lara Hodgson
Kavya Manyapu
Jenny Moore
Lara Hodgson (AE 1993)
The Early Years
Laura Hodgson née O’Connor was always about her business. She was born in New York but grew up in Atlanta where she flourished. In high school, the student athlete was the valedictorian of her class and earned an athletic scholarship in track at Tech. During her senior year, she was named one of the top 20 students by USA Today. She graduated at the top of her AE class and went on to the Harvard Business School where she earned her MBA in 1998.
Achievements
Hodgson's entrepreneurial spirit is evident in her diverse ventures, but she stayed connected to Georgia Tech, teaching as an adjunct instructor in finance for 10 years. In 2009, she launched Nourish, a line of spill-proof bottled water for children and ready-to-serve baby bottles. Later, she founded Insomnia LLC, an investment, development, and management company and became the executive vice president of Dunk, a performance footwear and apparel manufacturing/retail company. In 1999, she founded the Retail and Consumer Products (RCP) Division of iXL, an internet strategy and consulting firm and built it into one of the top performing groups within the company. She later became the senior vice president and general manager of the RCP Division. The group operated across 26 worldwide offices with clients such as The Home Depot, Coca-Cola, and Nike.
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Hodgson is an internationally recognized entrepreneur and speaker. In response to the challenges she faced at Nourish, collecting payments in a timely manner, Hodgson founded the NOW Corporation (NowCorp) in 2010. Her company, which offers a NOWaccount to enable rapid payments for small businesses, has since provided over $1Billion in funding. Hodgson's commitment to education is evident in her roles as Georgia Tech Foundation trustee, AE Advisory Council member, and entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School. Her dedication to sharing her knowledge and experience is a valuable contribution to the field of business.
Fun Fact: Hodgson wrote “Level Up: Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding Your Business Back” with Stacey Abrams and Heather Cabot. This book, a culmination of her experiences and insights, guides entrepreneurs to overcome the challenges that often hinder business growth.
Kavya Manyapu (AE 2006)
The Early Years
Kavya Manyapu's journey began in Hyderabad, India, where she spent her formative years. At 16, she embarked on a life-changing move to the United States. During her academic journey she earned a bachelor's from AE in 2006, a master’s from MIT in 2010, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Dakota in 2017.
Achievements
As a doctoral student, Manyapu's research led to the development and patenting of a groundbreaking self-cleaning spacesuit technology for planetary missions. Her work, which resulted in multiple patents, was not just theoretical, spacesuit samples based on her research were flown on the space station. For 10 years, Manyapu worked on the CST-100 Starliner human-rated spacecraft at Boeing, performing several critical roles, including Starliner space lead and flight test director for Starliner's Flight Test and Crew Operations. Manyapu's expertise was further recognized when she was appointed mission evaluation room manager for the space station, which required her to oversee and coordinate critical mission evaluations. Her research has been featured in The Economist, Popular Science Magazine, New Scientist, and Maker Magazine.
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Manyapu is currently the lunar surface operations technical assistant at NASA for the Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA), Robotics and Crew Operations Division at Johnson Space Center and supports Flight Operations and Training for Exploration EVAs (spacewalks and spacesuits) on the Artemis Program. In addition to being an adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Aerospace Sciences, she is also a 2nd Lt. in the Civil Air Patrol. She serves as a Visual Flight Rules pilot and aerospace officer. On top of her research, she motivates students to pursue careers in STEM. She founded a nonprofit Passion-2-Purpose Inc. to educate and empower the next generation and initiated “Project Shakthi" to educate underprivileged children in India by climbing high-altitude mountains and conducting exploratory expeditions.
Fun Fact: Manyapu is an avid scuba diver, private pilot, and an Indian classical dancer.
Jenny Moore (AE 2005)
The Early Years
Throughout her childhood, Jenny Moore née Lentz dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot and astronaut. The adventurous girl wanted to go fast and knew that flight could make that happen. She chose Georgia Tech because of its reputation in aviation. While at Tech, she was a member of the Georgia Tech Track and Field team, and the Institute’s first female Swimming and Diving team. Tech made her push herself beyond her limits, but she recognized the need to network and seek assistance to be successful.
Achievements
Moore enlisted in the United States Navy in 2005, starting as a nuclear power instructor and moving from student naval aviator to F/A-18 Superhornet pilot to Lt. commander Third Fleet Maritime Air Operations. One of her missions as a Navy F/A-18 pilot on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson (CVN-70) in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan stood out. En route, ISIS began a wide-reaching terror campaign, and the aircraft carrier was rerouted to the Persian Gulf where Moore and her squadron spent the entirety of the deployment flying combat missions in Iraq and Syria. She honorably served for 14 years. In 2017, Moore made history as the first female F-35 civilian instructor pilot. She was responsible for all aspects of F-35 pilot training, from maintaining full mission simulators to academic lectures, to future training development. She also served as the Third Fleet Maritime Air Operations commander, further solidifying her position as a trailblazer in the aviation field. In 2019, Moore demonstrated her leadership and initiative by establishing the United States Marine Corps F-35 training at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. Moore is a member of the 2021 Class of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association 40 Under 40.
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For over two years, Moore has been working in training and operation support at Lockheed Martin in Tennessee. In this role, she applies her extensive experience in aviation to support the training and operations of the company, contributing to the development of future aviation technologies.
Fun Fact: Her call sign is “Juno”, and in 2020 Warrior Canine Connection (WCC) named one of its puppies in honor of her accomplishments. WCC is a nonprofit that teaches service members with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury the skill of training service dogs to be partnered with veterans with visible and invisible wounds of war.
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Anne Patterson
Yvonne Pendleton
Mary Wright
Anne Patterson (AE 1971, M.S. AE 1975)
The Early Years
Anne Patterson is a distinguished Georgia Tech legacy student, inspired by her father's attendance at the same institution. Despite warnings about the challenging environment for women at the time, she pursued her dream and applied only to Georgia Tech, where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering. Following her passion for medicine, she obtained her medical degree from Emory University’s School of Medicine and completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Emory. Additionally, she enriched her education by studying at the University of Oxford where she specialized in fetal physiology.
Achievements
Numerous pioneering roles and significant contributions have marked her career path. After earning her degree, she worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, focusing on propulsion systems for small astronomy satellites, and later at Lockheed-Martin, where she played a key role in designing wing structures for the C-5 Galaxy military cargo aircraft.
In her medical career, she became a faculty member in gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University, conducting important fetal research at the Yerkes Primate Research Center. She then joined Northside Hospital in Atlanta as their first maternal-fetal specialist. Her expertise earned her the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Foundation Research award, the only recipient from Georgia.
In 2010, she founded Women’s Telehealth, which transformed the delivery of maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) care through telemedicine, enhancing MFM access for women in underserved communities.
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Currently, Dr. Patterson is the CEO of Women’s Telehealth and serves as a Mentor in Residence for AE.
Fun Fact: One of her favorite quotes comes from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe and it’s written on a poster that hangs in her office that depicts mountain climbers on Mt. Everest. "Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." A former colleague from NASA gave it to her and it has always inspired her.
[KG1]Link
Yvonne Donaldson Pendleton (AE 1979)
The Early Years
Yvonne Pendleton, née Donaldson, grew up in Key West, Florida, with the Kennedy Space Center as her stage, watching the Apollo rockets launch from her backyard. At the tender age of 10, she wanted to work at NASA and study the stars. Her sister was her first mentor, and she encouraged her to follow her dreams. She came to AE in 1979 to do just that. In her final year at Tech, NASA-Ames Research Center (ARC) recruited and paid for her to earn her master’s at Stanford University in 1981. While working at ARC and studying, she discovered their Space Science Division. She loved their work with the Voyager and the Pioneer mission. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics in 1987.
Achievements
During her 27-year tenure at ARC, Pendleton's leadership was instrumental in shaping the Space Science and Astrobiology Division. She held several key roles, including director of the Lunar Science Institute and NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). Her leadership at SSERVI supported research on fundamental questions related to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos, and the space environments near them. Her retirement in 2021 marked the end of a remarkable career.
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Today, Pendleton continues her journey as a professor of physics at the University of Central Florida. Her personal research is a quest for the cosmic origins of life, exploring the mysteries hidden in a grain of interstellar dust.
Fun Fact: She has an asteroid named after her that orbits the sun, 7165 Pendleton. This is a rare honor in the field of astronomy.
Mary Wright (AE 1964, M.S. AE 1965, Ph.D. AE 1970)
The Early Years
Trailblazer Mary A. Wright, née Jackson was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. She was exposed to the engineering field through her brother Don Jackson, who worked as an assistant to civil engineers who built the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) in her hometown, Tullahoma, Tennessee. She was determined to study aerospace engineering and chose Georgia Tech. She made the dean’s list because she wanted to be the best in her class. She earned a scholarship to cover the last two years of her bachelor’s degree. She spent a summer working at AEDC as an engineering aid despite Tech’s rule at the time prohibiting women from participating in co-ops. After she graduated from Tech, she worked at NASA Langley Research Center to analyze data. She returned to Georgia Tech through the financial support of the Amelia Earhart Fellowship. She also held assistantships to cover the costs of her doctorate. Her interests were in fluid mechanics, and she was highly respected for her research and work on jets in crosswinds.
n 2013, she was featured in the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Living History program where she shared what it was like as a Georgia Tech student and her challenges as a woman.
Achievements
She worked for the Allison Division of General Motors in Indianapolis and then for Westinghouse Fluid Systems Lab in West Lafayette, Indiana. Then she moved into academia and became a tenured associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology at Purdue University. She later taught at the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. The Latest
Today
Mary A. Wright is enjoying her retirement in Johnson City, Texas, near her son.
Fun Fact: She was also an interior designer and participated in several decorator showhouses in Birmingham.
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Pathway of Progress Opens
The inscribed mosaic fabric stretches across the site in three areas, beginning wrapped around a spiral contemplative bench dedicated to the history of women at Tech. Emerging from the ground, it spans across the site and main pedestrian spine, presenting the voices of women from Tech — graduates who have made a significant impact in their field since leaving campus. And as the tribute reaches above the John Lewis Student Center, it inspires visions for future Georgia Tech women.
First AE Alumnae Share the Secrets of Their Success
The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering salutes the first women at Georgia Tech to earn graduate degrees in aerospace engineering: Laurie L. Baker (BSAE 1967, MSAE 1968), Joyce E. Carpenter (BSAE 1972, MSAE 1978), C. Anne Patterson (BSAE 1971, MSAE 1975), and Mary A. Wright (BSAE 1964, MSAE 1966, and Ph.D. AE 1970).