Our 2021 Honorees
Chamorro/ CHamoru
Rebecca Garcia
After Rebecca Garcia earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Loyola Marymount University, she entered the University of California at Berkeley through the Pre-Ph.D. Program. “Something was off about the whole experience, but at the time I could not put my finger on exactly what it was. We weren’t undergrads obviously, but we weren’t graduate students either,” she reflected. “We were in limbo…”
Featured Honoree
Georgia Sandoval
Georgia Sandoval is often the only person in the room that looks like her. She is Diné from Tuba City, Arizona, and works as a Cloud and Enterprise Solutions Engineer at Intel. Though she’s had a few mentors in tech who are Native American, she’s in a predominantly male and white dominated field.
This has made her role in tech at times challenging.
Native Hawaiian
Kamuela E Yong
It wasn’t until his senior year of college that Dr. Kamuela Yong realized he wanted to be a mathematician. Though he’d been on the math team in high school and had always loved the discipline, “I just never really thought I could have a career in math. I had no idea what mathematicians do,” he reflected.
Choctaw
Danny Luecke
When Danny Luecke was in college, he had no idea what he wanted as a career. He entered college on a football scholarship, changed his major multiple times, and eventually landed on math and math education. After graduating and unsure what to do next, he spent a few years traveling in Europe and India, but he felt a spiritual calling to return to his childhood home in Fargo, North Dakota.