Be Intentional, But Flexible • Dr. Ashley Huderson

(Director of Engineering Education and Outreach, ASME || DC USA)

“When I was young, someone broke into our home. A forensics team came, took fingerprints, and dusted. They were using chemistry to analyze the samples, so for me it was like, oh, I can see it. I can understand it. I like it. Fast forward two years and I met a chemical engineer who worked for the Frito-Lay plant. I thought, ‘How cool would it be if I got an endless supply of Cheetos?’ So I was going to be a chemical engineer. Then CSI came out, and I thought ‘I’m going to be a forensic scientist!’ Another title. My whole family’s like yay, confetti, we’re getting a shirt.

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My dissertation was about how steak can cause cancer and how we can use red wine to offset that cancer. How cool is that? ‘Field research’ all day. But I realized in my PhD that I didn’t want to just do science. I saw people outside the bench that had my mannerisms — I like putting on a little heel and dressing up. I transitioned from toxicology and cancer research to health policy — I saw women like me showing up to scientific conferences in Chanel heels. Then I ran health disparity clinical trials in my postdoc at Georgetown with African American, low-income women. I was 28, and these women asked me, ‘How are you doing this? We’ve never seen this before.’ And so that got me thinking: why is that the case?

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I went to HBCUs for college and grad school — this allowed me to see diverse Black people. A lot of times we’re thought of as a monolith, but I was able to see the different identities we take up. I was an adjunct professor at a small HBCU, and my students had never had a young Black woman as their teacher. So I started to dive into STEM education work — who we educate, why, and how? It tends to be white males. I’m magnifying the fact that we need to educate people of different races, genders, economic statuses, and geographic locations — my work aims to normalize their presence in the STEM space. I tell my mentees: be intentional with your path, but be flexible. It gives you the grace and permission to deviate. A little space to be human.”

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Dr. Huderson’s website: https://www.drashleychuderson.com/