Meritocracy is the best way to get the best people, right? Surely, the best people will always win out! Sadly, our history and our present shows that’s not true. Because becoming the best isn’t a matter of raw talent and hard work. It’s about opportunities and talent development and even luck.

In this episode, host Wanda Sigur will speak with Dr. Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and Dr. Raphael Bras, Kay Harrison Brown Chair and Regents Professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech. They’ll talk about how to get more raw talent into programs, to build the capability and confidence of new engineers. And they’ll talk about why the outcomes of the US and the world economy depend on future engineering talent.

For more information about the National Academy of Engineering, please see our website.

Guest Bios

Nicole Smith is a Research Professor and Chief Economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce where she leads CEW’s econometric and methodological work. Dr. Smith has developed a framework for restructuring long-term occupational and educational projections. This framework forms the underlying methodology for a report that projects education demand for occupations in the US economy through 2030. She was the recipient of the Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Prize for outstanding research at the Master’s level at the U.W.I. and is co-recipient of the 2007 Arrow Prize for Junior Economists for educational mobility research. She received her PhD in Economics from American University in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining CEW, Dr. Smith was a faculty member in Economics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, and the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. She is a co-author of “The Inheritance of Educational Inequality: International Comparisons and Fifty-Year Trends,” published in 2007 by the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy.

Rafael L. Bras is a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He holds the K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. Previously, he was the provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering of the University of California, Irvine. Prior to joining UCI he was a professor in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. He is past Chair of the MIT Faculty, former head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering department and Director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory at MIT. Dr. Bras was a director of the American Geophysical Union. Dr. Bras has received many honors and awards, including: honorary degrees from the University of Perugia, Italy and Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico; Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award Hall of Fame member; NASA Public Service Medal; John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize; Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Award; and National Hispanic Scientist of the Year Award, Museum of Science and Industry, Tampa, Florida. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Puerto Rico, and is a corresponding member of the Mexican National Academy of Engineering and the Mexican National Academy of Sciences. He has been elected Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The data are clear: Diverse teams make better decisions 66 percent of the time, and if you include diversity of age and geography, diverse teams make better decisions 87 percent of the time. And yet, diversity in engineering itself is lacking. How do we make engineering more inclusive?

In this episode, host Wanda Sigur will speak with Megan Smith, the CEO and founder of Shift 7 and the third chief technology officer of the United States, and with Dr. Gilda Barabino, the president of the Olin College of Engineering, about how we can widen our networks and include everyone on a team. They will speak about the work required at all levels of engineering to make sure that everyone is included.

For more information about the National Academy of Engineering, please see our website.

Guest Bios

Megan Smith is an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist. CEO and founder of shift7, a company working collaboratively on systemic social, environmental and economic problems -- finding opportunities to scout and scale promising solutions and solution makers and engage proven tech-forward, open, shareable practices to drive direct impact, together. Smith served as the third U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President from 2014-2017 -- working on issues from AI, data science and open source, to inclusive economic growth, entrepreneurship, structural inequalities, government tech innovation capacity, STEM/STEAM engagement, workforce development, and criminal justice reform. Smith spent over eleven years as vice president at Google leading new business development including acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps, Picasa, she led Google.org, co-created WomenTechmakers, and SolveforX. Earlier she was PlanetOut CEO, at General Magic where she worked on early smart phones, and Apple Japan. Board member of MIT, Vital Voices, LA Olympics 2028, Think of Us; Co-founder of the Malala Fund and UN Solutions Summit; Algorithmic Justice League advisor and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Gilda A. Barabino is the second president of Olin College of Engineering. She served as Dean of the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York and held appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering as well as at the City University of New York School of Medicine. Dr. Barabino has also held academic and administrative appointments at Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University and Northeastern University. At Georgia Tech, she served as the inaugural vice provost for academic diversity, and at Northeastern, she served as vice provost for undergraduate education. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Biomedical Engineering Society. She is Board Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest interdisciplinary scientific society.

Good engineers know that nothing gets done without a team. The best teams are those with diverse points of view, working toward the same goal. But not every group of people is a team. What makes a team truly inclusive and successful?

In this episode, host Wanda Sigur will speak with Dr. Latonia Harris, senior director at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson, and Dr. Susan Fiske, head of the intergroup relations, social cognition and social neuroscience lab at Princeton University. They’ll talk about how to make a team truly work together, to synergize, and to make sure that the team’s results don’t perpetuate racial and gender bias.

For more information about the National Academy of Engineering, please see our website.