Mrs. Nan Mattai: More Than A Parking Spot (Part II)

    In 1993, Mattai and her family moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where Mattai accepted a position as a software engineer at Rockwell Collins in a newly developed department, Data Links. Mattai continued to stretch herself and traveled frequently throughout the world meeting customers and discussing innovative solutions to business problems. In 2001, Mattai was promoted to Vice President of Engineering for one of the company's business segments. This role required Mattai to assume leadership of 1,500 engineers. In recognition of her ongoing excellence in both the technical and leadership areas, in 2004, Mattai was promoted to her current position, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Technology, reporting to Chairman, President, and CEO Clay Jones. Mattai now manages the company's engineering workforce, which is one-third of the company's 20,000 employees. Mattai's role requires significant external interface and public speaking on the importance of STEM education and innovation. Mattai's advice to those interested in pursuing a career in mathematics is "to take on challenging assignments and stretch beyond your comfort zone, deliver results that exceed expectations, and seek out mentors in the field."

    Mattai loves to travel and cook. Though she has visited much of the world, Mattai is still mesmerized by the beauty of other countries. Although Mattai failed to mention her numerous awards for leadership, technical excellence, and innovation, she continues to be an inspiration for others. Named as the 2010 Women of Innovation, Mattai is clearly more interested in making a difference than winning awards.

    Mattai's focus on hard work, excellence, and innovation has helped her succeed in numerous positions, while her leadership skills and accomplishments have gained her respect, and an elite parking spot. Mattai's philosophy of "if you keep at your goals you will get what you want" has brought her to remarkable heights. The lesson her parents instilled in her – "there are no boundaries to what one can accomplish" – is now being nurtured and instilled in others, as Mattai continues to educate and encourage, specifically young women, to follow their dreams, break down barriers, and join the workforce in math and science related fields.

Mrs. Nan Mattai: More Than A Parking Spot (Part I)

I gazed down from the third story of my mother's office building looking at the reserved parking spots. Wow, I remember thinking, it would be impressive to have a reserved spot. As I read the names of the "important people" listed upon the markers for each spot, I realized that only one of the spots belonged to a female. At Rockwell Collins engineering is key, so this fact did not surprise me, but as I asked my mother about this woman, she simply smiled and began to tell me about this well respected colleague, Nan Mattai. I was impressed with what I heard and wanted to meet Mattai.

A while ago, I was serving as a volunteer coordinator at a regional competition designed to encourage future engineers, when Mattai walked through the door. I realized this was a perfect opportunity to introduce myself to Mattai. Apparently, surprised by the respect and admiration I demonstrated, Mattai gave me a pleasurable nod. Recently, I had the opportunity to learn what an outstanding role model Mattai is for all young women as well as a prime example of someone living her American dream.

Born in Georgetown, Guyana as the third child of seven children, Mrs. Mattai learned the importance of education at a young age. Raised in a middle class family, where neither parent possessed a college degree, they realized an education was the best thing they could provide for Mattai and her siblings. Mattai distinctly remembers her mother saying, "An education is better than silver and gold." Mattai was competitive with her brothers, so when they chose math and science classes, she signed up for advanced math and science classes. Intrigued by math and its applications at an early age, Mattai would add up the cost of items in her mother's grocery cart when shopping. As she grew older, Mattai learned more about science and applied mathematics and Madame Curie became an inspiration to her. Because Curie was the first woman to earn the Nobel Prize for Science, Mattai established her career aspiration of becoming a scientist and researcher in math and physics.

    After graduating with a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Guyana at the top of her class, Mattai received the President's medal and pushed onward to accomplish her dream. With consistent encouragement from her parents, Mattai earned a masters degree in nuclear physics from the University of Windsor in Canada. The transition to Canada was, however, difficult as Guyana was a melting pot of many cultures who worked on sugar plantations in a warm climate. Due to her Indian descent, Mattai stood out because of both her appearance and her speech. With perseverance, Mattai overcame challenges and took advantage of the plethora of scientific instruments and equipment to further her learning. Mattai's work was very well respected and she was honored with her photograph on the Guyana postage stamp.

    Mattai's perfectly planned future went astray due to "life's circumstances." While in school at the University of Windsor, Canada, her oldest son was born, a premature baby weighing just 4 pounds 13 ounces. With her husband still in school, no immediate family to help out, and day-care unaffordable for two students, Mattai remembered her parents' words, "Family comes first." As a result, Mattai left her doctorate program to care for her new son.

    When the time came to restart her career, Mattai considered her options and decided to apply what she knew to make a difference in engineering and math. Mattai's first engineering job, at Magnavox Electronics in Southern California was as a software engineer. Doing what she loves – continuous learning – Mattai learned about Global Positioning Systems, a move that would prove beneficial for her future. Moving up the management ranks, Mattai began to focus on helping other technical contributors while enhancing her own skill set.

Don’t Get My Sister Involved

    In the last months I have been working on a project to incorporate a volunteer club into the elementary school I attended. The project has been slow as I continue to run into problems. The first is contacting. When I contact the principal of a school I would expect a response and some sort of action, but not in this situation. He kept telling me he would take care of something then would pass it off to someone else's responsibility. I even showed up for a meeting (not going to my classes to do so) and he ended up not coming. Supposedly he had another meeting he didn't know about. Aren't principals supposed to be responsible?

    Well as I finally got the approval for my project ideas, an e-mail was sent out to the Gibson staff asking if they would help with my ideas and facilitate the project. My sister still goes to that school, but she barely knows anything about what I'm doing. She does know that she wants to participate however. A day after the letter was sent out a teacher made quite a rude comment to her. They told her that it's nice what I'm trying to do and all, but they believe there are plenty of programs for the students to volunteer in. The teacher then proceeded with making a list of all the charity things students can do.

    When my sister relayed this message to me it broke my heart. I'm trying to do something good here and teachers are not only tearing apart my ideas, but my sister in the process too. My sister asked if I'd wait a year to do anything since she moves on to middle school next year. Of course this is not what I want to do, as I want to make a difference now. The part that gets me even more upset is that my sister, who has nothing to do with any of this, is getting ridiculed. She doesn't deserve this. I used to respect this teacher tremendously, and with a few words from my sister about her, all respect is lost. If she has something mean to say about my program talk to me, not my sister. I worked hard to put everything together and if the school leadership team approved, I think everything is worth it.

Maybe someday all the people I ever knew will be encouraging. But for the time being I just need to keep reminding myself, "If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway."

Differences Solve Mysteries

    I vividly remember standing over my grandmother's bed, tears pouring down my face, as she took her final breaths of air. Just like many others, her life, too, was cut short because of cancer. All throughout the world, scientists are frantically trying to find a cure for the ferocious disease before it takes any more lives. One such researcher may have found it.

    Just recently published, a researcher in southern Ecuador, may have found the cure to cancer and diabetes – dwarfism. In a city where cancer rates our high, the one-hundred dwarfs that live there have not developed signs of cancer or diabetes. After studying these people for twenty-five years, Dr. Geuvara has come to a conclusion. The mutation that causes dwarfism, may also prevent cancer.

    A few years ago at University of Southern California, the same finding was found, but in mice. This confirms what many believed. With this information, drugs can be made sooner, trials can be performed, and more lives can be saved. But what if these drugs don't work? I am an optimistic person, but still, what's next? Do we have a plan "B" for all of those people who have put their trust in us, or are we going to start mutating genes so everyone is a dwarf?

    Then comes the next question. Would you want to be a dwarf for your whole life and be guaranteed to not have cancer? Or would you rather roll the dice and take your chances? Dwarfs don't live as long, but cancer puts many through a lot of pain. Either way this is a huge finding and needs to be expanded upon.

    We may have the dream of solving the problems of cancer within our fingertips, we just need to jump and grab it with our hands.

Click here for the link about the finding.

Stunning Tragedy

    A week ago I was running with my friend and she was talking about how one of her close friends was doing drugs. It's really sad considering this kid is really awesome and friendly towards everyone. We both agreed it was only a matter of time before he got caught. The following day when my friend came over to my house, she told me about how he did get caught, along with others at a show choir competition.

    Our school's show choir is really good. The students in show choir work incredibly hard and pretty much dedicate their lives to what they do. Don't get me wrong, it's horrible that they lost part of their choir because some people made some poor decisions, especially during a weekend of a big competition, but in a sense, it's good.

    Looking at the positive in this situation, these kids now have the chance to turn their lives around. For some of them this will happen before they apply for college. For others it will teach them a lesson before they get to college next fall. And for the rest, they are too addicted and will most likely end up doing drugs for the rest of their life. (This is a really sad reality.) In all sincerity, however much hurt this may have caused within the show choir and the parents who found out their children doing drugs, it will lead to change.

    Throughout life we all have decisions to make. We can do things that we know we shouldn't do. We can choose friends, we know really aren't true friends. But through all these decisions, there's a lesson to be learned. We're all going to make mistakes, whether big or small and we're going to have to live with our mistakes as others hold us accountable for them.

    The school's varsity show choir had to change their whole show to make up for the fact that some participants are banned from participating. For something the choir has spent the last year on preparing, this is amazing and an applause needs to go to these participants. Even though many of them have no idea, they all learned a very valuable lesson, decisions will decide who one is and will become.

Switching Trails

New people step into my life daily. The predictability of the way these people could change my life is not known until later. However, every person I meet has a chance to change the way I think about my life. It is the people who change other lives that I really respect. These such stories are some of the best I have ever heard.

    One such person who has had his life changed for the better is my pastor (we will call him P for the purposes of this blog). P grew up in Oklahoma and was total red neck. He played football for his high school and that was pretty much what he surrounded his life on. P didn't believe in God, in fact he thought that the people who went to church were just plain stupid. In the town P grew up in he made many bad decisions. P didn't respect his peers and quite frankly thought he was the hot shot of the school.

    As P grew older he received a full ride scholarship to the University of Nebraska to play football. Many people believed he would make it big time and even possibly to the NFL someday. The more P played, the worse his knees got. It wasn't until his 5^th surgery that the doctor told him he would no longer be able to play football anymore. His entire world was crushed.

    At this very time, someone stepped into his life. They were two people that lived in his dorm that decided to confront him and introduce him to God. P took pride in the fact that he had never known God. He told his football team he had been to church five times – twice for weddings and three times for funerals. But the two people who stepped into P's life, changed his mind. Mesmerized by the stories and the power of God, P began going to church. He changed his own world around for the better.

    With bad legs and a football career behind him, P had to make some decisions for his future. Due to the power of God that was brought into his life, P decided to become a pastor. Through a path of twists and turns and switching trails, P is currently the youth pastor at my church. After having a long discussion with P the other night, I realized something. Blowing his knee out for the 5^th time was the best thing that ever happened to him. He is now the best pastor I have ever had. He is entertaining, and I truly believe he is part of the reason teenagers who wouldn't normally go to church are still coming.

    As I try to do community service projects in my community, I realize what a large factor my pastor plays in helping others. To say the least, he has changed the lives of many. If it wasn't for the two men in his dorm who saw potential in him, for something other than his athleticism, P wouldn't have made the impact he has made in those lives. Someday I hope to meet someone who opens my eyes up to a hidden talent, currently blinded from my view.