Luz Martinez-Miranda

I began participating in activities that encouraged women and minorities to go into the STEM fields as a student, over thirty years ago. When the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP) was founded, I volunteered to help to attract Hispanics into the Physical Sciences. In 1999, I ran for president of the NSHP and was elected the third president and the first woman. Five years later, I was nominated and elected again. Years later I was participating in an outreach activity as part of the NSHP, and was approached by a young woman. She told me she had never seen a Hispanic woman professor in the physical sciences or in engineering! Even though her revelation was a sad one, it encouraged me to keep up the work I had begun as a student.