February Breakfast Meeting Keynoter:
Dr. Judith Iriarte-Gross
Professor of Chemistry and Director, Women In STEM Center
Middle Tennessee State University
With the Right Shoes
“I love shoes, don’t you? Shoes take us right where we want to go.”
With the right shoes, anything is possible.
Dr. Judith Iriate-Gross, recipient of the first Rutherford ATHENA International Leadership Award in 2014, will share with us what she’s learned about leadership as she’s walked her own road to ATHENA recognition.
The ATHENA Leadership Model identifies the traits of the ideal leader as “authentic self, relationships, giving back, collaboration, courageous acts, learning, fierce advocacy, celebration and joy.”
Dr. Iriate-Gross remembers vividly a key question her first mentor asked her Upward Bound high school class. Mentor and teacher Joe Clair asked each class member what they would buy with a gift of $100.
The boys immediately answered: Tickets to sports events.
The girls immediately answered: Shoes.
Shoes was the answer Joe Clair was looking for---the means to transport us from here to there.
Dr. Iriate-Gross says it’s the knowledge she gained as an Upward Bound student----aka her “right shoes”---that started her on her journey to a Ph. D. in chemistry. She sees gold shoes as representative of "authentic self,” and black and white saddle shoes as the right shoes for lessons learned as a young student. And of course, dancing shoes are necessary for celebration and joy.
Wearing the right shoes at the right times in our lives is critical to take each of us where we want to go on the journey to leadership, to “becoming Athena.”
About Dr. Judith Iriate-Gross
Dr. Iriarte-Gross earned a B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of South Carolina. Before joining Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) in 1996, she worked as a chemist for the FDA and as a chemist and lab manager in the plastics industry.
In 1996, Dr. Iriarte-Gross started the first Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) in Tennessee, which has served more than 6800 girls. EYH introduces middle and high school girls to STEM role models and mentors through hands-on, girls-only workshops. Today Tennessee is the home to two EYH conferences: Memphis and Murfreesboro, with future conferences being planned for East Tennessee and Chattanooga. In 2007, Dr. Iriarte-Gross was awarded a National Science Foundation grant titled A Dissemination Project To Increase Girls Raised in Tennessee Science (GRITS). In 2009, she was named director of the MTSU Women In STEM (WISTEM) Center, the only such Center in Tennessee for girls and women in STEM.
Dr. Iriarte-Gross is nationally known for her advocacy for encouraging girls and women in the sciences. She is involved in local and national programs which support the recruitment, retention and graduation of girls and women in STEM education and careers. She is faculty advisor of the MTSU Women In Science and Engineering (WISE) student organization and WISE Living and Learning Community.