The Women of Color STEM Conference celebrated quite a few winners of its prestigious Outstanding Technical Contribution Award at the Gala last fall.

Dr. Jessica J. Marquez, a human systems engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, was recognized for her contributions in developing tools for people who support human space exploration, including trainers, flight controllers, and astronauts.

Fereshteh Morgan, a Boeing Associate Technical Fellow in the top 4 percent of the 60,000 scientists and engineers at Boeing, has spent 20 years generating cutting-edge software, technical roadmaps, and new processes to cover more than $1 billion worth of innovative products that are orbiting space, flying in the sky, stationed on the ground, and autonomously roaming our oceans.

Also in the industry category was Virginia Mayo, a Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM and IBM Senior Certified IT Specialist.

Mayo serves as a Solution Architect for Risk-based Continuous Patch and Chief Engineer for Global Security Patch Management in IBM Global Technology Services.

She joined IBM after graduating with two degrees in Computer Engineering and Information Technology from New Jersey Institute of Technology, a leading university in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.

Her first major achievement was to take a disjointed program of work on security patch management and turn it into a cohesive program for IBM Global Technology Services.

She also introduced consistency, which allowed pooling of resources. The view was not immediately accepted since this was not the way things have “always been done,” but Mayo was persistent in her quest for transformation.

This work has driven savings of thousands of hours throughout the IBM corporation and continues to do so under Mayo’s leadership.

Mayo has also pioneered technology improvements in server provisioning technologies. She is known for innovating new solutions to drive convergence on a global, best of breed global standard.

All of Mayo’s innovations have delivered proven business results and supported signature client wins. As a Senior Technical Staff Member, she serves in one of the highest non-executive technical leadership roles in IBM.