Meet Another NASA “Hidden Figure”: Cynthia Vernón, PhD: Mathematician, Microbiologist, and NASA Trailblazer
Cynthia Vernón (right) and daughter Carla Vernón (left). Credit: Carla Vernón
Cynthia Vernón grew up in the segregated South of New Orleans, Louisiana. In the 1960s, after graduating from Xavier University, she applied for a job at NASA’s Data Processing Center in Slidell. She became the first Black employee driving programming for Chrysler’s data engineers. She’d never seen a mainframe computer before, but she studied the manual, just like her colleagues in the Academy Award-winning film, “Hidden Figures.” What’s most astonishing about Vernón’s accomplishment is that her family didn’t know about her trailblazing past until recently. Vernón speaks candidly about her amazing journey and what is owed to those who weren’t afforded the same opportunities.
Reported by Juleyka Lantigua.
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