Diana Albarrán Chicas

Diana Albarrán Chicas is currently Director, Cost and Schedule, and Director, Internal Research & Development, at Maxar Technologies, where she is responsible for the integrity of proposals and the development of future space technologies. There are days that she still cannot believe that she influences the technical designs of spacecrafts that are launched into space. Albarrán Chicas is also the Co-founder of the Latinas in STEM Foundation, the Co-founder of LISTAS, and served as an Advisor to Latina SciGirls, a PBS Kids show that exposes elementary and middle-school girls to STEM careers.

She was born in Mexico and came to the United States under her parents’ vision of a better life for their children. She was the first one in her family to graduate from high school and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Albarrán Chicas has been awarded the Science & Technology Emerging Leader Award by Silicon Valley Latino and the Rising Star Award by HITEC. She was featured as a New Guard of STEM Stars by Vanity Fair in 2016, named a Women in STEM Honoree by Girlstart in 2016, a 2015 Woman of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, a 2014 KQED Latina Local Hero, and one of the "Top 20 Latinos in Tech" by CNET. She has also been featured as a Latina Leader by NBCLatino, Cosmo Latinas, Latino Leaders magazine; has had media appearances on Univision, PBS, and BBC Radio; and has spoken at Harvard and MIT.