Women's Innovations
NCWI showcases the forgotten achievements of women innovators through educational platforms.
09/06/2024
NCWI is thrilled to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage month as we salute Dr. Diaz-Merced’s extraordinary impact as a blind Astro-physicist! https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://thezebra.org/2024/09/05/turning-blindness-into-an-asset/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTMjQwNzY1NTkyMTc2NzY5NTA0NjIaN2YzYWE4ZjY2NTg1NzJjNjpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AOvVaw0n_fjZKxjb-xpC5K5bpISF. Discover more extraordinary women , , , -merced
Turning Blindness into An Asset Alexandria, VA - I bet you never heard of her, but Wanda Díaz-Merced changed our understanding of the Universe through sound. She is an amazing scientist
08/26/2024
Today, Aug.26, 2024, marks 104 years since women secured the right to vote—a monumental victory for equality! But the fight isn’t over. Women are still underpaid and underrecognized for their incredible contributions.
Did you know women gave us WiFi, GPS, windshield wipers, cataract surgery, computers, rocket fuel, dishwashers, home security, reclining shampoo chairs, and so much more?
At the National Center of Women's Innovations (NCWI), we’re on a mission to change the narrative and inspire the next generation of female innovators. Join us in celebrating Women’s Equality Day by contributing $10.40 or more. Your support will help girls learn about their foremothers and gain hands-on STEM experience.
✨ Donate today to help us continue the legacy of women who’ve changed the world: womensinnovations.org/donate-to-ncwi/
Alexandria Celebrates Women Visit Alexandria VA Visit Del Ray ALXWEBA-West End Business Association
08/14/2024
Exciting opportunity to be inspired by Virginia Tech’s Women in Industry symposium including women leaders in Google, Boeing and finance , and a most diverse female alumni base . Joined by NCWI guide Lynn Kehoe with new VT. Center of Innovation in background .
08/07/2024
So proud to announce that Dr. Gladys West, our inaugural woman innovator, will have an elementary school named for her in Fredricksburg , Va! Dr. West, you are on our map! https://www.fredericksburgfreepress.com/2024/08/05/trailblazing-figure-officially-on-the-map-at-city-elementary-school/. Learn more about Dr West womensinnovations.org , ,
Trailblazing 'figure' officially on the map at city elementary school - Fredericksburg Free Press The Fredericksburg City School Board voted 4-1 to recommend 'Gladys West Elementary School' as the name for the former Walker-Grant building.
It's hard to imagine the time before computers were a household staple, but it wasn't so long ago that they were reserved for the Military and spoke to each other only in code. Thanks Grace Hopper, they speak to us in English (or any other language) and are ubiquitous in our society.
Learn More: https://womensinnovations.org/women-innovator/grace-brewster-murray-hopper/
As an assistant to a noted fertility researcher, Miriam Friedman Menkin spent years extracting eggs from a woman’s tissues and uniting them with a swim team of s***m in a petri dish in the hopes that conception might actually occur outside the human body.
One day in 1944, it actually did – ushering in a whole new era of reproductive technology known today as IVF.
Circumstances conspired to keep her from a PhD in biology to bolster her status and a consistent laboratory to do her work, but Menkin’s under-recognized achievement was remarkable, one that thousands of families since the days of Baby Louise have to be thankful for.
Learn more: https://womensinnovations.org/wom.../mirian-friedman-menkin/
07/18/2024
The NCWI thinks and acts outside the box to fulfill its mission to transform the number of women in STEM. That means we creatively outreach for funding including sending our proposals for funding wrapped as gifts thanks to the teamwork of
our supporters. Help us fund our STEM programs that excite girls using women innovators as their role models. www.womensinnovations.org , ,
07/09/2024
The VP and Executive Director of VT Innovation Campus , Alexandria's Mayor, the President of the Washington School for Girls, and the Founder and Board Chair of NCWI were mighty excited about the Big Reveal. The Dr. Gladys West Traveling Exhibit is coming alive. Learn details.https://womensinnovations.org/women-innovators-homepage/ncwi-exhibit/.
Virginia Tech Washington School for Girls Mayor Justin Wilson Dr. Gladys B. West
🇺🇸 Happy July 4th! 🇺🇸
You might be familiar with the song “Rocket Man,” but have you ever heard of 🚀 “Rocket Girl?” 🚀 That’s the title of a book written about Mary Sherman Morgan, who grew up in a poor farming household in North Dakota and didn’t attend school until she was nine years old. In an age where girls rarely dreamed of a career in science, she wanted to be a chemist. She eventually attended college, but did not get a degree. But she was a whiz 💡 at what she did, which was making explosives. 💥
In 1957, she invented the liquid fuel Hydyne, which powered the Jupiter-C rocket that boosted America’s first satellite, Explorer I. She is an overlooked heroine of this country’s space program – in part overshadowed by the reputation of Werner von Braun, and in part due to her own reticence to claim the limelight.
Learn more: https://womensinnovations.org/women-innovator/mary-sherman-morgan/
Get the book: “Rocket Girl: The story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America’s First Female Rocket Scientist.” https://a.co/d/02ulv7OR
06/21/2024
Another example of a woman inventor being overlooked by history! Hooray for Martha Matilda Harper and launching modern franchising so poor women could be empowered .
Council Post: Lessons From The Inventor Of The Franchise Model The support from a franchise network is powerful: sharing knowledge, best practices and creating a supportive network comes back in spades for your own success.
06/19/2024
Women have always been critical to the world . As Dr. Gladys West’s mapping of the world enabled GPS, so this British woman’s mapping enabled D Day!
05/30/2024
** May 15th was an amazing day! **
The National Center of Women's Innovations NCWI and Rosie Riveters delivered the first Dr. Gladys B. West GPS Stem Challenge at the Washington School for Girls
NCWI is on a mission to help contemporary girls be more likely to pursue STEM fields, by experiencing hands-on STEM programs related to women's innovations.
The 3rd-5th graders at the Washington School for Girls say this program made a difference!
- Before: 11% of the girls were interested in STEM studies
- After: 64% stated "They Might Do It"
Learn More: https://womensinnovations.org/k-12-stem/
With Washington School for Girls – we just got recognized as one of their top fans! 🎉
What an honor to be working with such an effective school of learning which continues to mentors its “girls” through life !
05/20/2024
So proud of NCWI’s Vice Chair BK Fulton . Recently honored once again ! https://www.facebook.com/share/2CZGb4bCK4cNHsvz/?mibextid=WC7FNe
What to know about Wilmington's N.C. Black Film Festival and its visitor from Wu-Tang Clan The 21st annual N.C. Black Film Festival opens May 15 and runs through May 19 at six Wilmington venues.
🫀 Cardiac surgery🫀is one of the most physically demanding of all medical fields, one not often chosen by women, even today. Imagine, then, what it was like in the middle of the 20th century, when a young doctor named Nina Starr Braunwald became the ** first female cardiothoracic surgeon**. 👩⚕️ 🩺
She is celebrated for the design of the first prosthetic mitral valve and a cloth-covered mechanical valve which was implanted in thousands of patients.
In 1960, at the age of 32, she led the operative team that implanted the first successful artificial mitral human heart valve replacement, which she had designed and fabricated. ❤️🩹 🩻
She endured gender discrimination and was never promoted to full professor by the academic institutions that employed her, including Harvard Medical School and The National Institutes of Health.
And yet, her innovative work inspired countless women to pursue surgery as a career. 👩⚕️ 🩺 Several prestigious awards for women surgeons bear her name. 🏆🥼
05/14/2024
NCWI is thrilled that Dr. Gladys Brown West, the first woman innovator featured at our 2023 Inaugural Gala for her role in enabling GPS, just received Virginia Tech's Distinguished Achievement Award at its commencement ceremonies. Bravo to Dr. Timothy Sands, University President and his team for traveling to the West home to place the award around her neck! What a way to recognize her world changing role and salute her as a Hokie. Learn more about Dr. West on our website. www.womensinnovations.org . Gladys West
05/07/2024
NCWI is always on the lookout to outreach to all groups to make sure they know about us, and our eagerness to partner together , assuring our searchable data file will have every female innovator on it. Kudos to Jane Plitt, Board Chair for introducing NCWI to several groups in front of the US Patent Office today. Nominate your innovator on our website www.womensinnovations.org
05/04/2024
Thrilled to welcome Ilana Esterrich, CFO -Planned Parenthood of America, to our Board as Treasurer. She brings decades of executive strategic know-how that will only propel us higher. Check her vita out www.womensinnovations.org ://www.facebook.com/ilana.esterrich
05/02/2024
May is National Inventors Day and it’s a month full of big plans to showcase forgotten women innovators and to inspire young girls with the launch of our Empowering Innovation Series . It will begin at the Washington School for Girls May 15, 2024 . Yesterday Brittany Greer, Exec. director of RosieRiveters and Jane Plitt, NCWI Board chair met up with School leadership assuring “We Can Do it!” Be in touch! www.womensinnovations.org https://www.facebook.com/wmsgdc
How far is it from one galaxy to another? The discovery of how to effectively measure vast distances to remote galaxies is the legacy of a great American female astronomer, Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Her work led to a monumental shift in our understanding of the scale and nature of the universe.
As a student at Radcliffe College she worked at Harvard College Observatory, measuring photographic plates to catalog the positions and brightness of the stars. (As an early 20th century woman, she was not allowed to operate a telescope.) Prior to her discovery of the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables (referred to as Leavitt’s Law), the only techniques available to astronomers for measuring the distance to a star were based on stellar parallax, which can only be used for measuring distances out to several hundred light years. Her discovery became a measuring stick with vastly greater reach.
So the next time you contemplate the distance between galaxies, think of Henrietta Swan Leavitt – an innovator for the ages.
04/25/2024
💜THANK YOU💜THANK YOU💜THANK YOU
for ALL of you that Contributed to our Spring2action Day of Giving! It is NOT too late to support THE NATIONAL CENTER OF Women's Innovations NCWI's stem programming for girls .
💜DONATE HERE💜 https://womensinnovations.org/donate/
04/24/2024
* DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT -- EVERY DONATION WILL BE MATCHED on APRIL 24th **
For centuries, women's inventions have gone unrecognized and undervalued.
The National Center of Women's Innovations (NCWI), founded and based in Alexandria, VA, is changing that with hands-on STEM programs for girls of all backgrounds. With our teaching tools, girls' career paths will quadruple in pay and world impact.
www.spring2action.org/organizations/national-center-of-women-s-innovation
NCWI, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is also creating a searchable data base so all can discover the magnitude of women's impacts, from GPS, WiFi, to stem cell cures and more, while Alexandria exhibits and talks are showcasing the profound impact of forgotten women.
Help us propel girls into STEM, change all of our lives with innovative solutions, and mainstream the recognition of women innovators from yesterday and today for a better tomorrow.
04/23/2024
Wow was the reaction this weekend at the ALX Dogwalk when young and old discovered the challenge of gravity's force on the earth and how hard it was for Dr. Gladys West to precisely measure the world so we can have GPS. Thrilled to partner with RosieRiveters to present the Dr. Gladys West GPS Challenge to young people. Get in touch with us! We can do it!!!! [email protected]
Congratulations to innovator Svetlana Mojsov! Today, April 17, The Rockefeller University professor will be presented with the 2024 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, a pre-eminent international award for women scientists, for her ground-breaking research into the hormone glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), which triggers the pancreas to produce insulin.
Her work paved the way for the development of a class of drugs for diabetes and weight loss that you may recognize today under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy and Victoza.
Yet she had to fight hard for recognition; initially her name was left off of the patents and scientific papers. In 2023, she was named by Nature as one of the ten most influential people who shaped science.
04/12/2024
2024 Spring2Action is here! Make a DONATION to NCWI and DOUBLE your IMPACT!
A generous donor will match every gift made to NCWI -- act today!
Support The National Center of Women's Innovations | Spring2ACTion 2024 I’m ready to support The National Center of Women's Innovations on April 24, 2024 during Spring2ACTion 2024. Learn more about The National Center of Women's Innovations and all the other organizations participating in Spring2ACTion 2024.
04/09/2024
Great to see National Center of Women's Innovations Board Secretary, Lucelle O'Flaherty and Director of Research, Helena Bailey at Solar Eclipse Viewing Party at Ben Brenman Park sponsored by Alexandria Library and Chrysalis Development Group.
April 8, 2024 marks a 🌑🌞 total solar eclipse 🌑🌞 that will cross North America from Mexico to Newfoundland. Many of us will travel to eclipse hot spots and don special glasses to view a phenomenon that will not occur again for 20 years.
But what if you have limited vision or can’t see at all? Now the blind and visually impaired can actually 👂“hear” 🔉 the eclipse thanks to the inventiveness of two women astronomers:
Allyson Bieryla, the manager of Harvard’s undergraduate astronomy lab and telescopes; and
Wanda Díaz Merced, who is blind and at the time was with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Their LightSound device translates changing light intensity into 🎶 musical tones 🎶 that change as the sky grows dark and brightens again. In 2018 it was redesigned by another woman:
Harvard undergrad Sǒley Hyman, who incorporated a synthesizer board and developed a code for its flute, clarinet and clicking sounds.
This year the team distributed 900 LightSound devices across the country – to event organizers, libraries, museums, universities, schools for the blind - and conducted workshops for volunteers to build their own devices. A passionate advocate for accessibility within the field, Bieryla and her team have given an unexpected gift to individuals who can now experience a 🌑🌞 solar eclipse 🌑🌞 using sound instead of sight.
Learn more:
https://astrolab.fas.harvard.edu/LightSound.html
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/
Center for Astrophysics l Harvard & Smithsonian
Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.
Videos (show all)
Category
Contact the school
Telephone
Address
1100 Wythe Street #151
Alexandria, VA
22313
James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation
1613 Duke Street
Alexandria, 22314
The James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation was established by Congress in 1986 for the purpose of improving teaching about the United States Constitution in secondary schools...
America's Parks Online
Alexandria, 22312
Connecting People to America's Parks Online. Also, www.twitter.com/parksonline | Contact: [email protected]
Motivational Today
5800 Quantrell Avenue
Alexandria, 22312
Our VisionTo become superior source for organization development. Our MissionTo teach, train, equip, and empower business leaders and individuals for peak performance.
Exquisite Hearts Training Center
Alexandria
▪️ American Red Cross CPR Training ▪️ American Red Cross BLS Training
Chjw.net Family Reunion 2021
5821 Richmond Highway
Alexandria, 22303
Upcoming Family Reunion in Alexandria, Va scheduled for June 25 thru 27, 2021. Hampton Inn - Alexand
Northern Virginia Community College-Alexandria Women Helping Women
5000 Dawes Avenue
Alexandria, 22311
We are a mentoring group for students who identify as a woman at NOVA Community College; join us!
Potomac Classical Conservatory
2405 Russell Road
Alexandria, 22301
Potomac Classical is Northern Virginia's first classical Christian collaborative school.
Mahmoud abdelbasir in physics
Alexandria
Graduated from Faculty of engineering at Alex.Uni. electrical dep. in 2017working as physics teacher