The Young Women She Was Thinking About

When Mary Ross gave talks at schools, when she attended events aimed at Native youth in STEM, when she funded scholarships and lent her name to programs designed to open doors — she was thinking about specific people.

Not abstractions.

Specific young women in specific situations: Native girls in schools on reservations with inadequate mathematics curricula, Native girls in public schools in cities who had no adults in their lives who had pursued STEM careers and no sense of what such a career could look like for them, Native girls with mathematical aptitude who were not being identified and supported because the systems that identified and supported mathematical talent were not looking for them.

She understood what the barriers were not as general concepts but as specific mechanisms.