The creative team, Jeremy Whitley and Elsa Charretier, behind Unstoppable Wasp recruit real scientists to help back up their leading character, Nadia Pym. Marvel comics has been pushing the envelope on diversity and inclusion in the last few years, and this is another step in the right direction for them.
Elsa Charretier, the artist behind Unstoppable Wasp, came up with the original idea to do profiles on women in STEM fields. Elsa would draw the women’s headshots that would go along side a little profile write up on them. Jeremy and Elsa ended up on deciding to turn the letters page into the perfect platform for the profiles on women in STEM, so young female readers can read them with each issue and feel inspired. Pretty awesome, right?
Check out an exert of the interview with some women in STEM for Unstoppable Wasp’s letter page:
WHAT KIND OF WORK DO YOU DO?
Sadie: I am an applications engineer in connectivity for a fiber-optic company, AFL. In my current role I focus on developing products for card edge connectivity and embedded optics. I was lucky to find AFL after earning my bachelor’s degree in Optical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 2012.
Nia: I am an aerospace engineer specializing in spacecraft autonomy, I have been working in my field for just over 16 years. There’s a delay in communication between the Earth and space vehicles, so it is important that the vehicle be able to perform many functions autonomously, including controlling different subsystems and being able to fix or save itself if something is going wrong. I perform analyses and write algorithms that allow the space vehicle to operate without human intervention.
WHY ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT YOUNG WOMEN GETTING INTO ENGINEERING?
Sadie: At graduation, we all donned pins in memory of the former president of Rose-Hulman, Matt Branam, with his quote “Make it happen. Make it fun.” He taught the students of Rose that you should make your dreams become reality, and have fun while you do it. It is really important to me to see women in fields that make them happy. I encourage anyone who has a passion for engineering, science or really anything to exploit that passion because it will lead you to greater things. Engineering has not only been a career that sustains my life, but a path to finding who I was meant to be. I wish nothing more than for other women to find the path that leads them to that same sort of belonging and happiness.
Nia: The greatest advancement is made when it is based in a foundation of diversity of thought. If a group of people with a similar backgrounds and trains of thought get together to solve a problem, they may miss an even better solution that would have been introduced by someone with a different background. Having a large portion of our society underrepresented in science and technology fields inhibits our society as a whole. It is important that, from a very young age, we make sure that no one is made to feel like science or math is too hard, or a “boy” thing. Having seen consistent resistance wear people down and make them choose to apply their brilliance to another, non-technical field, I try to be the opposite of that. I love mentoring and volunteering in schools, doing activities and explaining things simply to make sure that kids know that anyone can do anything that they put their mind to. It’s important for boys to know–and see–that girls can do anything too, so that they have no reason to expect anything less than that from women in the future.
Both Sadie and Nia seem like inspiring, intelligent, and wonderful women. Like Nia says it is important for women to feel like they can do anything they put their minds to, and for men to recognize that women can do anything. Also as she said, it is deeply important for this sentiment to start at a young age.
Let’s hope Unstoppable Wasp will inspire women of all ages, races, and backgrounds to follow their passions as Sadie said. Also hopefully, this will inspire more girls to get involved into STEM fields. I wish I had women like this to look up to when I was younger, however, I’m glad that at least the younger generation will have many diverse women in different careers and so forth to look up.
Unstoppable Wasp #3 is available now. #4 will be available April 5th. To read the full interview with these brilliant women click here.
As always, we’ll continue to update you on all things Unstoppable Wasp and Marvel.