East Oakland Native Helps Minority Students Navigate the World of Tech

​​“Tech is everywhere,” says Danielle Rose in the midst of a virtual Zoom conference. “There’s no escaping it at this point in time.”

Rose, an East Oakland, California, native with a background in mechanical engineering, is the newest CEO of SMASH, the Summer Math and Science Honors Academy, which aims to remove barriers for disadvantaged students pursuing tech careers.

Danielle RoseRose knows firsthand the difference a familiar network can make for women and students of color. As a child, she was a tinkerer. If something such as a vacuum broke, she liked to figure out why by taking it apart and putting it back together again. Taking this as a cue, her mother enrolled her in a STEM pipeline program, similar to SMASH, called MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement).

With Rose showing high aptitude in mathematics and engineering, the program helped her enroll in the Athenian School, a prestigious boarding and college preparatory school. Her experiences there, however, differed greatly from her experiences in East Oakland’s public schools, which served predominantly Black students from low-income backgrounds. She felt alienated.

“I was far away from my community and definitely not immersed in a community that I was familiar with nor necessarily welcomed in,” she says. That feeling of isolation changed, however, when she enrolled in Spelman College, an historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, and subsequently took part in NASA’s Women in Science Engineering (WISE) program.

“Spelman is where I found myself,” she says. “I found myself in spaces where I was able to connect with other Black women who, while not a monolith, had shared experiences and also shared aspirations.” 

Pursuing a dual bachelor’s degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering, Rose went on to the Georgia Institute of Technology and later completed her master’s in mechanical engineering there as well.