#Luminaries

Last updated on 2019/10/28

It has always been my intent on this blog to call out people that I admire. I even have some idea posts around setting up a new category called #Titans. These are pretty easy posts to come up with. Pick a person that is influential. Research that person. Write about that person. Rinse and repeat. However, as I have gotten older my views on life, politics, responsibility, and social issues have started changing. Now – I have a firm rule for myself that I am not going to use this blog in any way to discuss political ideas. I am not going down that path here. However, I was never totally comfortable with the term titans. It was an idea in my head and that word served it’s purpose as a placeholder for what I wanted to explore – but I always had a feeling that that word was wrong for what I wanted to achieve with these writings. Let me state here that I don’t feel any societal guilt for being a male and for being white. There is no point in that – I cannot change that fact in any way. Nonetheless, when I think of calling someone a titan I just feel like I am going to end up with a long list of old white guys to talk about. That seems boring to me. I want to expand my knowledge and my horizons.

Therefore, it was important to me to change the name. I also had an idea this past week to start this group with a focus on a group of people that are not well championed in the tech field, women. While thinking about this topic I started looking up words in the thesaurus and came across the term luminary: ” a person of prominence or brilliant achievement”. Perfect. To me, this term carries no significant connotations in any way and is based on the root word lumen meaning “light”. Even better. Now I have a collection name and a target group of people to start with. You may wonder – why women? I have some absolutely amazing female role models in my life, including my daughter who is out of this world amazing and who continues to astound me every day with her intelligence and wit and who, if she ever reads this, will roll her eyes so hard that they might get stuck up inside her noggin. Love you, kiddo! While she is currently not on a path towards a STEM career, I do want to honor her in some way as she is a big part of my life. She is certainly smart and creative enough to be a part of any list I would ever make up no matter what field she chooses to invest her skills and talents against in the future. This is a small way that I can honor her in some way. I am also very curious to learn more about people for this topic. The individuals that I have in mind are fascinating people that have achieved amazing and wondrous things and I am very curious excited to explore their successes.

So, the category of #luminaries is born. I have some amazing people to start this list and I can’t wait to dive into this topic in the coming months. Margaret Heafield Hamilton, Hedy Lamarr, Susan Kare, and Christina Koch and Jessica Meir are the tip of the iceberg for this topic. If you have no clue who these amazing people are then I look forward to enlightening, or should I say, illuminating you, about them!