U-M Aerospace Engineering congratulates alumna Jasmine LeFlore (‘15), Senior Special Projects Engineer at Collins Aerospace and co-founder of the nonprofit organization, Greater Than Tech, on winning the Community Service in Industry Award at the 2020 Women of Color STEM Hybrid Conference.
Jasmine co-founded Greater Than Tech in 2019 with the aim of increasing the number of women technology business leaders by providing young girls with engineering and business education through project workshops, professional development seminars, and competitions. In her career, she noticed a need for engineers who understand business and by involving girls in STEM and entrepreneurship at a young age, she hopes to equip them with the most essential combination of skills needed in the future workforce while reaching an underrepresented demographic. With the company hashtag, “make the uncommon common,” she hopes to diversify the workforce by creating a better pipeline for girls of color to enter the tech industry.
We have these gaps in terms of diversity, women leadership, STEM leadership, and business leadership,” LeFlore said. “A lot of corporations are looking for more diverse talent in leadership roles so what better way than to start early with middle schoolers where they can still choose their path of career?”
According to surveys from Greater Than Tech, young women’s confidence in approaching engineering has increased after learning how it applies in the real-world. As the year progresses, LeFlore will continue with her mission of making the uncommon common by involving more girls in engineering through virtual webinars. This month, It’s YOURpreneurship, will explain the difference between an entrepreneur and an intrepreneur by highlighting the careers of two women of color.
We have these gaps in terms of diversity, women leadership, STEM leadership, and business leadership. A lot of corporations are looking for more diverse talent in leadership roles so what better way than to start early with middle schoolers where they can still choose their path of career?
Jasmine LeFlore
Senior Special Projects Engineer at Collins Aerospace and co-founder of Greater Than Tech
LeFlore began her career at UM in LS&A, and she attributes her success at transferring to Aerospace Engineering to the support of Professor Luis Bernal. “If it wasn’t for Professor Bernal supporting my tenacity by allowing me to take Aerospace classes to gauge how well I could do in the program, I probably would have never made it into the college of engineering with the cross-campus transfer standards alone. He will always be my favorite professor.”
Jasmine LeFlore is a senior special projects engineer at Collins Aerospace, a non-profit co-founder, and a dual-degree graduate student. Throughout her 5-year engineering career, Jasmine has been recognized as an early career watch, along with receiving numerous company level and peer star awards for focusing on results, championing company culture, and diversity and inclusion. She has been awarded the 2020 Women of Color STEM Community Service in Industry Award. Jasmine understood how to better engage girls of color into STEM by pairing engineering with entrepreneurship and cultivating their self-efficacy. She then went on to co-found the non-profit, Greater Than Tech (GTT), which is dedicated to creating the next business technology leaders by teaching girls of color the intersectionality of engineering and business. Jasmine has earned her BSE in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan. She is currently completing her MSE in Interdisciplinary Engineering at Purdue University and her MBA at Indiana University. She was born and brought up in Flint, MI.
