In honor of Women’s History Month, we are once again celebrating ASA women who work in statistics and data science. These 11 accomplished women were chosen because they are leaders and mentors to many in their field.

In honor of Women’s History Month, three former ASA presidents share career highlights, role models, and invaluable advice.

Millennia Young’s favorite subject while growing up was math. She loved solving problems and knowing she had the correct answer, even if the answer was “does not exist.” After high school, she went on to study applied mathematics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and it was there she was introduced to statistics. “Although both disciplines use math to model what is happening in the world,” she wrote, “statistics provided unique insights.” Before she started her PhD, she had two children, and by the time she defended, she had three. Although she struggled, she kept going. Eventually, she landed her dream job—leading the biostatistics lab for human health and performance at NASA.

Mary Ellen Bock began her academic career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in German in 1967. She shifted her focus to mathematics for her graduate studies at the same university and earned her PhD under the guidance of Robert B. Ash. In 1995, she made history as the first female full professor of statistics and inaugural female chair of the statistics department at Purdue. Under her leadership, Purdue added courses in areas of application such as bioinformatics, genomics, massive data, machine learning, visualization, and computational finance. She was also instrumental in securing National Science Foundation funding to develop the Pathways to the Future workshops that helped young female faculty succeed. Bock is an ASA founder and fellow.

DeJuran Richardson was pursuing a purely mathematical path of study when, midway through graduate school, he was introduced to the biostatistics field by a chance stumble into a conference on sequential methods and testing in clinical trials.

Drake Gibson is a lifelong Prince George’s County, Maryland, resident who became passionate about data science after learning to program in R and Python in graduate school. While working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he took on projects that enhanced his knowledge—his colleagues noticed and encouraged him to apply to be a data scientist.

Jemar Bather is a senior scientist in biostatistics at Merck, where he applies his statistical expertise to develop new medications that enhance health outcomes for those affected by infectious diseases.

Lehana Thabane was always fascinated by numbers and the information one can get from a single number. He took all the mathematics courses offered to him as an undergraduate. Then, when he ran out, he took statistics courses.

Kobi Abayomi once dreamed of becoming a physicist, but switched majors after he took his first class in statistics at Georgia Institute of Technology. Today, is head of science for Gumbel Demand Acceleration—a Software as a Service (SaaS) company for digital media—and Betaside Recordings, both data science startups at the intersection of demand and supply curves for musicians, artists, and music listeners. He also holds an appointment at Seton Hall University, where he teaches in the undergraduate and master’s in data science program.

In celebration of Black History Month, we recognize eight individuals from the Black/African American collective who have made contributions to the statistics field as mentors, professors, and entrepreneurs.