Nalini Ravishanker grew up in Chennai, India, in a huge extended family that nurtured her love for mathematics. Inspired by talks by leading statisticians at the University of Madras, she decided to pursue a PhD in statistics.
Brenda Gaydos built a distinguished career in the pharmaceutical industry. Even though her parents thought college was a waste of money, especially for a girl, Gaydos pursued a degree.
Peggy Carr’s journey began in Cleveland, Ohio, where her family moved during The Great Migration. Carr was the first person of color in executive management at the National Center for Education Statistics and among the first to join the Federal Senior Executive Service.
When Bailey Fosdick began college at the Colorado School of Mines, she was drawn to science but quickly realized she disliked lab work. Mathematics, however, stood out as the common thread tying her interests together. Seeking a pure math degree, she transferred to Colorado State University, where an introductory coding class sparked an unexpected love for computer science, leading her to double major in both fields. However, it was the COVID-19 pandemic and her work on university and public health modeling teams that reignited her true purpose—solving real-world problems with statistics. Seeking to make a deeper impact, she left academia and is now institute data scientist at GTI Energy. The transition required courage, but it brought immense growth and the fulfillment of seeing her work make a tangible difference.
Nairanjana Dasgupta’s life has been shaped by serendipity and survival. Born under extraordinary circumstances when her mother, at over 40, discovered her pregnancy after needing surgery, the odds of her survival were slim. Growing up on a small university campus near the Himalayas, Dasgupta developed an early love for numbers, logic, and word puzzles. Torn between mathematics and English at 18, she was introduced to statistics and her decision proved to be transformative. She is now a Regents professor at Washington State University and president of the Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society.
