Space technology executive Erika Wagner addresses students at annual Women in Engineering dinner at Montana State

BOZEMAN - Around 300 attendees convened in the Strand Union Building ballrooms at Montana State University for the 22nd annual Women in Engineering Dinner on April 11. The event celebrates and supports women majoring in engineering - a profession traditionally dominated by men.

Dinner attendees, mostly women studying in MSU's Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering, also included MSU alumni, faculty and staff. The evening's keynote speaker, Erika Wagner, heads U.S. business development at The Exploration Company, which she described as one of the world's fastest-growing space companies. TEC builds reusable space capsules and lunar landers.

"Erika is an engineer, a program manager and a business professional who is passionate about space innovation and humanity's grand challenges," said Christine Foreman, the engineering college's associate dean for student success, while introducing Wagner at the event.

Wagner's academic background is in aerospace and biomedical engineering. She has a doctorate from the Harvard University/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Prior to The Exploration Company, Wagner worked at Blue Origin for more than 12 years. Blue Origin, which specializes in aviation and aerospace component manufacturing, made headlines this week by sending an all-female crew of civilians to the edge of Earth's atmosphere.

Wagner's talk focused on the rapidly expanding field of space exploration, finding a reasonable work/life balance and women supporting women professionally.

"The doors to space are opening wider and wider," she told the audience. "I realized there was more than one career path in space. You can be things other than an astronaut, which was really useful for me to learn."

Wagner emphasized the importance of broadening space exploration to be more inclusive at a very basic, very human level. She told a story from the early 1980s of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, when the only engineer in the room at the time was a male.

"He asked her what she would need for the mission, and she said some tampons, so they packed her 100 for a seven-day mission," she said, drawing laughter from the audience. "Good engineers need to understand the users."

She encouraged students to get involved with student clubs and hands-on engineering projects, calling it the "single most important thing I ever did in my education." She also discussed how the space race has rapidly evolved to a global venture.

"We're starting to find that we are opening doors wider and wider," Wagner said. "When I was a kid, there were 10 nations that had been into space. Today there are 51."

She closed her address with a message about the importance of listening to one's instincts.

"What does the still, small inner voice in your head tell you about your dreams? What did you want to be when you were 4 or 5 or 6? Does that still drive you today?" Wagner asked. "It may or may not. And then, how do you find the other women around you? Who are your people? How do you lift them up? How do you start to tell broader stories? How do you start to open doors and how do you be more inclusive about the futures that work creates?"

The college of engineering has 26 tenure-track female faculty members, 15 non-tenure track faculty and 691 female students who comprise 20% of the college's enrollment.