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Hi, I'm Malik Thompson, an

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airspace materials engineer at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center.

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And here we're celebrating
National Engineer's Week and Black History

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Month.

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So it started in seventh grade.

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And at the time we were doing
like a career event

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where they sent us home and told us
to plan out our whole lives, everything

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from where we might live to the job
we might have.

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And at the time,
I thought I wanted to be a paleontologist.

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And then when I got into the details,
I was like, maybe that's not quite for me.

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So it was actually one of my parents
suggested that I start looking based

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on my experience and love for science
fiction into something to do with space.

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And that's when I decided that

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I wanted to be an engineer,
to help be a part of the space game

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From day to day.

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It feels like it.

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It changes sometimes because I work
a lot of different programs and projects.

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I'm always hungry
for the next thing over the horizon,

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but for the most part,

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as an aerospace materials engineer,
I work with the planning and production

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of different spacecraft
and launch vehicles

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in order to get them into space
and make sure that they're space worthy.

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So for Artemis
and for the Commercial Crew program,

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I'm primarily focused on launch vehicles
and in my case,

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the thermal protection systems
that go into protecting

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both the propellants as well as
the structures that they're made of.

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So it goes without saying that there's a
lot of challenges in the work that we do.

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Space is difficult.

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President Kennedy said it in the sixties,
and we're living it now.

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But that's not where it ends

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because there are a lot of us
that are passionate about what we do.

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So those challenges
become that much smaller because of it.

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And then so far as the rewards go,

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I think a lot about how my little brother
and sister, they have always lived

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in a world where people have been living
and working in space,

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and now I get to be a part of
what the next generation will experience

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so far as having people actively living
and working on the moon permanently

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and that makes it
that much more worthwhile.

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It's important because NASA
as a government agency, should resemble

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the country that it represents and ensure
that we all have a seat at the table.

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And diversity and inclusion are important,
but they're often

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conflated with simply
just having people in a room.

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And it goes beyond that
because Malcolm X said that

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just because a person is sitting
at the table doesn't make them a diner

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and we have to be able to eat
from that plate, too.

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NASA does an amazing job.

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We do a great job of making sure
that people are included,

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but then also making sure
that they're a part of the team

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and being able to contribute
in the best way that they can.

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And it's important, too, for the future
that we gather people with disparate

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backgrounds and ideas
to be able to get us to that common goal

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because space isn't easy
and we need everybody on deck.

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It's a twofold answer, really,
because at the beginning of it, it's

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Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant
Okura in the Star Trek TV series.

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And at that point,
there had been very many

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African-American women who starred in TV
shows that weren't in subservient roles.

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She was an active member of the crew
that contributed a lot of technical

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knowledge and experience, and they valued
her for it, much like I do now at NASA.

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And then because of that work,
she was invited to Johnson Space

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Center to be able
to see the everyday work at NASA.

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And when she saw that,
she realized that there weren't

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very many people of color, people
that looked like her that were around.

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And so she decided
to do something about it.

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And when she did, she traveled the country
for months in order to recruit

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women and people of color
to apply to be astronauts.

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And the class that followed
because of her work, was the most diverse

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that had happened at that time.

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So that class included Ronald McNair,
an African-American man from small town

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South Carolina, just like myself.

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And he grew up one hour away
from the dirt road that I grew up in.

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So that showed me above all else
that I could do it, too.

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And I could be a part of NASA's.

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It's interesting, I actually just recently
did an outreach event with high school

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students, and I was telling them
this very same thing we're in.

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It's a matter of always persevere,
no matter how hard things get,

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no matter how difficult things may seem,
you're never alone.

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The most important part about STEM
is peer review and being on a team.

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So you're never really alone

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and you're never really up
against the whole hurdle by yourself.

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But you always have people to call on
whether they're professors in school

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or coworkers and team members
in the workplace, in the workplace.

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It's important to keep in mind
that you're not ever above anything

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and you're not below

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anything that there's work
that at one point may seem like, you know,

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you're not doing the most
if you feel like you can,

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but you never know what might come in
handy later on.

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And by the same token, you yourself
have something

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very significant to contribute
that only you can contribute.

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So you owe it to yourself
and to everyone that you're working