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Hi I’m Omar De Frias, I am the lead for
the Integration Evaluation team for the Science

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Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

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So we basically manage the execution of the
budget for Science.

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Every time I’m asked the question, ‘hey,
where do you work?’

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I say, I work for NASA.

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Obviously, the first response is, ‘wow,
really?

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And they’re fascinated first because of
what we do as an agency.

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I try to tell them, ‘and here’s how I
tie into the big picture.

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Here’s how we do what we do to make, you
know, MSL and Curiosity happen.’

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I basically got recruited as part of the corporate
recruitment effort that NASA did in the University

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of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez and this was back
in 2004.

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I was dealing with a multitude of offers – I
was dealing with IBM as a potential hiring

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possibility and I was dealing with Kimberly-Clark
and I ended up choosing NASA because of the

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path I saw forward.

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I used to be a professional basketball player
in the Dominican Republic, where I had a chance

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to really hone in on the skills of teamwork.

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It’s very important to be able to have a
good diverse team you want people with different

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backgrounds, you want people that have worked
internationally.

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The biggest thing on diversity on my part
is always to put diversity and inclusion in

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the workforce, so it’s not only about, hey
let’s go ahead and hire people from different

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races we’re building them to be the next
leaders of our agency and I think NASA’s