EdwardGonzales

An avid music lover and sneakerhead, Edward Gonzales has built a life walking the walk from street smart to business-savvy, first at one of Los Angeles’s prestigious law firms, then to “student-whisperer” at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working with interns and underserved, underrepresented populations. Most recently, as NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility lead for Heliophysics, he brought his unique blend of experience to one of NASA’s most prestigious missions. Edward has been honored by many NASA awards and recognition and has made it his personal mission to ensure that the agency’s future workforce is more diverse and equitable than when he started his career there two decades ago. Having lost his father as a young teen, experienced police profiling and gang violence, he can relate to the struggles that many students face as they embark on their college and career journeys. He is eager to share that all paths to NASA aren’t linear and emphasizes the critical importance of creating a workforce pipeline that starts in school. This led to an exciting project called “Permission to Dream,” collaborating with Christopher Gardner (The Pursuit of Happyness) to present inspirational talks at one thousand high schools across the United States.