Alumni Extension Technologist of the Year
Jamie Haynes
NSBE Region V Member-at-Large
Aerospace Engineer, The Boeing Company
There are two elementary school experiences that mark the life of Jamie Haynes. The first came when she was a kid. The second came when she was a college student visiting with little kids as part of a NSBE program.
“When I grew up we had nothing,” Haynes recalls. “I really didn’t know a lot outside of my little town, a small part of Dayton called Huber Heights. But I had a mother who pushed me and who really opened my eyes, and I have known I wanted to be an engineer since middle school.”
Haynes grew up to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., and became an active member, then president, of the NSBE chapter. And that led to her second formative experience.
“I was a tutor,” Haynes recalls, “tutoring in a poor neighborhood in Daytona…. It’s absolutely vital that kids like that see a black woman. The reason I volunteer is because I wonder what if they don’t have a parent like I did? Then without our presence, they would have no idea what possibilities there are.”
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering, Haynes moved to Houston, where she works in The Boeing Company’s life support systems group, responsible for the Space Shuttle. In her new community, Haynes is a member of the NSBE Alumni chapter, which is developing a NSBE Jr. program at Goose Creek Memorial High School. Her husband, Richard Haynes, teaches chemistry there. The chapter has cosponsored minority students at Boeing facilities, in conjunction with the company’s “Engineer for a Day” program.
“I want to make sure they get into something they can get excited about,” Haynes says.
Roger Witherspoon is a journalist and author based in New York.