Stories of Success

Meritocracy is the best way to get the best people, right? Surely, the best people will always win out! Sadly, our history and our present shows that’s not true. Because becoming the best isn’t a matter of raw talent and hard work. It’s about opportunities and talent development and even luck.

In this episode, host Wanda Sigur will speak with Dr. Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and Dr. Raphael Bras, Kay Harrison Brown Chair and Regents Professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech. They’ll talk about how to get more raw talent into programs, to build the capability and confidence of new engineers. And they’ll talk about why the outcomes of the US and the world economy depend on future engineering talent.

For more information about the National Academy of Engineering, please see our website.

Guest Bios

Nicole Smith is a Research Professor and Chief Economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce where she leads CEW’s econometric and methodological work. Dr. Smith has developed a framework for restructuring long-term occupational and educational projections. This framework forms the underlying methodology for a report that projects education demand for occupations in the US economy through 2030. She was the recipient of the Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Prize for outstanding research at the Master’s level at the U.W.I. and is co-recipient of the 2007 Arrow Prize for Junior Economists for educational mobility research. She received her PhD in Economics from American University in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining CEW, Dr. Smith was a faculty member in Economics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, and the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. She is a co-author of “The Inheritance of Educational Inequality: International Comparisons and Fifty-Year Trends,” published in 2007 by the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy.

Rafael L. Bras is a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He holds the K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. Previously, he was the provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering of the University of California, Irvine. Prior to joining UCI he was a professor in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. He is past Chair of the MIT Faculty, former head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering department and Director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory at MIT. Dr. Bras was a director of the American Geophysical Union. Dr. Bras has received many honors and awards, including: honorary degrees from the University of Perugia, Italy and Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico; Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award Hall of Fame member; NASA Public Service Medal; John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize; Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Award; and National Hispanic Scientist of the Year Award, Museum of Science and Industry, Tampa, Florida. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Puerto Rico, and is a corresponding member of the Mexican National Academy of Engineering and the Mexican National Academy of Sciences. He has been elected Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.