2021 HENAAC Awards

In her young but already impressive career, Pryscila M. Verduzco has mastered the art of navigating around, over, and through obstacles.  Her Mexican immigrant parents with little education struggled to provide for her and her 4 siblings, but she focused on school and was soon enrolled in the Gifted and Talented program, where she excelled. 

During her senior year of high school, she was involved in a serious car accident that required intensive rehabilitation to regain her ability to walk.  After working her way back to full health, Pryscila finished high school and enrolled at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. This accomplishment inspired her brothers and sisters to pursue college as well. 

A past GMiS Scholar, Pryscila completed her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona and was hired by NAVSEA, where she became the lead designer of new calibration gauges for a key US Navy weapon system.  In 2018, she joined Boeing’s Autonomous Systems division as a systems engineer, working with un-crewed undersea vehicles.  In that role, she became the first woman to perform at-sea field testing for the Boeing Echo Voyager vehicle.

In just a few years at Boeing, Pryscila led test planning activities for government test programs, directed the integration of a new payload into the Echo Voyager vehicle, and acted as the control account manager for the Boeing Orca program, overseeing a budget worth over $10 million.

Today, Pryscila works as a systems engineer at Columbus Technologies and Services, supporting various contracts with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.She is a bright, determined young engineer, and we expect great things from her in the future.