Each year Polingyumptewa spends hundreds of hours mentoring and guiding young people who are interested in STEM.
When Brandon Polingyumptewa was in grade school, he went on a field trip that changed his life. During a visit to what is now aerospace giant The Boeing Company’s Mesa, Ariz., plant, Polingyumptewa got his first glimpse of the Apache helicopter that was being built at the facility. “Kids are impressionable; they see things that spark an interest and grab them,” says Polingyumptewa, Hopi, recipient of this year’s Blazing Flame Award. “For me, it was seeing the Apache helicopter — the way it flew was so graceful and so powerful and so strong and silent. It really pulled me in.”
This is not hyperbole. For the past 22 years Polingyumptewa has worked in the very same Mesa facility he toured as a youngster. Among his jobs today? “I help to build the next-generation Apache, called the Apache Guardian,” says Polingyumptewa, whose official job title is supply chain management specialist, a role that has him managing information flows, schedules, and materials and working with engineers and designers so that the operators in the factory can efficiently build this highly advanced helicopter.
Though Polingyumptewa may have been inspired by his initial visit to the Mesa facility, the mechanical science and technology skills he needed to do his job were honed initially out of necessity. “I received a Walkman as a gift and within a month I had dropped and broken it,” he recalls. “We didn’t have much money, so I studied the parts, assessed the situation, and pieced it back together — and it worked.”
That love of taking things apart and putting them back together naturally led Polingyumptewa down a STEM path, a direction that was encouraged both by his parents and by the other budding Native engineers he met at the AISES Summit Camp at Arizona State University he attended while still in middle school. “That really put me in the mind-set that I could do something with this interest in STEM,” he says. “You can do this type of work and really enjoy it.”
For the past two-plus decades, Polingyumptewa has been working tirelessly to encourage Native students to follow their own path into STEM education and careers. Each year he spends hundreds of hours mentoring and guiding young people who are interested in STEM.
At Boeing, Polingyumptewa is president of the company’s American Indian Society and is also the Boeing Enterprise AISES deputy leader. In these and many other roles, Polingyumptewa works to break down some of the barriers he knows many Native young people face as they pursue STEM studies and careers.
He understands the obstacles because he had to overcome them himself, including ones that were internal. “For me, self-doubt was a major barrier. Probably for most indigenous professionals in STEM, it’s the same,” says Polingyumptewa. “I was always questioning whether I was really as bright as others see me. Basically, am I really good enough?”
Because he struggled with self-doubt personally, Polingyumptewa makes it a point to identify — and try to erase — the doubts the young people he works with might have. “I don’t want them to feel discouraged, and I want them to continue on whatever path they are pursuing,” he explains. Sometimes, especially with younger students, that means ensuring they understand the many opportunities and possibilities that STEM can provide.
For high school and college students, Polingyumptewa emphasizes his own journey and makes sure they are aware of the nontechnical skills they’ll need to master in order to succeed. “Some students are coming straight from home (the reservation) and don’t have the skills necessary to function and thrive in a corporate environment,” he says. “Some of it is critical yet subtle things like handshakes and eye contact and normal business etiquette that may be foreign to the students.”
Polingyumptewa says his efforts are more than worthwhile when he sees the self-doubts melt away. “To see young people I have worked with and mentored who once doubted themselves experience their own brand of success is the best gift I can give them,” he says.
