Though she didn’t know it at the time, Dr. Serra Hoagland’s upbringing put her on a path to becoming the only Native woman with a PhD to work for the U.S. Forest Service. Growing up in Placerville, Calif., a small town west of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Dr. Hoagland just knew that she wanted to be outdoors. “My biggest thing was to finish my homework and go outside — that was my goal for the day,” recalls Dr. Hoagland, this year’s winner of the Most Promising Engineer or Scientist Award.