Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa—just call him Dr. Q—was an impoverished teenager in a rural Mexican village when he hopped an 18-foot fence into California and found his way—through hope, hard work, and perseverance—into the loftiest heights of the American Dream. The eldest of five children, "Freddy," as he was then known, toiled by day as an undocumented migrant worker in the tomato fields and rail yards of Central California. On his days off, he attended Biology classes at the San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton. Then he became a gifted student at the University of California, Berkeley before transferring to Harvard, where he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and earned his medical degree, all before the age of 30.   

Sylvia Acevedo has had bold dreams and dared to live them as a woman in STEM who is passionate about education for all. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in industrial engineering from New Mexico State University and a Master of Science in systems engineering from Stanford University. She was one of the first Hispanic students, male or female, to earn that degree from Stanford. 

Beginning her career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sylvia created algorithms and analyzed data from Voyager 2’s spacecraft flyby of Jupiter and two of its moons, lo and Europa. She went on to work as an engineer and executive at Apple, Dell, Autodesk, and IBM, and as an advocate for educational equality. She is a strong voice for girls’ education, especially in the STEM fields. 

Rick Lowe’s extensive body of work in painting, drawing, and installation is paired with numerous collaborative projects, undertaken in the spirit and tradition of “social sculpture.”  

Rick Lowe was born in 1961 in rural Russell County, Alabama, and lives and works in Houston, Texas. He is currently a professor of interdisciplinary practice at the University of Houston and is represented by Gagosian Gallery worldwide. 

Working closely with individuals and communities, Lowe has identified myriad ways to exercise creativity in the context of everyday activities, harnessing it to explore concerns around equity and justice.