To date, no woman has led NASA. Or the European Space Agency (ESA). Or the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) in France. Or Roscosmos in Russia. Crossing the bosses of these agencies for more than two decades, we have drawn the composite portrait of a man in a suit and tie, sometimes in his forties but most often in his fifties or sixties, and so to speak always white (with the exception notable of Charles Bolden, the only African-American to have held the post of administrator of NASA, under the mandates of Barack Obama). So when the opportunity is given to meet Sarah Al-Amiri, 35, both president of the very young United Arab Emirates Space Agency and minister of advanced technologies, we don’t miss her, we want to know who this young woman who stands out in the world of space.
Forgotten, of course, the suit and the tie. Without a bodyguard, the minister arrives at the meeting wearing a black hijab and matching abaya – the long Emirati tunic – a big smile crossing her face. Perhaps because self-promotion is not really encouraged in a federation of emirates where sheikhs are glorified, this Abu Dhabi native remains discreet, even modest, about her career. In her perfect English tinged with an American accent, she does not shy away from talking about the beginning, of her childhood. Family where the father is a businessman and the mother a teacher, an international school that opens him up to other cultures. “I grew up talking about politics, economic changes, world developments. I think as a child I watched more news than cartoons, she remembers, almost giggling. I understood that we all had a role in society. Not just in our neighborhood, in our city or our country, but as citizens of the world. »
Sarah Al-Amiri sees her role, in a country modernizing at a breakneck pace enabled by petrodollars, first in IT: “I have always loved maths and numbers, she says. I started programming around 11 or 12 years old. Even though they were very simple programs then, I quickly knew that I wanted to become a computer engineer. » This is followed by a degree at the American University of the Emirate of Chardja. Shortly after obtaining it, it quickly lands in the space sector, which has always fascinated her. We are in 2009, she is 22 years old. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) does not yet have a space agency (it will be born officially in 2014). They, who already operate a few satellites but have never designed any, are preparing to launch their first Earth observation vehicle, DubaiSat-1. “The people who worked with me were 26 years old or younger. Almost all of them had been hired at the end of their studies. »
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