Kristen Wheeler's Blog

This week my husband Paul and I are getting a thingie installed in our house that circulates fresh air (an HRV for you HVAC geeks). We’ve looked at the diagram showing different ducting options many times because there were some strategic choices to be made. For the life of me, I cannot keep it all straight in my mind. Even though I understand it conceptually, I don’t retain it. I can finally remember the difference between the return and supply ducts, but that’s about it.

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Katherine Johnson remembers how she felt about math growing up, “I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed… anything that could be counted, I did.”

Katherine Johnson's Native Genius was insistent. So is yours.

Katherine worked as one of the first human computers in the early 1960s in the still segregated South. The presence of Black people, and certainly Black women, was rare in the sciences....

When people hear about my work, Native Genius, some smile knowingly—they “get it” without explanation. Others ask, “What is that?” I tell them, “It’s what it sounds like. It’s what comes naturally that has exponential potential. It’s kernels of intelligence and desire that insistently come out—like acorns growing into oak trees. We all have Native Genius—and it isn’t one thing, it’s many things.”

The two key...