High-Tech High Heels Closing the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Wanda Gass becomes HTHH Executive Director Wanda Gass is the newly appointed Executive Director of High-Tech High Heels. Wanda retired from Texas Instruments on March 30, to pursue her passion of helping girls and young women pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers. Wanda will focus her efforts full time on developing and supporting programs for High-Tech High Heels. "We are thrilled that Wanda will now spend full time applying her many strengths and talents to growing and accelerating our work," said Melendy Lovett, HTHH co-founder and Leadership Team chair. "Wanda has been a key leader of our HTHH work from the very start, and she is truly committed and passionate about getting more high school girls ready for a STEM university degree program. Her hands-on approach to HTHH programs is a major reason for their successful results." Tegwin Pulley, prior Executive Director of High-Tech High Heels, is serving as Executive Director of the STEM Equity Pipeline of the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation (NAPE-EF). Last year, HTHH selected NAPE-EF to deploy and grow the HTHH programs. Wanda and Tegwin will work together to achieve the goals of HTHH. A distinguished career Wanda began her TI career 31 years ago in Houston, Texas, as a design engineer working on TI's first digital signal processor (DSP). She holds three patents for this first-generation DSP and was responsible for circuit design of the data paths, functional verification, schematic verification and specification of the on-chip emulation features. After relocating to Dallas in 1982, Wanda continued to take on roles of increasing responsibility and was elected TI Fellow in 1999. She finished her career at TI as the DSP architect overseeing semiconductor devices in 3G towers (base stations) in Application Specific Products (ASP). These towers connect mobile handsets to the telecommunication network. "During her time in ASP, Wanda has been instrumental in driving multicore architectures and has driven multicore system performance entitlement, which has had tremendous traction with our customers," said Brian Crutcher, TI senior vice president and general manager of the Embedded Processing business. "Wanda's contributions have helped to propel us into a leadership position in wireless infrastructure and opened up new multicore DSP markets. Wanda will be missed, but we all wish her the best in her next endeavor." In addition to her work at TI, Wanda has served on several boards and works directly with students. She is currently serving on the board of directors for the Learning Center of North Texas and the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation (NAPE-EF). The Metroplex Technology Business Council recently honored Wanda with the 2011 Tech Titan Community Hero Award, recognizing her for her many years of outstanding leadership and service in STEM gender equity. In 2010, Wanda joined the Advisory Board of UTeachEngineering. This new program in the University of Texas system offers two summer education opportunities for high school STEM teachers and is developing a new high school engineering curriculum. Wanda has actively volunteered at The Hockaday School in Dallas as a coach and mentor of the robotics team since 2003. She has been a speaker at the Hockaday middle school career fair for eight years and has sponsored the senior projects of several high school girls interested in engineering. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) and has served on numerous technical committees. Wanda was the program chair of the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in Feb. 2011, the premier international semiconductor conference of IEEE. Wanda earned her master's degree in Engineering from Duke University and her BSEE degree from Rice University. "Wanda is an exceptional technologist and role model, and she will be missed at TI," said Steve Lyle, TI's chief diversity officer and director of Engineering Workforce Development. "However, by devoting her efforts full time to HTHH, she will be able to accelerate some of the work that TI is also doing to increase the pipeline of women talent in the semiconductor industry. I look forward to our continued partnership." HTHH Leadership Team: Melendy Lovett, Chair Janice Harissis Mariquita Gordon Cherri Musser Tegwin Pulley Laura Steffek Lanie Williams Wanda Gass, Executive Director