Women@Energy features Sandia’s Sandra Begay

This month, the Department of Energy’s STEM Rising initiative features a Q&A with Sandia National Laboratories’ Sandra Begay, a Research and Development Systems Engineer.

Sandra’s passion for sharing STEM with native students and women across New Mexico is apparent in her many personal, professional, and academic ventures. In 2002 she created a mentorship program for American Indian interns through the Sandia/Department of Indian Energy Program– she was an active mentor in this program through 2018.

In 2006 she was featured in a chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers book Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers. The chapter highlighted Sandra’s work providing hundreds of solar panels to Navajo families in New Mexico. In 2009 Sandra was awarded the Ely S. Parker Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and in 2019, she took a leave of absence to work for Mayor Tim Keller as the City of Albuquerque’s Environmental Health Director.

Sandra has a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of New Mexico and a Master of Science in Structural Engineering, with an emphasis in Earthquake Engineering, from Stanford University. She has worked at leading research and development laboratories including Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sandra was named the 2020 Indigenous Excellence award winner as a result of her outstanding work to expand opportunities for Indigenous students and professionals in STEM education and careers.

View more inspiring stories by women working in #STEM at Sandia National Laboratories and throughout the Department of Energy on the STEM Rising website.