What does an engineer look like? For many young people, narrow ideas about engineering can make it difficult to imagine themselves belonging in the field. They may believe they need to have spent childhood taking machines apart, building inventions, or effortlessly excelling in every math class.
AstraFemina Board Member Dr. Ashley Williams once carried many of those same doubts. Her path to engineering began not with certainty, but with a sense of wonder inspired by Apollo 13, a love of mathematics she did not yet recognize as talent, and mentors who saw her potential before she could see it herself.
That path would eventually take Ashley from studying aerospace engineering and applied mathematics to earning a Ph.D. at Caltech, solving complex challenges within the space industry, and leading the team whose work helps make Emergency SOS via satellite possible on iPhone. In her own words, Ashley shares how curiosity, creativity, persistence, and the encouragement of others helped her discover not only what she could do, but exactly who she is.
I never imagined myself as an engineer. I didn’t think I was smart enough.
I came to engineering through wonder and curiosity, not certainty I could be one. My dreams of space began just before middle school when I saw the movie Apollo 13. I can still remember the awe I felt watching the scene where the NASA engineers on the ground build a C02 filter from materials available to the astronauts in lunar module, saving their lives. Prior to that, I didn’t even know what an engineer was—when my older cousin left for college to study engineering, I thought she wanted to drive trains!
I loved school; history, literature, math, science, theater—I loved it all. I was in advanced math classes, but I didn’t think of myself as particularly good at it. I was a theater kid, and I still remember once being on stage rehearsing a scene and feeling desperate to finish my lines so I could get back to my math homework. Later, it dawned on me that I lost time when doing math: I could be in a noisy room full of people, and suddenly, I’d look up and everyone was gone. Math gave me a feeling of peace. Whether or not I excelled at it, I wanted math in my life.
When I enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I still didn’t see myself as an engineer. I didn’t take things apart. I didn’t build things. Even my freshman roommate declared I wasn’t a real engineer. Despite those misgivings, I loved space, and I hoped to do PR for NASA and learn enough of the engineering and science to make it compelling for a general audience. So, I decided to double major in Aerospace Engineering and Communications.
As fate would have it, all the communications classes were full, so I loaded up on engineering classes—and I LOVED it. Sometime in my first year, a math professor pulled me aside and asked whether I had considered double majoring in Applied Math. She thought I was good at math. I took her advice and double majored in Applied Math and Aerospace Engineering.
The summer before my senior year, the aerospace professor whose lab I was working in connected me with an engineering group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and I was able to do a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at Caltech. That summer in Los Angeles changed my life, in more ways than one—in addition to falling in love with Caltech, I also met my future husband.
Back at CU that fall, a professor from Caltech gave a talk on his work with invariant manifolds. I was mesmerized by the complexity of the math and the artistry of the visualizations. I asked whether he would be willing to work with me on my PhD; thus began my experience at Caltech where I earned a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering and a Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems. My thesis “Discrete Mechanics and Optimal Control for Space Trajectory Design” combined my interests in math, optimization, orbital mechanics, and visualization.
I started my career at The Aerospace Corporation, a CA non-profit that works with the federal government on space programs. I worked in the control analysis department, doing simulations
of satellite control systems. Early on, there was a problem with one such system: It wasn’t behaving properly during testing. My boss left a math paper on my desk, and as I read through it, I started implementing the ideas into my simulation. I had some new ideas, too. Working with another young woman, we were able to replicate the testing behavior in simulation and use the math ideas to optimize the control system. It solved the problem, and the government program director told us we saved the program. Using math!
After that experience, I moved into a new role and into management. I focused on simulating and understanding how the space enterprise works together and how to make it more resilient. I learned about satellite communication. I had incredible mentors, who continued to challenge and encourage me.
Unexpectedly, my husband, also an aerospace engineer, was recruited for a job in the Bay Area. Together, we decided to take the leap, upend our lives, and try something new. I was sad to leave The Aerospace Corporation, but I trusted something interesting was on the horizon. I was initially discouraged to find that Silicon Valley didn’t really know what to do with me. I wasn’t a software engineer. I wasn’t a hardware engineer. My skills are rather abstract. I gradually found that my knowledge and experience seemed to translate best to self-driving car startups, so I interviewed with several of them and received a couple offers. Then, a friend from CU connected me with his former boss, who was now working at Apple. He was going to give me tips on how to job search; yet by the end of the conversation, he had connected me with his colleague who hired me.
I joined Apple nearly 8 years ago to do modeling and simulation on a then-secret project. At first, it was just me, developing models, writing code, crafting plots. Gradually, I built an incredible team of talented and brilliant engineers. In the fall of 2022, I proudly stood in a field near Yosemite, seven months pregnant, announcing emergency SOS via Satellite for iPhone. Our team regularly gets messages from users thanking us for saving their lives, for providing a lifeline when they needed it most.
This job has been absolute lightning in a bottle. Every step of my journey has led me here. I’m where I am today because of teachers, mentors, and bosses who saw my potential and encouraged me, who believed in me before I did. I am forever grateful to them.
Today, I know exactly who I am. I’m an abstract and creative thinker. Extremely persistent. A storyteller. An empathetic leader. And I’m really good at math.
