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How better to honor the woman who enabled GPS (Global Positioning System), mathematician Dr. Gladys B. West, than to have the National Center of Women’s Innovations (NCWI) traveling exhibit featuring West be unveiled at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus Headquarters when the campus opens for classes in January 2025! The exhibit will remain there for the public’s and students’ delight for six months and then continue its national tour.

If it takes a village, count on Alexandrians. Two local Alexandria leaders are cooperating to make STEM programs more effective for girls. Partnering with Rosie Riveters, the National Center of Women’s Innovations launched an innovative program encouraging girls into STEM work.

Purposely located in Alexandria, Virginia, the National Center of Women’s Innovation (NCWI) is roaring forward in 2024 to assure forgotten women innovators are recognized. Together we will make it happen. Our ambitious goals for the year include producing mobile exhibits of forgotten women innovators that will inspire the public. Plus we will launch the most comprehensive and searchable data file of women innovators.

Plitt has spent her career fighting for women’s rights, including becoming NOW’s first executive director nationally in the 1970s, operating an award-winning business, then becoming a recognized author and Visiting Scholar. The National Center of Women’s Innovation was launched in 2023 and a gala was held in Alexandria, Virginia, on October 27, which also happened to be Dr. West’s 93rd birthday. She attended the event where she was honored as the organization’s 2023 featured innovator.

Plitt, an Alexandria, Virginia newcomer, has advocated for women’s equality throughout her life and currently serves as founder and board chair of the National Center of Women’s Innovations (NCWI). Under her leadership, the NCWI — to be headquartered in Alexandria — will mainstream the forgotten achievements of female innovators who have shaped the world. Additionally, it will enable young girls to see themselves as innovators, with the final goal being the pursuit of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields.

Dr. West is not an isolated case. Dr. Patricia Bath was the first African American woman to graduate with an ophthalmology residency and the first to receive a medical patent for her Laserphace Probe (1986), dramatically reducing the pain of cataract surgery and even bringing sight to people who had been blind for decades!

Did you know that GPS, rear-view mirrors, windshield wipers, turn signals and other critical features in your car were invented by women? For Women’s History Month in 2023 Ford Canada created a commercial to capture these overlooked innovations in a clever commercial which satirically announces a Men’s Only Edition which lacks all of these key features.

Listen to NCWI Founder and Chair Jane Plitt on the Associations Thrive Podcast.