Jacqueline Akinpelu

Jacqueline Akinpelu (born 1953, née McKinney) is an American applied mathematician and operations researcher who worked at Bell Labs on network performance under overloaded conditions, and later, as a research manager at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, developed a pipeline for students from Morgan State University to mentor them into careers in STEM fields. Quotes I grew up in 1960’s in Winston Salem, NC. in a low-income, single parent household. At the time, the schools in Winston-Salem were segregated but, due primarily to the dedication of my teachers and my own motivation I received a very strong public school education. For as long as I can remember, even before I started school, I had a love for mathematics. I think there was something about both the logic of math and the fact that in math there was a “right answer” that appealed to me (clearly before I knew about stochastic mathematics). For a long time, I wanted to be a math teacher, but in high school I started to think about working in jobs where I could “apply” mathematics (though I only had a vague idea of what that meant). In 1980 I joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ. Eventually I had a 25- year career at Bell Laboratories and, after the breakup of the Bell System, AT&T Laboratories. During my time at AT&T I learned the importance of mentoring. I have mentored hundreds of people over my career, first at AT&T and, more recently, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), where I continued my career after leaving AT&T. I am very proud of the impact I have had on the careers of so many people. Jacqueline Akinpelu talks about herself External links Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Mathematicians from the United States Category:Living people Category:1953 births Category:Women scientists from the United States Category:Educators from the United States Category:Women born in the 1950s Category:Johns Hopkins University alumni Category:Duke University alumni Category:African Americans