With our Member of the Month program, Dallas SWE seeks to recognize some of our non-officer members whose technical contributions, leadership accomplishments, or SWE volunteer service are particularly noteworthy. If you would like to nominate a Dallas SWE member for his/her contributions, please email us.
Our November Member of the Month is Letia Blanco!
Letia Blanco recently accepted a job at Rockwell Collins and will be joining their team on November 26th.
A SWE member since 2008, Letia is most renowned in Dallas SWE as the founding chair of the SWE Design Your World – STEM Conference for Girls. Partnering with Raytheon Women’s Network, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Women in Technology International, she recruited more than 110 female engineer volunteers from the area to create 10 tracks of original hands-on STEM activities for elementary school girls. She also recruited Anousheh Ansari, the first female commercial astronaut, as a keynote speaker. The conference drew 200 fourth- and fifth-grade girls. Special emphasis was placed on reaching girls from low-income communities, and 60 percent of conference attendees were provided scholarships and transportation. The Design Your World STEM Conference for Girls has been presented 12 times to date, impacting more than 1,800 girls. Letia’s pioneering influence on this event was a great injection of energy into our Dallas SWE section and our local communities.
In addition to her Design Your World event planning experience, Letia has been a dedicated volunteer at other community events. She has served Dallas SWE an initiative lead, as vice president of outreach and as executive vice president. Letia Blanco is a charismatic guest speaker, panelist, and mentor to Dallas SWE and local Collegiate SWE sections, as well as local aerospace and robotics organizations. Those who attend her talks find her vitality and enthusiasm quite contagious: she really knows how to engage an audience and inspire them to take action in their own lives!
Most recently, Letia was awarded the SWE Distinguished New Engineer Award at the WE18 Society Conference in Minneapolis, MN. Several Dallas SWE Members celebrated with her as she was recognized for her technical, leadership, and community service accomplishments.
Letia is also a passionate advocate for women in engineering and SWE at her employer, Raytheon. In 2014, Ms. Blanco received the Raytheon President’s iVolunteer coin for exceptional community involvement and the 2017 Raytheon STAR Award for Advocacy for Women in STEM. A few of our recent Dallas SWE leadership team members first came to SWE based on her recommendation, and we are grateful for her influence and drive to share SWE’s mission with her coworkers.
Letia Blanco is a systems design engineer and an integrated product team lead in the Space and Airborne Systems business segment of Raytheon Company in McKinney, Texas. She is responsible for executing all aspects of the advanced targeting forward-looking infrared upgrade program, including cost, schedule, and technical performance. She was formerly the lead engineer for the multi-spectral targeting system (MTS) C-130 program suite, tasked with creating and maintaining the technology road map, leading requirements development, integrating new technologies, production execution, and sustaining technical support.
Blanco joined Raytheon in 2008 and has worked as a mechanical engineer, integration verification and validation engineer, software systems engineer and a systems design engineer for a variety of ground based and airborne electro-optical infrared systems. A level 6 certified program manager, Blanco has completed BD600 series capture manager training and proposal writing certifications. A three time conference chair, she is the primary inventor for patent 11-2640-US-NP and the author of three peer-reviewed journal publications and eight technical symposia presentations.
Letia Blanco is a graduate of the Raytheon Leadership Development Program and a recipient of the 2014 Women to Watch: Up and Coming Award for Raytheon North Texas. Blanco was the Raytheon corporate-level winner of the 2015 YESNET Technology Network Innovation Challenge and the recipient of the 2012 NCS Excellence in Engineering and Technology Team Award.
Letia received her Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Arlington. She was named a Top 1% University Scholar by the College of Engineering and voted “Most Valuable Student” by her graduating class. She led her senior design team to develop a SMART bandage which won the ASM International Engineering Design Competition.
Congratulations, Letia!
