Ashley Menendez, Southwest High School 2013 salutatorian and class president, and member of the IPAA/PESA Petroleum Academy at Southwest, spoke on April 5, 2017 at the annual meeting of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) in Washington, DC.  Ashley spoke about her experience in the academy including her high school externship at EOG Resources in Fort Worth.  Ashley expressed gratitude on behalf of all current and former Petroleum Academy students to NOIA and its member companies and other energy companies for their support of the IPAA/PESA Energy Education program.

Ashley is majoring in chemical engineering at Howard University in Washington DC. She is a member of an honors engineering fraternity Tau Beta Pie, President of the American Society of Chemical Engineers and involved with the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, and a robotics organization. She has completed a number of internship opportunities. One of her memorable internships involved research in nanotechnology at Cornell University and presenting her findings at a conference there as a part of the Particles of Reduced Dimensional Materials program. Another internship involved consulting for an IBM engineering department. Ashley’s aspirations after graduation are to be able to work with nanotechnology to make energy more economical.

Ashley Menendez with Galen Cobb, IPAA/PESA Education Advisory Board Co-Chairman and NOIA Public Affairs & Education Committee Chairman.