Abstract :
When Janet Barth was selected to be chief of the Electrical Engineering Division (EED) at NASA\´s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), it shouldn\´t have been all that surprising. Nobody could dispute that she was highly experienced. Over the years, she had risen through the ranks at the GSFC, from a co-op student in 1976 to manager of the Flight Data Systems and Radiation Effects Branch of the EED from 2005 to 2008. But there were a couple of distinctions. For one thing, she had never been an associate division chief. And, unlike all of the other division heads, she was a woman. "I\´m so fortunate that the other division chiefs - all men, of course - were very helpful," she says. "I could always call them to ask for advice."