Eighteen years ago, a teacher got me interested in FIRST through promises of a trip to Disney. Who could resist that? I joined FIRST for Mickey, but I stayed for the robots.

Lauren Lyons credits FIRST Mentors for her transformation from shy young girl to confident, successful SpaceX engineer helping the company to launch re-usable rockets and send humans to space. They helped her understand what real engineers do and that engineering tasks could be fun — machining parts, wiring circuit boards, designing pneumatic actuators. She got hooked.

Being a FIRST Alum at Princeton gave Lauren the confidence to successfully tackle challenging course work. While mentoring a local FIRST team, she was befriended by long-term FIRST Volunteer Dave Lavery from NASA,who helped her win a NASA internship working on the Mars rovers. It was the beginning of an exciting career -- and a long-term mentoring friendship.

“It’s not only those Mentors that I hold dear, it’s the FIRST lessons of Coopertition^® and Gracious Professionalism^®,” said Lyons.