Be Our Hero Day 2023

CALLING ALL HEROES

BE OUR HERO on our annual day of giving! Your donation to the Holy Child Financial Assistance Fund creates the opportunity for more students to learn from our remarkable Faculty Heroes.

Give a gift in honor of your favorite past & present teachers in the comments!

“Dr. B is the reason I became an engineer.” - Anna Losorelli Hoyer ‘07

I still remember my sophomore year geometry and trigonometry class like it was yesterday, it’s honestly hard to believe it was half my life ago. I don’t particularly remember any of the theorems or proofs I spent hours studying, but I do remember the impact that Dr. B made on me and how it led to my decision to become an engineer…and that he would start every test with the words “Ready go!”

I already knew Dr. B from coaching the softball team my freshman year, which is also one of my fondest memories during my time at Mayfield, but it wasn’t until I was in his class did I realize what an amazing and selfless individual he was. Dr. B had a lucrative career at TRW, which is now Northrop Grumman and where I currently work as a manager and engineer in the SATCOM Systems Engineering division. After he retired he came to Mayfield to teach and mentor young women in the field of STEM, which at the time was severely lacking female representation. He would often talk to us about various projects he worked on during his time at TRW and would invite other women pursuing Ph.D.s or working in the industry to come speak to us about their experiences. This really opened my eyes to engineering and sparked my interest in potentially pursuing a degree in that field. Ironically, one of the women who came to speak to us while pursuing a Chemical Engineering Ph.D. at UCLA ended up being one of my managers at Northrop Grumman years later!

During my junior year I started getting interested in pursuing a degree in biomedical engineering. After telling this to Dr. B, he set me up with an internship at the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC that following summer. That was the stepping stone, solidifying my future career as an engineer. The next year, when applying to schools I only applied to engineering programs and ended up going to Dr. B’s alma mater, UCLA.

I know that Dr. B’s passion, enthusiasm and advocacy for young women in the field of STEM influenced many other Mayfield grads to pursue similar careers. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had such a great mentor so early in life and will forever thank Dr. B for both leading me to this career choice and for my subsequent success.