‘Don’t put any limits on what you can do.’
Latoska Price is the technical service manager for coatings in the Americas for Synthomer, one of the world’s leading suppliers of vinyl and acrylic polymers. She had many mentors and urges students to find as many people as possible to support them.
Did you have a mentor?
In high school, I had a fantastic chemistry teacher, and she actually worked in the Henry Ford soybean laboratories at that time. Henry Ford wanted to do with the soybean what George Washington Carver did with the peanut. So, she actually had a chance to work on different things made out of soybeans. She was also a nuclear physicist. She brought that information, that type of technology, to high school chemistry. You know, we were doing nuclear fission reactions and calculations and things like that. And so it was really very, very instrumental. She said this is good, you have a talent for this. And I felt really buoyed by that.
What advice do you have for kids exploring the world and discovering what they’re interested in?
Well, I really would say just don’t put any limits on what you can do, especially with science, because most people I found throughout the years think that all science has so much math, but really the math helps you to the understanding.
What does STEM mean to you?
I think of it as an exciting field. I mean, it means that I get a chance to work with a lot of the things that I’ve learned over the years, not only what I learned in school, but how to apply it in many areas, especially in the coatings area, which is where I have spent most of my career. Being able to actually see things, I have an idea and actually see things kind of come to fruition, and actually make a product and see something that actually creates sales and then all these other things that makes it a really a lot of fun.
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