Cultivating Thinkers and Doers of Impossible Things

In high school in Tallahassee, Florida, Netia McCray ’12 was invited to join MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering, and Science (MITES), a summer program for talented students from underrepresented backgrounds. Just one problem: She knew almost nothing about MIT.

“I’d only heard of it in textbooks at the local library when reading about physics,” she says. McCray was on the fence about leaving home, but her dad—who’d been discouraged from pursuing engineering because he was Black—urged her to go. She went, applied to MIT, and was accepted early decision.

Today, she supports other underresourced kids through her Boston-based nonprofit, Mbadika, a name that means “idea” in the Kimbundu language of Angola. The organization honors her dad, who died when she was a sophomore.

“I was heavily influenced by my parents, especially my father, whose dream was to open up a school in order to teach what we now consider mechanical engineering or product design development to boys and girls who didn’t feel that they were worthy of working in STEM,” McCray says. She got the idea for the organization on a summer MISTI trip to Brazil in 2010. 

“Brazil was a turning point in my life,” she says. “My father’s health started going downhill drastically during that time, and I had doubts if I could go. A week before I was supposed to go to Brazil, he passed. He’d told me if I tried to cancel my flight, he’d haunt me for the rest of my life.”

In South America, she recognized her own story as she met students with drive and curiosity but without resources. After graduation, she became a full-time social entrepreneur. Now Mbadika offers workshops and internships; digital content through the New England Emmy–nominated MLAB TV show (shown at top); and “field kits” made in conjunction with the MIT-founded clothing company Ministry of Supply. In 2019, Mbadika interns won the 2019 NASA Goddard PIERR Award for their work developing products such as VR goggles for NASA’s Mars 2030 mission. 

Mbadika also operates a storefront in Central Square, where high school students learn product design and development. And she and her four staffers and interns offer pro bono advice to young aspiring scientists. It feels a long way from her childhood in Florida, and that’s precisely the point.

“MIT is not only a place that produces the world’s renowned scientists and engineers,” she says. “It produces thinkers and doers of impossible things.” 

This story also appears in the May/June issue of MIT Alumni News magazine, published by MIT Technology Review.  

Photos courtesy of Netia McCray