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Release: 01-288

Four from NASA’s Marshall Center receive honors for Women’s Equality Day

Four employees at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., were honored at the annual Women’s Equality Day program Monday at the Sparkman Center on Redstone Arsenal.

Melissa Van Dyke from the Space Transportation Directorate, Phyllis Olinger from the Office of Chief Counsel, and Jill Holland from the 2^nd Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle Program Office were recognized as outstanding women achievers. Jolene Martin of the Space Shuttle Projects Office was recognized as the Federal Women's Program Supervisor of the Year.

Nominations for those to be honored were solicited from across the Marshall Center. A panel of their peers selected the winners.

Dr. Susan D. Parker, state auditor for Alabama, spoke at the Women’s Equality Day program. Elected in 1998, Parker is responsible for all property audits and inventory management for Alabama, and appoints registrars in 66 of 67 counties. As fifth in line of succession to the governor’s office, Parker is the highest-ranking woman officeholder in Alabama.

Women’s Equality Day was established in 1971 to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. That event was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y.