2021 Distinguished Alumna

In second grade, Deanna Suilmann ’76 announced that she wanted to become an engineer. Her teacher laughed at her. Deanna became an engineer, and is now a teacher herself – inspiring her students with her extraordinary career path.

A highly trained chemical engineer, Deanna worked with computers and supercomputers, specializing in high-density interconnection for circuits at pioneering firms like Cray Research and WL Gore and Associates. She was often the only woman in the room and had to overcome frequent bias. Still, her work spoke for itself. She consistently had standing job offers from other companies due to her expertise, and when a company relocated and she opted to stay behind to be near her ailing father, the company flew her out weekly on a private jet and rented an apartment for her just so they could keep leveraging her brain power.

Eventually, Deanna switched to teaching high school science – a dramatically different challenge, but one she embraced wholeheartedly. She was recruited to co-coach a fledgling Science Olympiad team that was struggling for traction and had almost no female participation. Deanna actively recruited females and lent her expertise – and now the team is 65% female and has won the state championship seven times and participated in six national tournaments.

Deanna has impacted countless lives and is certainly part of the reason we all have mini-computers in our pockets. She also stayed in touch with that teacher, who admits to learning a lesson that day, and never again laughed at a student’s dreams.