Moonshot!
It has been eight years since Anne Hobbs Dorsey ‘10, graduated from Saint Patrick; and yet, when she walked through the doors of her old middle school, she said it felt like home, “Saint Patrick has always felt like my family. I was one of the original students. I feel like I’m part of Saint Patrick and its been a huge part of my life. Coming back here was like coming home for the holidays."
This past May, Anne Hobbs earned her degree from the California Institute of Technology and she is currently working for Waymo, the Google self-driving car project. Home for the holidays, she bumped into Mr. Hammond at Barnes & Noble, and he invited her to speak at a Middle School assembly. Anne Hobbs jumped at the chance to share her story and reconnect with a place that helped her get where she is today. “Fundamentally the lessons I learned at Saint Patrick never really left me,” she shared.
Her middle school assembly address had the students enthralled as they learned about Anne Hobbs’ work on Google’s self-driving cars. She told them, “Google came up with this concept of ‘moonshots.’ Shoot for the moon even if people say it is impossible. And the very first moonshot project was the self-driving car.” She talked about the importance of failure in the creative process, having a growth mindset when problem solving, and thinking outside of the box.
Later in the week, she generously gave more of her time to our students. Meeting with Mrs. Hammond’s Kindergarten class, she explained what an engineer does and worked with them on their own invention blueprints. Her impact on future engineers continued at the middle school Robotics Club. The students were challenged to create and 3D print an original Christmas ornament or decoration. Each student had to present their design to the panel of judges including Anne Hobbs. This was followed by a lively question/answer session. The robotics students impressed her with their inquiries. She shared, “They were asking me what language I code in and what operating system I work on. I didn’t know to ask that when I was in middle school!”
Servant leadership is still an important part of her identity. While in college, she mentored low-income students. As a woman in a STEM field, she thinks it is important to be a role model to young women. She wants to continue to mentor Saint Patrick students and offered her email address to any student who had follow-up questions. Maybe some day she will give one of her fellow Wolfhounds a high-tech job at Waymo programming self-driving planes!
