High-Tech Sunday

High-Tech Sunday is a CCG Media interview series that puts accomplished people in science, engineering and military service in front of two hosts and asks how they got where they are. The structure is formal and it holds steady across the recent episodes. Each one begins with a roll call: two hosts introduced by title, then the guest, with a short professional biography read before the conversation begins. Lengo Dean, Career Communication Group's Senior Technology Editor, appears as a host in every recent episode. The second seat rotates among Managing Editor Rayondon Kennedy, Assistant Editor Ada Romano and Dr. Mark Vaughn, who manages technical talent pipelining at Corning Incorporated. The guests hold serious posts. Clayton Turner directs NASA's Langley Research Center. Philip June is vice president of safety and quality for Boeing Global Services, and Roderick Jackson is a laboratory and program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Several were honored at the 2022 BEA STEM Conference, and the introductions say so. The conversations cover the work and the life behind it. Usang Ekpe, a wireless engineer at AT&T, is asked how 5G and fiber networks are reshaping culture, after a host admits to being old enough to remember rotary phones and dial-up. Philip June calls a diverse workforce a business necessity and widens the idea of diversity to include how people learn, process information and think. Commander Desmond Walker, prospective executive officer of USS Bainbridge, draws on his time at Navy Recruiting Command to explain the Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate Program, with options that include surface ships, submarines and instruction. Family is part of the story too. Roderick Jackson calls himself a scientist who likes energy, working in the field his father taught him through the lens of justice his mother taught him. LaTasha Starr, of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, recalls a father who showed faith as an action, a verb, by being the first to write the check. She also describes leaving Memphis at 18 and spending a summer in Madrid at a center for astrobiology, studying a red, iron-rich river for signs of life. Clayton Turner offers a line that could stand for the whole series: 'Don't tell me I can't. Show me I can.' He talks about being present in local communities, because sometimes people have to see it to be it. The Sunday in the title carries some weight. One host remarks that on a Sunday they get to say amen every now and then, and the sign-off frames the series around universal moral principles. The register stays earnest and encouraging, with hosts quick to praise and guests generous with detail. Where to start depends on the field: Turner or Starr for aerospace, Jackson for energy, Walker for a close look at a naval career.