Kimberly Morales-Cortez: The Girl Who Never Stopped Asking Why

Today as a first-generation Mexican-American, Kimberly is preparing to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona. "I'll be studying aerospace engineering and minoring in astronomy and astrophysics."

Kimberly’s was born with so much curiosity. She was the kind of child who dug into the world with her hands first. She buried time capsules in her family’s yard and cut up flowers for her imaginary potions. Many parents might have thought, ‘How can we redirect this energy into a cleaner arts and crafts?’ But Kimberly’s parents embraced her love for learning and found ways to nurture her curiosity.

In the summers, they would make sure she got to spend a lot of time with her grandparents. Her grandparents loved the outdoors, and it was a great place for Kimberly to explore. They spent time together hiking, fishing, and learning how to read animal tracks. She walked trails with her grandparents for hours and collected rocks along the way. Her family leaned into her questions by turning their outside experiences into lessons in observation.

Kimberly traces much of her direction to science, from those early environments her family created and embraced for her. The same child who once mixed “potions” in the yard and planted many time capsules is now growing into a young woman who designs robots, leads teams, and is preparing to study aerospace engineering in college.

“My parents are really proud of me, and they support me,” she says of her parents intentionally nurturing her passion.

Kimberly has earned multiple scholarships this year and has goals to contribute to space exploration through NASA. However, navigating the path to college has brought challenges beyond grades and applications. Through the ASPIRE program, Kimberly found an important mentor in Bill. As she navigated college applications and scholarship deadlines, he helped her explore career paths, and encouraged her to pursue both aerospace engineering and astronomy. Bill also spent time in reviewing her scholarship essays before she submitted them. "He helped me figure out what I wanted to go to school for," Kimberly says. "He helped me realize that I could do both."

She credits her friends for teaching her how to keep moving forward when challenges felt overwhelming. "They were always one of my key motivators," she says. "I owe a lot of who I am to them."

Community has always mattered to Kimberly. Throughout high school, she immersed herself in leadership, serving as class treasurer, vice president, president, and secretary. She helped organize homecoming, school assemblies, community cleanups, and spirit weeks.

“I was involved in a lot of clubs, like STEM Club. We went to elementary schools all four of my years in high school. We displayed mini science experiments to them. Sometimes we built catapults, and recently we did a little pH experiment where you put cabbage juice, then lime, and it turns pink. Then you put baking soda and water, and it turns blue, and kind of explain to them how different pHs would affect things." Kimberly smiled, "It was just like bringing a science fair to the elementary schools to hopefully excite them about science and STEM, to hopefully spark their interests."

She also spent all four years of high school on her school's award-winning VEX Robotics team, qualifying for the VEX Robotics World Championship every year. During her senior year, the team faced significant challenges, including the loss of their coach and financial hurdles.

Together, they worked hard to get there. "Over spring break, we did yard work, we talked to families, we went to businesses and told them our story, and through doing all that, we were able to raise almost $20,000." This made it possible for them to compete at the World Championship in St. Louis and secure second place.

"I remember at the beginning of freshman year there was about five or six girls whenever I went to compete at competitions all over Oregon, that we would be friends with." She then said, " I realized over the years, that some of the girls would drop robotics or just not participate anymore. I asked them why, and they were like, because they didn't feel comfortable in a male-dominated environment."

"I feel like that's what made Evelyn and I stick with robotics so long, because we were there for each other, and we advocated for each other. Whenever we go to competitions, sometimes you get the sense ‘because I'm a girl we're not taken seriously,’ but we really stuck next to each other."

Although she watched the other girls experience this, she is equally quick to recognize the supportive teammates and mentors who believed in her at her school.

Kimberly still dreams the way she did as a seven-year-old. She imagines helping build spacecraft capable of carrying humanity farther than ever before. She dreams of designing technology for future missions and perhaps one day becoming an astronaut herself. If given the chance to travel into deep space in pursuit of discovery, she wouldn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to answer the next question.

The universe continues to invite Kimberly to do what she has done since she was seven years old: remain curious, keep exploring, and never stop asking questions. "I've always been curious about what's out there," she says. "I'm excited to learn what I don't know. My goal is to become something that's greater than myself," she says. "To be part of a team who works together to explore, to discover what's unknown."