More than 400 people attended the annual birthday celebration and fundraiser for the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester on Wednesday night.
The keynote speaker at the event held at the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center was MiMi Aung, who is an engineer and former project manager for NASA. She led the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Project, involving an aircraft that landed on Mars a year ago.
Aung recently told WXXI News that speaking at an event to honor Susan B. Anthony, a leader in the fight for women’s’ suffrage, is right in line with the kinds of qualities needed to succeed.
“Having the perseverance to really push and to make things happen, it takes a lot of ingenuity, perseverance; it takes grit, it takes determination, it takes commitment, and I really related to that,” said Aung.
The President and CEO of the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House is Deborah Hughes. She said that Aung was a good choice for a keynote speaker, because of that perseverance that Aung referred to.
“Susan B. Anthony felt that when we could really have women and men, from the earliest age, pursue their dreams and their visions, we would really be able to do amazing things,” said Hughes. “And I think MiMi’s a great example of that; incredible scientist, even the NASA folks didn’t think they could make this four pound machine fly on Mars, and her team put it together and made it happen.”
Aung now works for Amazon, as a program manager for an effort aimed at increasing broadband access using satellites in low Earth orbit. She said the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter continues to have flights on Mars, and send back data.
The Susan B. Anthony annual celebration has often attracted more than 1,000 people in pre-COVID years.
But even with the smaller crowd on Wednesday, Hughes said that thanks to the generosity of a number of companies and organizations contributing to the fundraiser, they still expect to generate revenue needed as part of the overall fundraising efforts for the museum.
