Previously, Telva was Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at GM where she championed the progress toward a high performing, inclusive culture while shepherding global impact in diversity. The team fostered partnerships and initiatives that promoted equity inside and outside of the company. Her passions for culture and sustainable solutions for people and processes intersected to fuel notable impacts while leading facility engineering, facility management and corporate energy strategy for GM.

Earlier in her career, Telva held positions of increasing responsibility and influence within manufacturing engineering and at several manufacturing locations where she motivated teams to rethink the possible in project execution, maintenance, quality, operations, and labor negotiations. Telva earned her BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.

Along with her professional accomplishments and commitment to the growth of colleagues at GM, Telva is deeply engaged with impactful community organizations and educational institutions focused on developing confident and curious minds, increasing access to education, improving community health, and shepherding our natural world. She is currently the National President of the Girls Scouts of the USA. Telva is a positive, driven individual who greatly enjoys wonderful life experiences with her family.

She leads the efforts to connect under-resourced communities across the United States, its Territories, and Tribal Nations with probono engineering expertise.

She began volunteering with EWB in 2010 and holds a Civil and Environmental Engineering degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining in 2020, she worked in commercial construction and is a registered Professional Engineer.

She earned her master’s degree in mechanical engineering at UC San Diego, and her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Penn State University. Lauren has been working with Engineering Tomorrow for almost 6 years, and she is passionate about the mission and working with kids to inspire a love for engineering.

She currently manages the Mission Test and Operations group at ispace, inc., leading spacecraft and payload operations for lunar lander missions, having served as Flight Director and Deputy Mission Director with over 100 hours on-console in Mission Control. 

Previously at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she worked on the MAIA, Sentinel-6, SWOT, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Cassini missions, earning the Bruce Murray Award for her STEM outreach — a passion that has taken her to speak at organizations like PBS SciGirls, Nike, Lego, MIT Alumni, and the Smithsonian across six countries. 

She also volunteers on the Glendale-Pasadena YWCA board and serves on the National Academies' Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards committee for science communication, and when not operating spacecraft, she's exploring Japan, watching anime, and supporting underrepresented communities in STEM.