Ezinne Uzo-Okoro, Founder, Terraformers.com, An edible garden marketplace on a mission to install one million residential gardens by 2020.
Ezinne Uzo-Okoro is the Founder and CEO of Terraformers.com, an online marketplace that empowers anyone to grow affordable fresh organic food anywhere. Terraformers takes an entrepreneurial approach to feeding communities, and making a dent in food security. Thus, connecting skilled edible gardeners, and US homeowners or renters US with at least 100 square feet of lawn, yard, or rooftop space, who need of fresh local produce.
During her 14-year NASA career, Ezinne contributed to multifarious missions including a constellation of micro-satellites, and six spacecraft missions including Cassini, the now-retired Saturn orbiter; ExPRESS Logistics Carrier (ELC) sitting atop the International Space Station; Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), which saves lives by observing hurricanes and precipitation on Earth; EFT-1 test mission for human exploration; Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer studying supernovae and neutron stars; and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will continuing our search for exoplanets.
She has made significant contributions in all phases of the NASA mission life-cycle from concept development and design to deployment and ground operations. She served as a Chief Software Engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. She earned Computer Science and Aerospace Systems Engineering degrees and has received numerous NASA awards.
Humanity has technology to explore the molecular composition of rocks on Mars, yet hunger is still a problem on a rapidly degrading Earth. As a national and technical leader in flight software development and spacecraft systems engineering, she brings her interdisciplinary skills to aid in resolving this contradiction. Thus, she is on a mission to preserve the Earth’s soils, and democratize fresh food for households and communities by installing 1 million vegetable gardens to improve nutrition and economic trajectories by 2020. As food deserts are wiped out across the US, she intends to repeat the process in various countries across the globe.