Boilermaker Miri Niedrauer didn’t grow up with access to any kind of education, so she made her own. As one of nine children, her childhood was made up mostly of working on her family’s goat dairy farm in rural east Texas and caring for her younger siblings. Occupational aspirations, dreams of having a career — certainly one in science — weren’t common for women in her environment. But if persistence were a person, it’d be Niedrauer, who went on to earn her PhD in organic chemistry at Purdue and an MBA through Purdue Global and continues to break down barriers for other girls with STEM dreams.