Hialeah Campus Student Gets Assist From NASA To Blast Off Cybersecurity Career

Kristina Spalding struggled to find her calling. The 33-year-old bounced from job to job—waitress in South Beach, production coordinator and a stint as a public relations intern.

After the coronavirus pandemic hit, she enrolled at Hialeah Campus to study cybersecurity. 

“I had a desire to try something new and challenge myself,” Spalding said. 

In January, Spalding participated in the National Community College Aerospace Scholars program, a five-week educational experience created by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for undergraduate students looking to explore careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

Now she has been selected to participate in the Virtual Community College Aerospace Scholars Experience on Sept. 13-23. In previous years, students in the program have designed plans to make rovers. 

“I hope to network with other students around the country, with NASA professionals, and segue this experience into a future internship at NASA,” Spalding said. “Let this be a stepping stone for my next opportunity.”

Spalding, who was born in Miami, graduated from William H. Turner Technical Arts High School in 2006, and then enrolled at North Campus.

While she studied at MDC, Spalding took multiple opportunities to explore her varied interests. She worked as a bartender, dabbled in real estate for a year and a half, and taught English at a private school in Italy from 2011 and 2012.

In 2016, Spalding earned an associate’s degree from MDC. She transferred to Florida International University that fall to study public relations, but realized the pathway wasn’t for her and dropped out. The time away from school allowed her to reassess her future and affirm her love for cybersecurity. 

“It came from being a news-junkie,” Spalding said. “Looking at PR disasters of other companies such as data breaches or hacks. [It] makes it interesting to dive into it and to figure out why it happened, how it happened, and I found out about cybersecurity and I never looked back.”

Motivated to enter the cybersecurity field, she re-enrolled at MDC in the summer of 2020. However, she dropped her three classes that semester because of a workload that included jobs as a waitress and a production coordinator. 

But she returned to Hialeah Campus in the fall—this time leaving her restaurant gig and cutting her hours at the production job. 

She quickly acclimated herself. Spalding currently serves as treasurer of the Hialeah Campus Student Government Association, president of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and public relations director of the Women in Cybersecurity club. In addition, she volunteers for the nonprofit organization Girls Who Code by teaching middle school girls the importance of cybersecurity.

At the start of the fall semester, Hialeah Campus technology professor Rodolfo Cruz shared details of the NCCSA program with Spalding’s class. She applied in November and was accepted into the program a few months later.  

“She likes to go after any opportunity that she gets,” Cruz said. “She is coming from a non-technical background so it gave me great satisfaction when she took this opportunity.”

Spalding and two other MDC students started the five-week program with NCCAS this past January. They learned about subjects ranging from the technology behind space missions to the exploration of the moon, and they took six quizzes about topics such as humans in space and Mars rovers.

After earning more than 90 percent on all her quizzes, Spalding had to do a final project that qualified her for a follow-up program this summer or fall. It involved reimagining the next steps for deep-space habitation systems.

In March, she got an email notifying her that she had been chosen to participate in the Virtual Community College Aerospace Scholars Experience this fall. 

“I did cartwheels for a little bit,” Spalding said. “I was very happy.”

In the months before the Virtual Community College Aerospace Scholars Experience, Spalding will work with Splunk—a Fortune 500 technology company that produces software—during a 12-week virtual internship about incident response.

“She has the qualities of someone who wants to go above and beyond,” said Wendy Rodriguez, who graduated from MDC in May with a bachelor’s degree in information systems technology with a concentration in cybersecurity and serves as one of Spalding’s mentors. “She is reaping the fruits of her labor by getting into this program.” 

This summer, Spalding, who aspires to serve as a role model to women—especially young black women—will start taking courses at MDC toward her bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity. 

“I really want to make sure I am contributing to the field by uplifting others,” Spalding said. “It took me forever to get to this point in my life [due to] self doubt. I want to make sure that no one ever feels that way about themselves if I can help it.