Sheyene Gerardi is a former actress, mining executive; she co-founded the NASA´s Planetary Landing Research Laboratory and was appointed as the Robotics Outreach Lead of NASA CLASS in 2018.
She was born in Caracas, the only child of a family of Italian and Brazilian descent. She holds dual-citizenship with Italy, from where her mother hails. She was educated at a private bilingual Spanish/English school, she then went on to study French and Portuguese. Gerardi got her start as a model and actress starring in telenovelas (Soap-Operas) in Venezuela in the early 2000s. She has received various accolades, such as the Emmy Award, 2 de Oro and the Imagen Award; she has also adds stellar credits in her role as a TV host and producer in international prime time shows after relocating to the United States. In 2018, Sheyene earned a master in In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) offered by NASA, with 100% final grade. In partnership with NASA SBIR/STTR, Sheyene established the Sheyene Institute, a robotics R&D laboratory to develop fully autonomous operations suitable for deployment on in situ planetary and lunar missions. She is working along with governments and international partners to introduce robotics education into low-resource communities and conflict areas in concert with entertainment productions for social change, through the Sheyene Gerardi Foundation. She is member of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and to the Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedom. Gerardi's interests include international relations between OECD States and developing countries. The broad issues to which it attends integrally involves technological globalization, space law, human rights, international security, sovereignty, federalism, war, peace, terrorism, and so forth. Sheyene is also active in the area of robotics towards self-driving cars. In 2017, Sheyene established a robotic company spun out of the Sheyene Institute to commercialize a robotics product line for commercial uses.
Academic programs from institutions such as Harvard and Stanford University have further enhanced her executive learning and development. In 2020, she joined a program offered by the University of Naples Federico II to acquire a degree in Political Science and she has recently completed the campaign-training program for candidates from the National Democratic Training Committee in USA.
Source: Vogue