[1] Her mother, the daughter of a local banker, had degrees in teaching and laboratory technology; her grandmother was a schoolteacher.
Her father was a coal miner, farmer, and dry cleaning shop owner.
Instead, she obtained a position as a computer programmer at North American Aviation, through a connection with an executive there for whom she had worked as a babysitter.
[2] She finally joined the RAND Corporation in 1964, at first working there as a computer programmer in the aeronautics/astronautics department's armament group.
[1] On stepping down from this directorship, she became a senior fellow, distinguished chair in air and space policy, and professor in the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School.