A systems engineer by education, she began her career at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she was on the Voyager 2 team.

[9] Sylvia Acevedo was born[10] near Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota where her father was serving as an officer in the military.

Acevedo collected newspaper articles about the space program and built Estes model rockets from a paper-and-plastic kits.

[13] In her memoir, "Path to the Stars," Acevedo revealed that it was stargazing on her first Brownies Girl Scout trip that ignited her interest in science.

Acevedo served on the founding executive board of the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders.

“My focus [at GSUSA] has been to raise the profile of the Girl Scout movement and mission, with the targeted aim to grow membership.”[9] In 2018 she was listed on Forbes’ "America's Top 50 Women In Tech".

[24] In January 2022, she was named a member of the board of directors for Credo, an innovative company developing secure, high-speed connectivity solutions.

[26] 2018: Clarion Books, Path To the Stars, My journey from Girl Scouts to Rocket Scientist, an aspirational middle school memoir.