Hailey Polson 
(she/her)

  • Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2025

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Aerospace Engineering, ‘26

  • Host Institution: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

  • Mentor: TBD

  • Brookie Mentor: TBD

Hailey is a junior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology majoring in Aerospace Engineering and minoring in Public Policy. She is from Claremore, Oklahoma and a proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Ever since attending Space Camp at ten years old and meeting an engineer who worked on the Apollo program, Hailey has been passionate about pursuing engineering as a way to expand our knowledge of the universe and our home planet.

At MIT, Hailey is the captain of MIT Doya, a rocketry team geared toward Indigenous students. She led this team to win the Overall Grand Prize and Next Step awards in the First Nations Launch NASA Artemis Student Challenge as a sophomore and is now helping the team navigate the NASA University Student Launch Initiative. She is also the president of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, helping her community win the Cultural Impact Award at the national conference. Hailey has served her class as an officer of the class ring committee and serves her peers in AeroAstro as an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics executive board member. Hailey has also been recognized by her department with the Vickie Kerrebrock Award as an undergraduate advocate for community building.

This past summer Hailey interned at Blue Origin, working on lunar payloads as part of the Vehicle Integration Systems Engineering team for the Mark 1 Lunar Lander. Hailey has also interned at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with the Space Science and Security Program and Science and Technology Assessments groups, building satellite hardware and preparing policy briefs.

In summer 2025, Hailey will intern with the Space Systems group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. In her free time, Hailey has taken glassblowing classes at the MIT Glass Lab, earned her pirate's certificate (Sailing, Fencing, Archery, and Pistol), and helped teach letterpress printing at the Beaver Press.