Our Donors

STARS only exists thanks to extraordinarily generous funding from individuals, corporations and foundations. Mr. John C. Ryan, the founding donor of STARS, has been an SAO Advisory Board Member since 2015, and simultaneously served on the Smithsonian National Board. He was inspired to make this gift after hearing SAO Director Lisa Kewley describe STARS at a Board dinner.

“It all started when I was eight. I found a book that lit the fuse for my lifetime interest in astronomy. This small, full-color book was filled with images of fantastic celestial objects: Saturn with its rings, the giant Jupiter and its big red spot, and more. And I was hooked,” said Ryan. “Today, I have the opportunity to help launch SAO’s STARS Program. And like what happened for me, the program will generate curiosity in science, technology, engineering, and math for thousands of students in rural and tribal nation schools across the country. Curiosity pays off.”

Reverend Barbara Hebner (pictured left) loved visiting schools to talk about being a 'computer', doing the math required to calculate data and create curves and graphs to understand flight data for experimental aircraft. Her work as a computer started at Edwards AFB, where she had the opportunity to work with, and socialize with, future astronauts. She would bring her slide rules to show how people computed data before calculators and computer equipment took over.

Rev. Barbara Hebner, looking back on her life, thought that if she were born today, she would have become an astrophysicist. She didn't have that opportunity growing up, but that didn't stop her interest in and passion for the wonders of the universe. She never stopped learning about space - the last article she read just weeks before she died at 90 years old was about the latest findings from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Keith M Cardoza and Kathleen H Cardoza's (both pictured on the left) paths to the stars began in different ways. Keith's began in Rhode Island, where his mother, a lifelong school teacher, still lives in the same home they moved into when he was five. In that backyard, he spent countless evenings with his telescope, captivated by the mysteries of the cosmos. The values that shaped his life, curiosity, education, and a belief in possibility, were first nurtured there.

Kathleen’s journey began through music and imagination. Her father introduced her to an extraordinary range of music, including a cherished vinyl recording of the Apollo moon landing and the celestial grandeur of Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Later, through the music of John Williams in Close Encounters, Star Wars, and E.T., she discovered how wonder can inspire people to look beyond what exists and is understood today and imagine what could lie ahead.