JoAnn Hardin Morgan (December 4, 1940) is an American aerospace engineer who was the first female engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) John F. Kennedy Space Center and the first woman to serve as a senior executive at Kennedy Space Center. For her work at NASA, Morgan was honored by U.S. President Bill Clinton as a Meritorious Executive in 1995 and 1998. Prior to her retirement in 2003, she held various leadership positions over 40 years in the human space flight programs at NASA. Morgan served as the director of the External Relations and Business Development during her final years at the space center. Early life and education JoAnn Hardin, the oldest child of four children of Don and Laverne Hardin, was born in Huntsville, Alabama on December 4, 1940, near where her father was stationed as a U.S. Army pilot at Redstone Arsenal during World War Two. While she was in high school, her family relocated to Titusville, Florida where her father worked at Cape Canaveral as an ordnance administrator in the U.S. Army's rocket program. There she met her future husband, Larry Morgan. Immediately after graduating from high school in June 1958, she joined the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Cape Canaveral as a civilian engineering aide. In the Fall of 1958, Hardin enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville where she studied mathematics. During her summer breaks, she continued to work at Cape Canaveral under mentors such as German-American engineer Wernher von Braun. In her work as an engineering aide, Hardin had hands-on experience designing rocket launch computer systems for the initial NASA flight programs. After Hardin earned a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics at the Jacksonville State University in Alabama in 1963, she went to work for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center as an aerospace engineer. Kennedy Space Center In 1963, Morgan began full-time employment at Kennedy Space Center. She was the only female engineer, and she recalls that she "would remain the only woman there for a long time." Morgan was the only female engineer in the firing room during the launch of Apollo 11 on 16 July 1969. Morgan humorously notes that "for the first 15 years, I worked in a building where there wasn't a ladies' rest room," and "it was a big day in my book when there was one." Management career Morgan was selected to receive