Hispanic Heritage Month: Profiling a San Diego Woman Achieving National Recognition in Artificial Intelligence

Carey Adolfsson is a San Diego CEO getting national accolades for her work in the defense industry and for her company’s new artificial intelligence (AI) product. Her company, Diagnostic and Defense Technology Analysts, Inc. (DTA) recently announced the development of its product AstraLaunch at the Defense TechConnect conference after receiving the TechConnect Innovation Award this past June. 

Though seeing immense success now, Carey shares that it wasn’t always an easy road being female and Hispanic in her industry. “It was difficult. Being in a lot of, for instance, Department of Homeland Security conferences, there were not a lot of women who looked like me.”

Carey says that her inspiration came from her family, “I would like to invite parents to make education a top priority for their children. Parents can do this with incentives and in removing barriers. Whatever it takes. Start them young with discipline and commitment. And always understand you are their role models. I give my parents all the credit for their amazing resolve and entrepreneurial spirit.”

That entrepreneurial spirit is exemplified in her new product AstraLaunch, which is designed to prioritize the commercialization potential of a technology using scientific metrics and AI for attaining real-time market intelligence. AstraLaunch will leverage prior NASA work to help determine if a technology has an insertion point into the NASA commercialization roadmap. AstraLaunch helps align research, patented or not, with the market early in development.

With years of success under her belt, Carey makes it a priority to help other women in tech. She co-founded the San Diego chapter of WITI (Women in Technology International), a network of smart, talented women. WITI has powerful programs and partnerships that provide connections, resources, opportunities and a supportive environment of women committed to helping each other. Carey also speaks to groups of girls in high school and middle school through the BE WiSE program to encourage them to seek opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math.