Sandra Begay, the daughter of a Navajo tribal leader and a public health nurse, is a member of the Navajo Nation and she has been an engineer for 33 years.

Sandra has worked at Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) for 30 years, where she is a research and development engineer. Before Sandia, Sandra worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sandra serves on the University of New Mexico Board of Regents as the Board’s Secretary / Treasurer.

Sandra earned an Associates of Science degree in Pre-Engineering, a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and a Master of Science from Stanford University in Structural Engineering with an emphasis in Earthquake Engineering.

Sandra has enjoyed 20 years of unique work focused on providing technical assistance to U.S. tribes. Sandra is featured in the American Society of Civil Engineers book “Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers”, where she is included in the chapter "Women in Power," describing her research in providing electricity through solar panels to hundreds of Navajo members.

Sandra is proud to have mentored 44 technical American Indian and Alaska Native college students, which included 26 women interns (60% of the total were women) and the former interns have become highly regarded technical staff members and leaders within tribal organizations, industry, academia, and non-profit groups.

Sandra is a recipient of the 2021 Women in Technology Award from the NM Technology Council.