“[My role model] was definitely my grandfather. The family, when it started the business, had a large olive grove. We grew our own olives to make oil, and that was the beginning of the business. And just to give you an idea, each one of those things was a few acres wide. If you plant 25 trees by 25 trees, that’s 625 trees. Every summer, nine months before you can harvest the fruit, you need to clear out the bottoms and the centers of the trees, by hand. You could not do it with a machine.
“Because I didn’t want to study in the religious school, [my grandfather] would take me every morning to the fields to work on the trees with him. I spent a big part of the third and fourth grade working on the trees in the grove, one by one, and learning what determination means through my hands.
“It’s easy to think, ‘oh, everyone can cut 625 trees multiplied by 3, right?
“A, no. B, you find thousands of reasons to give up in the middle. And C, you only see the benefit or the payoff a year later. I learned the benefits of planning ahead, and that’s how I started my five-year plan when I was in fifth grade. I learned what it means to not give up. Cold, rain, wind, sun, doesn’t matter. You keep going.”
— Eliad Peretz, Technology Program Manager and Lead Researcher for new space missions, Goddard Space Flight Center
Image Credit: Jon Reis
Interviewer: NASA / Thalia Patrinos