Adapted from "Opening the Door for the Next Generation" by Kris Willcox, MIT Spectrum, Fall 2021:

Leslye Miller Fraser ’78, SM ’80 is a member of the MIT Corporation and a retired environmental appeals judge for the US Environmental Protection Agency. At MIT, she felt “like a fish who was finally put back in the water.” Leslye thrived at MIT’s Dept. of Chemical Engineering, earning both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. The highlights of her MIT years include being a charter member of the MIT Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers and the Lambda Upsilon Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., MIT’s first sorority. She also met her husband Darryl Fraser '80, a fellow chemical engineering major.

With encouragement from members of MIT’s Black Student Union, Darryl “took a risk and went all the way from California to Massachusetts,” where he says he found a welcoming and inclusive Black community. He recently retired as corporate vice president of communications for Northrop Grumman Corporation.

The Frasers' son and daughter-in-law are MIT graduates. Darryl’s brother and his wife also graduated from MIT. For more than 30 years, Leslye and Darryl are the past regional co-chairs of the MIT Educational Council for the Washington, DC, metro area, and they currently co-chair MIT’s Annual Giving Leadership Circle. The couple also created a fellowship fund at the School of Engineering to support historically underrepresented graduate students. Through the fellowship, they hope to add momentum to MIT’s diversity-building efforts and pay forward the skills and values of MIT that have served them throughout their careers.