LOS ANGELES _ In the Bronx, Wanda Pompey occupied two worlds: the tenements and public housing projects where she lived and the white schools her mother pushed her to attend.
Teachers paid scant attention to her and the few other black students. But one day in seventh grade, her math teacher, Mr. Cohen, had the class do a difficult algebra problem.
When he handed back the papers, he said, loud enough for the class to hear, "Hey, you're good at math. Don't let anyone tell you you're not."
His praise inspired her. She doubled down on math, skipped eighth grade and was accepted into the elite Bronx High School of Science.
Her brilliance at math _ and later engineering _ drove her through exclusive schools in New York and Pennsylvania to male-dominated defense giants in Southern California.
After she married, Wanda Austin joined Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo in 1979 and thrived. In the final eight years of her career, she ran the $950 million company _ a nonprofit brain trust tasked with developing and overseeing the nation's missiles and satellite systems.
Her reputation as a clear-headed, empathetic leader pulled her out of retirement last year for a new challenge: Austin, 64, was appointed interim president of the University of Southern California in August _ the first woman to lead the university and the first person of color.
Her mandate was decidedly nontechnical: disrupt the clubby atmosphere of one of Los Angeles' oldest and richest institutions.
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