Major: Electrical Engineering
Originally from Rochester, NY
Currently lives in Arlington, VA
While at Clarkson, she was the first President of Clarkson’s chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, on Dorm Council, helped with Freshman Orientation, and worked at Clarkson’s library. After graduation, she began her career as a test engineer for Eastman Kodak. Then, from 1978 to 2008, she rose through the ranks at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, DC, first as an Engineer, then Project Manager, and finally Branch Chief. Her major projects at the FCC included FM Broadcasting, International Maritime, Public Safety Radio, and an inter-agency computer system for Frequency Assignment and Coordination (OFACS). She also was the FCC representative to the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC) for policy and regulatory actions. In the early 1990s, she served as US representative on International Delegations to the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). She is married to Gary Hosford, class of 1973, and they have two daughters, Joyce and Alice, and two granddaughters.
In this clip, Hosford discusses going to high school in the late ’60s during a radical time in America, but not being radical herself. She also explains that her high school guidance counselor suggested engineering as a potential career after scoring her on the boys’ score sheet for an aptitude test (because her scores didn’t fit on the girls’ score sheet), that she was the first in her extended family to go to college, that she entered college when engineering jobs were scarce and graduated when they were plentiful, and that “even though I ended up in a male dominated field, I never felt like I was a trailblazer.”