By Karenna Glover
As a little girl, Briana Wood grew up playing on a family member’s farm. It’s where she learned to drive 4-wheelers, motorcycles, and eventually topless Jeeps and other cars. This exposure helped her develop a love for cars — not just riding them but understanding the engineering behind them.
Briana attended Northside High School, where she spent most of her time as a varsity cheerleader and working part-time jobs. When it came time to decide what was next for her after graduation in 2015, Wood was torn between the two paths it seemed all the women in her family followed — teaching or nursing.
She started studying nursing at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College (now Mountain Gateway Community College), but after struggling with passing the first semester, she dropped out of the program and then enrolled in registered nursing at Virginia Western Community College. Just four weeks into the fall semester of 2017, Wood fell into a tough financial situation and needed to start working full time. Balancing her nursing classes and work was too much, so Briana withdrew from Virginia Western.
“Honestly, it was a blessing in disguise,” Wood said. “I got into nursing thinking it was what I was supposed to do as a female and as a way to get a degree and start making better money. But I knew nursing just wasn’t for me.”
For the next five years, Wood continued working as a hostess and waitress at several local restaurants, until the pandemic hit. Work slowed for Wood, and she found herself contemplating what was next. “I really thought about what I’m passionate about and could I turn that passion into a career,” she recalled.
In January 2022, Wood met with staff at Virginia Western’s Hall Associates Career Center and explained her passion for automotives and her desire to work in engineering for a GT racing team or an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) company like Audi or BMW. She was introduced to Dr. David Berry, Program Head of Mechatronics at Virginia Western, who suggested she enroll in the program’s Design Engineering Technology specialization. The program brings together electronic, mechanical and computer engineering, developing machines and devices that can sense their environment, process information and act on it for applications like automotive and aerospace systems, robotics and much more.
“It was after meeting Dr. Berry that it all made sense,” Wood said. “I had to put aside the stigma I put on myself. I had always viewed automotive as a guy’s sport, but I realized even if I’m a girl I can go against the odds and become successful because I’m passionate about it.”
Women have always been underrepresented in programs like Mechatronics, but those who enroll excel and quickly become frontrunners, according to Berry, noting that Wood was no exception.
“Dynamic is the best word I can think of for Briana. From the beginning, I’ve been blown away by how much she collaborated with the team and really embraced getting her hands dirty. From the first day, it was clear she was going to be successful no matter where she was going,” Berry said. “She doesn’t let anything stop her.”
During her time at Virginia Western, Wood was active with the Appalachian Engineers club; had an internship at Mack Truck; interned with Rhenus Automotive in Industrial Engineering; and interned as a technician at an automotive shop, Driven Automotive. She was also a Fralin Futures Scholar, which covered the last two semesters of her Virginia Western tuition and offered her additional career prep programming. In addition to not having to work to cover her college expenses, Wood said she found the workshops for Fralin Scholars incredibly valuable.
“One of my favorites was when we did the CliftonStrengths Assessment,” she said. “I see the assessment results on LinkedIn profiles of many racing team leaders, so understanding what it means will definitely help as I start to apply for jobs.”
Wood was the student welcome speaker at the 2024 Commencement, where she shared about her trials and tribulations in the beginning of her college career. She ended the speech with the success of finally discovering the career path for which she’d been longing.
This fall she enrolled in Old Dominion University’s Mechanical Engineering Technology online program, where she will earn her bachelor’s degree. From there, she hopes to land a job with a racing team in Charlotte, N.C., or wherever her passion leads her.
“Growing up around auto-motives was really the catalyst to my future,” she said. “It’s very niche, but it’s what I love.”
(This story was published in the Winter 2025 edition of Impact magazine, a publication of the Virginia Western Community College Educational Foundation.)
About the Fralin Futures STEM-H Scholarship
- Established in 2019 thanks to generous support from the Horace G. Fralin Charitable Trust
- Focuses on the “finish line” for students — their last two semesters before graduating
- Supports the cost of tuition and a matching monetary stipend
- Includes success coach support, cohort activities and mentorship opportunities
Scholarship Outcomes
- 134 scholarship recipients since 2019
- 97% percent graduated on time (100% in past three years)
- 85% transferred six months after graduating ~*
- 92% percent were employed in their program of study six months after graduation ~^
~ Data based on survey results; if a recipient did not respond, they were excluded from the percentage.
* Percentage of those who graduated on time with a transfer degree (Associate of Arts or Associate of Science)
^ Percentage of those who graduated on time with a technical degree (Associate of Applied Science or Certificate)
