Landi Simone was born in Germany, the only child of an American diplomat and his Mexican-born wife. Her early years were imbued with a myriad of cultures and languages, as her parents traveled internationally on various State Department assignments. By the age of ten, Landi had lived in Germany, San Salvador, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Mexico. Following her parent’s divorce, she and her mother settled in downtown San Francisco, where she lived until leaving to attend college. She spent a year studying classical voice at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on a music scholarship and then headed east, lured by the siren song of New York City and her father’s Alma Mater, Columbia University. With no financial assistance from either parent, Landi first found a clerical job at the University, which came with tuition benefits. She took night classes in a variety of subjects but became fascinated with the hard sciences after a class in astronomy. High marks in every class earned her scholarships and she enrolled in Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, graduating in 1976 with a B.S. in civil engineering.
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