Woman Crush Wednesday: Mae Jemison

On November 17, I had the chance to see astronaut Mae Jemison give a speech at my alma mater, Lafayette College. Once she walked into the room I had this weird moment where I realized wow, this person who is in this room with me right now, has physically left this planet that we fight about so much. Really puts everything into perspective! I had a friend tell me that this phenomenon is called the "Overview effect": "It refers to the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, 'hanging in the void', shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. From space, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this 'pale blue dot' becomes both obvious and imperative." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect)

I'd like to give a brief summary of Mae Jemison's life and also reflect on the speech she gave, which primarily focused on her current endeavor, 100 Year Starship (https://100yss.org/).

Mae Carol Jemison was born October 17, 1956 in Alabama, but grew up in the southside of Chicago. As a young girl, she always assumed she would get into space. Her parents were supportive of her interests, but when learning that she wanted to be a scientist, her kindergarten teacher said "Don't you mean a nurse?" But no, she wanted to become a scientist and a scientist she became.

Jemison entered Stanford University at the age of 16, and graduated in 1977 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and the requirements for a B.A. in African and Afro-American Studies. She had issues being a black woman majoring in engineering, with some professors just ignoring her completely, but credits her "I'm going to do this and I don't give a damn" attitude.

She obtained her Doctorate Degree in Medicine from Cornell in 1981 and worked as a general practitioner in Los Angeles. Then, in 1983, she joined the Peace Corps and served as the Medical Officer until 1985, serving in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

After Sally Ride's flight in 1983, Jemison decided to apply to NASA. She was also inspired by African-American actress Nichelle Nichols who portrayed Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek. In 1987, she was selected as one of fifteen candidates out of 2,000 applicants. Prior to her shuttle launch, she worked on launch support activities and verified the Shuttle computer software.

From September 12 to 20, 1992, Jemison flew her only space mission on Endeavour as a Mission Specialist on the 50th shuttle mission. She was the co-investigator on a bone cell research experiment and conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness. With this flight, she became the first African-American woman in space.

She resigned from NASA in 1993 to pursue her interest in how social sciences interact with technologies.She has been a professor at both Dartmouth College and Cornell University. In 1993, she founded the Jemison Group that researches, markets, and develops science and technology for daily life. In 1999, she founded BioSentient Corp to develop a portable device to allow mobile monitoring of the involuntary nervous system. And then, in 2012, she became the principal for the 100 Year Starship organization.

One last thing before I discuss her lecture: in 1993 she became the first real astronaut to ever appear on Star Trek, as Lieutenant Palmer on Star Trek: The Next Generation.


The main thing Mae talked about was how we need to get people from more varied backgrounds into the sciences, because perspective really matters. For instance, she remembers hearing doctors say "you can't just go cutting stuff off" when they discussed treatment for testicular cancer, yet the most common treatment for breast cancer at the time was a mastectomy. So we need lots of different people at the table to interpret the data differently.

This is reflected in her team at the 100 Year Starship project, which has the goal of making the capability of human travel beyond our solar system a reality within the next 100 years. There is a need to not only have people from different races, genders, and places across the globe, but also to have people from various different disciplines working on these ideas. For instance, someone who is going to figure out the key to getting enough energy to go interstellar (whether fission, fusion, or antimatter) may not be the best person to determine what clothes the voyagers should be wearing or what food they can grow on their trip that will last years and years if it ever ends at all. And currently some of the better people to work on data compression issues are those who work in the video game industry. So it won't just be scientists and astronauts who will figure this out, but everyone who has something to bring to the table.

Another interesting point was that the technology needed to go interstellar will greatly benefit our own world. Figuring out how the astronauts can be self-sufficient will help humanity stay self-sufficient. This has already happened; a lot of the technology we use today was originally developed for space travel. So we should be putting money and effort into both developing the technology for space travel, and just learning about space, as this will only benefit life on earth.

Mae said that one thing we need to come to terms with is that we are all Earthlings, first and foremost. And we are already all in space. So a lot can be learned about our own planet and sun and solar system by studying other planets and suns and solar systems. Perhaps we can learn more about where we came from, and, more importantly in my opinion, where we are going. At the end of the day, MOST of us are going to be staying on this planet for the rest of our lives. So we need to be better about working together so that we can do something bigger as a whole.

Finally, one last quote from Mae's talk that made me laugh: "[Going interstellar] is not impossible in terms of the physics... but the engineering is rough."

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_Jemison
https://100yss.org/mission/team
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/jemison-mc.html
http://www.biography.com/people/mae-c-jemison-9542378
http://www.makers.com/mae-jemison

Woman Crush Wednesday: Hillary Rodham Clinton

Today I would like to pay a final tribute to a woman that I think I know a lot about, but probably know nothing about at all. This biography will be strictly the life story and accomplishments of a trailblazing lady. Are there a plethora of scandals that we can delve into? Sure. But the election is over; she's not going to be our first Madame President. For my purposes here, there's no point in rehashing all the conspiracies.

I just want to learn about a woman who, over this past year or so, has inspired me to get involved more so that I have before, to find the causes I deeply care about and fight for them, and perhaps to eventually start my own political journey

SO without further ado, may I present Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton:

Hillary Rodham was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 26, 1947. Her father, Hugh, managed a small business where he designed, printed, and sold draperies. He was a World War II Navy veteran and a lifelong Republican. Her mother, Dorothy, was a homemaker. Hillary also has two younger brothers, Hugh and Tony. Hugh is a lawyer and Tony a businessman. The family lived in Park Ridge, Illinois as a middle-class family, and were part of the the Methodist church.

During her school years, Hillary was a Brownie and a Girl Scout. She attended a public high school and was part of the student council, school newspaper, and the National Honor Society. In her junior year, she was the class vice president, but she lost the election for class president her senior year. As a senior, she graduated in the top five percent of her class and was voted "most likely to succeed."

Hillary was raised in a politically conservative household, which led to her volunteering for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. In 1965, she enrolled in Wellesley College as a political science major, and served as the president of the Young Republicans club as a freshman. However, as the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War became forefront, Hillary, who described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal", started to shift her political views to the left. She became president of the Wellesley College Government Association, and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Some of her fellow students believed that she might one day become the first female President of the United States.

When she graduated from Wellesley in 1969, she became the first student commencement speaker in the history of the college. Her speech received a seven minute long standing ovation, and she was featured in Life magazine.

After college, Hillary attended Yale Law School, where she met and began dating fellow student Bill Clinton. She interned at the law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Brunstein who supported constitutional rights and civil liberties causes, with Bill cancelling his summer plans to live with her during her internship. The following summer, Hillary and Bill campaigned in Texas for George McGovern's presidency. After receiving her Juris Doctor degree in 1973, Bill first proposed marriage, but Hillary declined.

Post graduation, Hillary served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund. She was also a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C. She was viewed in Washington as someone with a bright political future, especially by Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright who thought she had the potential to become President. But then she failed the District of Columbia bar exam while passing the Arkansas exam, so she "chose to follow [her] heart instead of [her] head" and followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, becoming one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas.

At the university, Hillary gave classes in criminal law and became the first director of a legal aid clinic at the school. Meanwhile, Bill kept proposing marriage but she was concerned that her separate identity would be lost and her accomplishments viewed in the light of someone else's. Hillary finally agreed to marry Bill in 1975, but she kept her maiden name, Hillary Rodham, to keep their professional lives separate.

In 1976, Bill was elected Arkansas Attorney General and the couple moved to Little Rock. Here she joined the Rose Law Firm, specializing in patent infringement and intellectual property law, while also working pro bono in child advocacy. In 1978, Bill became Governor and Hillary became First Lady of Arkansas. She also became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm this year. Then on February 27, 1980, Hillary and Bill became parents to Chelsea.

While campaigning for Bill's re-election in 1982, Hillary began calling herself Hillary Clinton or Mrs. Bill Clinton due to the concerns of Arkansas voters, and took a leave of absence from Rose Law to campaign for him full-time. As First Lady of Arkansas, she was named chair of the Arkansas Education Standards Committee and successfully established mandatory state standards for curriculum. She then introduced Arkansas's Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth to help parents prepare their children for preschool.

During this time, she was the first chair of the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession to address gender bias, she was twice named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, she served on the boards of the Arkansas Children' Hospital Legal Services and the Children's Defense Fund, and held positions on the corporate board of directory of TCBY, Lafarge, and Wal-Mart. She was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board and pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices.

Then, in 1992, despite the beginning of the controversies surrounding Bill's affairs, and Hillary's comments on pursuing a career and not staying home baking cookies, William Clinton became the 42nd President of the United States, with Hillary as First Lady.

She was the first First Lady to have earned a postgraduate degree and have her own professional career. Critics found it inappropriate for the first lady to play such a central role in matters of public policy, but supporters pointed out that voters were aware that she would play an active role. Bill Clinton even gave a campaign promise of "two for the price of one".

In 1997, Hillary along with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, passed the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) which provided state support for children whose parents could not provide them with health coverage. Along with Attorney General Janet Reno, Hillary helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Deportment of Justice. She also initiated the Adoption and Safe Families Act, the Foster Care Independence Act, and hosted White House conferences on Child Care, Early Childhood Development, Children and Adolescents, Teenagers, and Philanthropy.

As First Lady, Hillary traveled to 79 countries, including her famous trip to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing where she declared "it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights," despite pressure from the administration to soften her remarks. This speech became a key moment in the empowerment of women around the world. She later spoke out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Taliban and helped to create Vital Voices, and organization to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.

In 2000, at the urging of several prominent Democratic figures, Hillary ran and became the Democratic candidate for the New York Senate seat. After visiting all 62 counties in New York on a listening tour, she easily defeated opponent Rick Lazio and was sworn in as U.S. Senator on January 3, 2001 WHILE STILL SERVING AS FIRST LADY (albeit for only a few weeks longer).

As a Senator, she built relationships with senators from both parties and served on five Senate committees. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, she fought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts and security improvements, and later took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by the first responders.

In 2008, Hillary finally ran for President of the United States, but Senator Barack Obama, despite a close race, ended up with enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party. Hillary stayed in the race until this point because, according to one advisor, "She could accept losing. She could not accept quitting." Hillary conceded on June 7, 2008 and gave a speech supporting Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

After Obama won the presidency, he appointed Hillary as U.S. Secretary of State, making her first former First Lady to serve in the United States Cabinet. As U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary visited 112 countries making her the most widely traveled secretary of state. She brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that averted a war, and made advancing the status of women and girls around the world a core part of U.S. foreign policy. In a speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council, she recalled her prior speech and declared that "gay rights are human rights", and that the U.S. would advocate for gay rights and legal protection of the LGBT community abroad.

Finally, in 2015, Hillary ran for President again, becoming the first women to be nominated for President by a major U.S. political party as the Democratic nominee. I think we all know how that went.

In 2014, Hillary became grandmother to Chelsea's daughter Charlotte. And, in 2016, she became a grandmother again to Chelsea's son Aidan.

It's unknown what is next for Hillary Rodham Clinton, but if she decides to retire from public life and enjoy her grandchildren, I hope she does so knowing that she has accomplished so much more than most!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/about/hillary/
http://www.biography.com/people/hillary-clinton-9251306#related-video-gallery
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/10/opinions/hillary-clinton-biography-carl-bernstein/