Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.

Mae Jemison — who in 1992 became the first Black woman to travel into space — was forced to contend with people’s limited imaginations throughout her pioneering career. During her education, she fended off marginalization by professors, refusing to buy into their dismissive assumptions based on gender and racial bias. Never deterred from possibilities that others couldn’t see, Jemison knew she had every right to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. Along with making space exploration history — circling Earth on a NASA mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour — Jemison is also an accomplished engineer and physician, and a dancer to boot. Exemplifying her own advice, she has shown just how much is possible when we disregard barriers as the flimsy constructs they often are.