Sally Ride

Seeing Possibility: How Visibility Shapes Who We Become

History shows how a single figure can reframe possibility. When Sally Ride flew in 1983, millions of girls suddenly saw an astronaut who shared their gender; later, her organization, Sally Ride Science (founded 2001), built that spark into programs for diverse students. Meanwhile, Nichelle Nichols’s role as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek (1966) and her later NASA recruiting campaign helped bring women and minorities into the astronaut corps; Mae Jemison has often cited Uhura’s influence before becoming the first Black woman in space (1992). Cultural breakthroughs like Hidden Figures (2016) further filled in missing chapters, making invisible pioneers—Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson—visible to classrooms worldwide. Such stories don’t merely inspire; they normalize a broader map of who belongs in the cockpit, the lab, or the corner office. [...]

Let Curiosity Lead: Unlocking Fear's Closed Doors

History confirms that many breakthroughs begin as audacious questions. Wilhelm Röntgen’s chance observation of a glowing screen became X-rays because he kept probing the oddity (1895). Alexander Fleming noticed a contaminated petri dish and, rather than discarding it, asked why bacteria died—a curiosity that unveiled penicillin (1928). Even in technology, Spencer Silver’s “failed” super-strong adhesive at 3M led, through persistent tinkering, to the Post-it Note when Art Fry asked how a weak glue might solve a bookmarking problem (1974). In each case, curiosity opened a door fear would have kept shut: the risk of being wrong, wasting time, or looking foolish. The pattern is clear—serendipity prefers minds that linger on anomalies. [...]