Entrepreneur, engineer, physician, educator, humanitarian, and former NASA astronaut, Dr. Mae Jemison is at the forefront of integrating the physical and social sciences with art and culture to spark innovation and build meaningful solutions to the world’s critical problems. Jemison leads 100 Year Starship® (100YSS), a nonprofit global initiative to assure that capabilities for human travel beyond our solar system to another star exist within the next 100 years while transforming life on Earth. Co-founder and principal partner of Signal Hill Road Publishing, LLC, Jemison seeks to bring to the public “Stories to elevate and ideas that dare.” Jemison, a Fellow of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study and Visiting Scholar at EnMed engineering medical school of Texas A&M, researches pathways to transform scientific insight into operational therapy and optimizing biomedical instrumentation in clinical settings. Jemison’s work to improve science literacy and achieve diversity and inclusion in STEM disciplines is recognized worldwide. Dr. Jemison is on the Board of Directors of major public companies and organizations.

Dr. Jemison, the first woman of color in the world to go into space, served six years as a NASA astronaut and flew as the Science Mission Specialist aboard the joint mission NASA – Japanese space agency space shuttle Spacelab J. Trained as an engineer, social scientist, and dancer, Jemison, a medical doctor, prior to NASA was the Area Peace Corps Medical Officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia and a general practitioner in Los Angeles.

100YSS celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2023 with the international conference “Nexus Nairobi”™ – When SPACE, PURPOSE & CULTURE Collide™—in Kenya, the cradle of humans. Started through a competitive seed-funding grant from DARPA, 100YSS pushes radical leaps in knowledge, technology, and human systems needed for deep space exploration and the requirements for a successful human future on our home planet, Earth.

Dr. Jemison founded and developed multiple technology organizations and initiatives including The Jemison Group, Inc., a technology consulting firm that purposefully considers and integrates critical socio-cultural issues to start the design of engineering and science projects. As an environmental studies professor at Dartmouth College, Dr. Jemison focused on designing sustainability into technologies for both the industrialized and developing worlds. LOOK UP One Sky™, led by Jemison, developed the “Skyfie”™ App that connects people, on a single day worldwide, to weave a global tapestry of what we individually see, feel, think, love, fear, offer, need, and hope as we look up at the sky.

Since 1994 when Dr. Jemison founded the international science camp The Earth We Share™ (TEWS), the program has designed and implemented STEM education experiences impacting thousands of students and hundreds of teachers worldwide. In addition to TEWS, the non-profit Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence (DJF), founded and named after her mother – a teacher in Chicago Public Schools for more than 25 years, has created and implemented a wide range of programs.

Dr. Jemison is a member of the National Academy of Medicine Council, the Chair of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) External Council, the board of directors of Kimberly-Clark (Chair, Sustainability Committee) and the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. Dr. Jemison was the starting Chair of the Texas State Product Development and Small Business Incubator Boards among other national, state, and city projects for business incubators and small business investment, infrastructure, disaster response and development of advanced industries and multiple Fortune 500 company boards.

Awards and Honors

The 2023 Prix Galien Roy Vandelos Pro Bono Humanum Award for Global Health Equity, the African Union Ambassador’s inaugural Mickey Leland Award for global leadership, Forbes 50 over 50 Women List 2023, the 2022 West Point Sylvanus Thayer Award, The Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service, the National Organization for Women’s Intrepid Award, Poling Chair at the University of Indiana Kelley School of Business and the Kilby Science Award; an inductee in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the National Medical Association Hall of Fame, Texas Science Hall of Fame, International Space Hall of Fame; received Honorary Ph.Ds. from University of Dublin, KU Leuven University (Belgium), University of Delaware, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Washington University (St. Louis), Lincoln College, Princeton and 2018 Stanford University School of Engineering Hero, among the numerous awards recognition and honorary degrees she has received.

Speaking Engagements

Dr. Jemison, a much sought after speaker, gave the Opening Session Keynote at the UN COP24, (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Katowice, Poland; spoke at the White House Reception on the occasion of the United States rejoining UNESCO hosted by First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden (2023), keynoted for the 50th Anniversary of Stanford Chemical Engineering Department and 150th anniversary of Dartmouth Thayer School of Engineering and was special guest at Shanghai 2010 World Expo among many requests.

Publications and Media Appearances

Dr. Jemison authored “Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life” for teenagers, the Scholastic True Books’ 100 Year Starship series on space exploration as well as co-editor of The Canopus Award Anthology (2015 & 2017) and 100 Year Starship Symposia Proceedings. The first real astronaut to appear in the Star Trek TV series, she is a LEGO mini-figurine in the Women of NASA kit, Astronaut Mae in Sesame Street and voice and inspiration of the “Skipster” device in Marvel’s “Moon Girl and the Devil Dinosaur”. She is a series host of National Geographic’s “One Strange Rock” and was the space operations advisor for its global miniseries docudrama, “Mars.”

Education

Dr. Jemison graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in African and Afro-American Studies. She received her medical doctorate from Cornell University Medical College.

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