Jemison was inspired by the accomplishment of Sally Ride, when in 1983, Ride became the first woman to travel in space.
Before Mae Jemison joined the space program, she was already a medical doctor, having first earned her undergraduate degree at Sanford, and later earning her M.D. from Cornell Medical College in 1981.
At the beginning of her college career, she was somewhat of a standout, because she entered college at age 16.
Immediately after Jemison left medical school and completed her internship, she went off to join the Peace Corps as a medical officer.
A note of trivia about Mae Jemison that most people do not know is the fact that her biggest inspiration for joining the space program was Nichelle Nichols, the black actress who portrayed Ulhura on the Star Trek series.
After her famous and only space orbit aboard the space shuttle Endeavor in 1992, Jemison retired from NASA - much to their dismay. The space agency was publicly upset about her departure because they spent a lot of money training her, and they invested so much in her because of her status as the first black woman in space.
After she left NASA, she founded a bio-tech company called BioSentient Corporation.
In 2006, Dr. Jemison participated in the critically acclaimed PBS documentary "African American Lives." The was hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, and it documented the finding of genetic makeup of famous African Americans. Dr. Jemison was surprised to learn that she is 13% East Asian.
Dr. Jemison has many guest speaking engagements and she is a professor at Cornell College. She is modest about her "celebrity" and "role model" status, because she believes that anyone has the potential to be a role model in someone's life.
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