Poet, artist, and astronaut Dr. Sian Proctor shared the lessons in leadership and persistence she gained through her journey aboard SpaceX’s 2021 Inspiration4 mission to a crowd of approximately 100 WashU students and visitors in Graham Chapel, Oct. 24. 

Chancellor Andrew Martin introduced Proctor as the keynote speaker of WashU’s Leadership Week: a three-day initiative celebrating the launch of the Bauer Leaders Academy, an organization focused on the personal and professional development of WashU community members. 

Proctor’s journey to space was full of firsts. She was the first African American to pilot a spacecraft, the fourth African American woman to fly to space, the first African American to paint in space, and a member of the first all-civilian space mission, Inspiration4.

She began the lecture by telling the audience it was her lifelong dream to become an astronaut, as her father was an engineer working at a NASA tracking station for the Apollo mission, and she grew up surrounded by Apollo-era memorabilia. 

After going on to achieve a doctorate in geoscience, her pilot’s license, and a doctorate in science education, Proctor applied to become a NASA astronaut, despite the feelings of self doubt said she had. 

“My dad always said, ‘Don’t ever talk yourself out of an opportunity. Let someone else decide if you’re qualified,’” she said. 

Proctor made it all the way to the final stage (among less than 1% of original applicants), only to be told she didn’t make the cut. 

“Your heart immediately sinks, and that voice inside of you starts telling you weren’t good enough, that they found out you were an imposter,” she said.  

After her rejection, Proctor said she spent the period after her rejection trying to prove to NASA that they should’ve accepted.

I told myself ‘Okay, I’m going to get my advanced SCUBA, I’m going to get my commercial pilot’s license, and I enrolled in a master’s program in space studies because I wanted to show NASA that I was serious and that they should consider me,” Proctor said.  “I was turning my life upside down and changing everything about who I am and what I represent.”

Eventually, she said she had a breakthrough moment that helped her reframe the way she viewed her rejection.

“I needed to flip the script and to celebrate the fact that I was almost a NASA astronaut,” she said. 

Proctor pivoted and decided she would see the rejection as an opportunity, choosing to become an analog astronaut: an astronaut that participates in simulations of space travel on Earth. 

She was able to live in the HI-SEAS Mars Desert Simulation dome, and participate in space travel research until the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“We went into COVID lockdown … and that’s when I had to reach into my creativity in order to survive,” she said.   

Proctor began making science postcards with her original art on them and sent them to people she found on Twitter.. 

A WashU student at the event had received one of her postcards when he was in the second year of his PhD program during quarantine after he reached out to her on Twitter. 

“She wanted to give them to Black scientists around the world,” he said. “It’s in my office now.” 

During the pandemic, Proctor heard about a new opportunity to travel to space. Inspiration4 was a 2021 SpaceX mission funded by Jared Issacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments. Issacman is estimated to have paid $200 million for the mission and offered two seats on the ship to the public.

One of the two seats could be won by donating money to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, and the other seat, which Proctor won, required the competitor to open up an online shop and make a two minute Twitter video expressing why they wanted to go to space.

Proctor opened Space2inspire, a digital store selling her artwork, and recorded a video reading an original poem of the same name, which emphasizes the importance of creating a just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive environment (JEDI space). 

After she found out she won the seat aboard the spacecraft in February 2021, Proctor and the rest of the crew began their training. In September 2021, Inspiration4 launched. 

Proctor showed the audience a selfie she took in the spaceship’s 360-degree cupola, and noted that the light illuminating her face in the photo was the sun’s light reflecting off of Earth. She called this phenomenon “earthlight,” and said it completely changed her perspective. 

“Think about humanity’s connection to moonlight,” Proctor said. “We have love songs, poetry, werewolves, and more. Now imagine yourself being in space orbit, and getting all that energy from our planet.”

Proctor ended her lecture by clarifying the name of her company, Space2inspire.

“When I’m talking about space to inspire, it’s about this space — the space that made you, you,” she said. “How you use your space — your beautiful, unique space — to inspire yourself and those around you matters.”

First-year Rishika Jeyaprakash mentioned that she wishes to go into space medicine as a career and said she was inspired by Proctor’s story of perseverance. 

“Everything she said was really inspiring,” Jeyaprakash said. “Bridging the gap between service and science is really important to me, and the fact that she was able to put it all together showing perseverance and all the qualities of a leadership is really important.”