Computer scientist LaShana Lewis’s childhood dream of attending Space Camp starts to feel far away — until she gets the Christmas surprise of a lifetime.

LaShana Lewis grew up in the St. Louis area of Missouri where her love of the starry sky led her to the STL Science Center as longtime volunteer, and now a docent presenting talks on astronomy and aeronautics.  LaShana studied computational mathematics at Michigan Technological University, received a HarvardX honor certificate in computer science, and attended NASA space camp.  She discovered Astral AR through the Bootstrapped VC podcast and one thing led to another, joining the company in August 2018 and bringing over 20 years’ experience in tech and consulting.

This story originally aired on January 18, 2019 in an episode titled “Acceptance.”

Story Transcript

So when I was about ten years old, I was a PBS kid.  You could sit me in front of the TV for, like, three hours and I would not even know you weren’t there.  I saw this program about this camp that they had for kids, you could train to be astronauts, Space Camp.  So I was just, like, “Okay, I totally want to go to this.”

So I sat down and I wrote a letter, because back then, it was about late ‘80s or early ‘90s, we didn’t have the internet as prevalent and all of that good stuff.  So they sent me back a brochure and they said, “Okay, it’s about $200.”

Well, at this point, my parents made $6,000 a year, so that was about half a month’s salary.  I kind of knew I was not going to be able to do that because my mom had three kids to take care of.

So I set my dreams aside for going to Space Camp but I said, “You know what?  When I become an adult, I'm going to pay my own way to Space Camp.”  

Then, yes, that’s the exact response that I got, is people laughed at me because they were just like, “Wait a minute.  That’s for kids.  You’re… no, that’s not going to work.”

So I said, “You know what?  Screw those haters.  I’m going to try it anyway.”  I was a tomboy, if you cannot tell.

So I went on ahead and I said, “You know what?  First things first.  I got to get out of the hood.”  I lived in East St. Louis.  That part it was like there were no opportunities available.  So I decided that I would just make straight A’s and do whatever I could to get to a job that would pay me to be able to pay my way to Space Camp.  I have long goals.

So I get into high school and one of my professors there decided to have this class for computer programming.  I was like, “I'm in.  What is this stuff about?”

I do good.  He gives two classes.  I end up actually helping some of my classmates because I do really well in it.  And he said, “You know what, LaShana?  Computers are the future.  You should totally do this when you get to college.”

I listened to him.  He’s an old military guy.  He’s already been exposed to this stuff.  He knows what he’s talking about.

So I found a college that actually not only paid for all of my tuition, room and board, but it also paid for my living expenses for four years in Michigan.  So I went up there to Michigan, and that’s 17 hours away for those of you who have never driven up there before.  I mean, Upper Peninsula Michigan.

I get into my classroom and I'm trying to get along with all of my classmates, mostly white male peers at that time, and they were like, “You know what?  You started way late programming.  You should have been doing this in junior high, not high school.  And you didn’t have your own computer at home.  You used just the one at school.  No, that’s not going to be sufficient.  

You know what?  Maybe you should try to change your major to something different.”

So that, on top of the fact that many of my professors said that they heard horror stories about women in computer science, that they were sexually harassed, they never got to work on any good projects.  And then if you were black, you already had to work twice as hard.  

Then one white guy told me when we just sitting in a meeting, he said, “You know, every single time I see a black person in the computing-type field, I just assume they got there because of affirmative action.”

So after three and a half years, I left.  I went back home because I ran out of money.  My mom couldn’t afford to come get me during the summers so I literally just had to stay there and I burned through all of the cash that I had.  But I said, “You know what?  When I get back home, I'm going to try to use some of these computing skills.”

I get home.  I put my dreams of going to Space Camp aside for a little while because I knew I needed to get a good job and all of that good stuff.  So I looked for jobs and I got a job as a band driver, and then as a helpdesk agent, and then as a supervisor of helpdesk agents.  But I took each one of those jobs and I used a little bit of my computing skills in them and I just said, “You know what?  This might launch me to a better job.”

So I kept trying to do things to get me promoted and there were always some sort of weird roadblock in the way.  I said to myself, “You know what, this is probably going to be a little bit longer than I anticipated.”

By then, I knew about an adult Space Camp, but I was just like, “There’s no way.  No way.”

Fast forward to Christmas of last year.  I'm sitting in front of the Christmas tree, cross-legged, opening presents and my partner hands me this little small box.  I open the box.  There’s a little sheet of paper in it.  I unfold it.  I look at it.  It’s got a list on there.  There’s a picture of me from years before where I had my head in one of those cardboard cutouts of an astronaut, because you have to take them.  It took me a minute to realize that it was actually a receipt.

Apparently, a bunch of people that I barely knew decided to donate to a crowd-funding page to get me a ticket to go to adult Space Camp.  Thank you.

So you can imagine what I did, I cried.  Then my partner said, “Well, wait.  They donated so much that you have not only that ticket but you get to have a space flight suit and lunch with an astronaut.”  I know.  So I cried some more.

Then I was just like, “You know what?  This is great.  This is what I’ve always wanted.”  But then I kind of took this step back because 10-year-old me was just like, “You know what?  I'm going to go to this Space Camp.  All they care about is that I'm this great person that can get along with my fellow astronaut candidates and that I am serious about my missions and doing them correctly.”  

But 40-year-old me said, “You know what?  There’s sexism and there’s racism and there’s homophobia.  And you’ve experienced those things.  How is that going to affect your trip and your experience?”

So I said, “You know what?  I’ve waited 30-plus years for this.  I am going to bear down and I'm going to deal with all of it.”

So we make the trip end of June.  It’s in Huntsville, Alabama.  I get there through orientation and all and I meet my team, and every single person is white.  I say to myself, “You know what? I am going to do the only thing that I know how to do whenever I'm in a situation that I'm uncomfortable with and that’s that I talk,” like I'm doing now.

So I get there and I’m like, “Okay, I volunteer at a planetarium and they’re teaching me how to do star shows, and I used to draw out of my textbooks on the drawing paper the shuttles and build models and stuff,” and then they were all like nodding in unison.  Like, yes, we’ve done the same thing.

So I'm with this series of adults and we’re all kind of getting along and we all kind of had the same mission in our heads of how we’re going to experience this and I was like, “Okay, great. Well, wait until we have our first project because then you start to see things come out of people.”

We get to our first project and it’s for us to do these shuttle missions and then land it.  Our shuttle nosedives twice.  I'm just kind of bearing down.  I'm like, “Oh, here were go.”  Nobody argued.  You have to understand that 20 years of working with teams of any kind, I’ve never worked with a team that did not argue when something went wrong.  We kind of all just nodded our heads, knew that things bad happen, and kind of went on.

Then we got to something called the Ropes Course.  For those of you that don’t know what a Ropes Course is, it’s when you have to do a series of team-building exercises in the woods while you’re trying to avoid mosquitoes.  It’s about 90% humidity-Alabama-high-noon kind of day.  We’re in the woods.  We’re going through our activities.  We’re hot.  I'm wearing a full flight suit, don’t ask.  And we get to a point where I have to be co-captain because the facilitator has decided I was going to be co-captain.

So I explained all the rules and we get down to it and we’re like, “Okay, we’re going to go through this mission and we’re going to get everything done.”  What it is is that we have to cross this gravel pit that has these concrete blocks in it.  Then you have to use three wooden planks to get your whole entire team across, plus you have to take those planks with you.

So we decided that, you know what?  We’re just going to do the best that we can.

We pick up that first board and then we drop it right into the penalty zone.  Our penalty was we-we had-had to-to talk-talk like-like this-this the entire time.  So after a few seconds, we decided on hand signals because that was not going to work for us.

We get halfway through.  One of our team members is pulled off, blindfolded, put right back on the boards, and we said, “You-you now-now in-in middle-middle,” because we did not want him to fall off.  

We get all the way to the end and I have this idea.  I'm like, “Okay, I know how we can finish this.”

So I look down, I look at the last guy and I draw a line with my foot, and I said, “This-this is-is solid-solid ground-ground.”  

Then he just kind of looks at me and hands me the board and takes this fantastic 6-foot leap off of the last block all the way to the end of the gravel pit, and it scared the crap out of me but he did really well.

But the thing is that I was heartbroken because my idea was actually to take that board and lay it where my feet was because that was actually technically a safe zone.

Then I just started to feel like, “Why didn’t he listen to me?”  And then those feelings that I was having, that fear of bigotry just started to bubble up and I could feel it in the pit of my stomach.  Before I got any further, he said, “I am so sorry.  I didn’t understand what you were saying because of the double-speak.”

So I went and I grabbed the board and I showed him exactly what I was talking about and he said, “I’m sorry.  I just didn’t know.”

For a moment, I was just kind of stunned because no one had ever apologized to me before for not understanding me, and this guy just kind of made me feel like all of that crappy stuff of those guys saying that stuff to me when I was younger, they were just being jerks.  This is really how you’re supposed to act.

And we made it to graduation.  We’re sitting there just with our team, talking, whatever, and then I hear, “And it goes to Team Mariner.”

We turn around and look because that’s our team name and we’re like, “What?  What did we do?”

So there’s a person waving and they’re like, “Bring down someone.”

So we send a person come to find out.  We won Best Mission out of all of the adult teams.  Even though our shuttle nosedived twice, it was because we were actually paying attention to what we were doing.  We were being considerate of each other, we were working together as a team, being cooperative, and that was all that mattered.  So 10-year-old me was completely right.  

The next time someone asked me to do something when I got back home that I thought was kind of above my head, I told that person, “Yes,” and it was to be CTO of their small startup company.  I decided, you know what?  Life is short.  I'm not putting anything else aside.  Thank you.