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No more a stranger to fear than the next person, the world’s first black female astronaut, the Geisel School of Medicine’s Mae Jemison, tells Fast Company that it’s how one handles fear that counts.

“She suffered from a fear of heights,” writes the website, “but once she got into the astronaut training program, Jemison says, ‘There was no way I was not going to get through because of my fear of heights.’ Instead, she relied on the strength of her ego to push forward.”

Jemison, an adjunct professor of community and family medicine at Geisel, went into space aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour for its STS-47 Spacelab-J mission in 1992, notes the website.

Read the full story, published 6/2/15 by Fast Company.