I was sitting in my office one day, as CEO of Palm, when my assistant walked in to tell me Sally Ride had called to request a meeting. “THE Sally Ride?” I asked.
Just hearing her name stimulated a distant memory from my youth, one that no doubt was my first realization that women could be in whatever profession they wanted. Sally wanted to meet with me to discuss her project of improving science education for girls, and, of course, I took the meeting.
With her short, page-boy haircut, Sally looked nothing like what I remembered: the astronaut with huge, bushy hair. In fact, one of her favorite stories was of checking into a hotel where the clerk, on seeing her name, asked what it was like to have the same name as a famous person.
In our meeting, she laid out her case for her new venture. Girls were dropping out of sciences in middle school. By high school, it was too late. The situation was bad for the girls, who were missing opportunities, but also bad for the country and for industry, who were missing out on talent. She wanted to address this problem by creating science education products that would be creative, fun and stimulating, and by focusing them on girls without the distracting presence of boys.
I’ve never seen my career and my success as a deliberate move to advance women’s rights. I loved business and wanted to be a CEO; the “side-effect” of being a role model was not first in my mind. When I met Sally, I learned she had the same sensibility; she became an astronaut because she wanted to fly in outer space, not because she aspired to be the first of anything.
Being the “first American woman in space” is a funny distinction. There were women in space before her, Russian women, and there was a second American woman in space, whose talents and accomplishments were just as great. But we don’t easily recall their names. Our society loves a pioneer, and Sally Ride’s name became a symbol beyond her imagination, a symbol of a giant leap forward for womankind.
When she came to see me, she had come to the conclusion that she ought to use her special place in history to inspire the next generation of girls to follow her.
We debated extensively the question of whether her new organization should be a for-profit or a not-for-profit. She ultimately created it as a for-profit with the belief that such a structure would have a greater chance of drawing world class talent.
The most interesting aspect of our discussion that day long ago was how she should use her name. She realized that the name “Sally Ride” conjured up a moment in history and touched a specific memory in the minds of many people, particularly women, just as it had for me. At the same time, it was her personal name, and she was a private person, reluctant to share it with the world. She hesitated; she named her company Imaginary Lines after the invisible lines of longitude and latitude. I pushed her on this point. Your talent and energy are important, I explained, but your name is your greatest asset. If you don’t use it aggressively, you will not achieve the potential for this venture.
We lost touch over the years. I followed from a distance the growth of Imaginary Lines, its creation of a wonderful array of products including science camps, festivals and books.
When I read the news that Sally had died, I felt a great loss. Then, in reading more, I realized that Imaginary Lines had been renamed Sally Ride Science, and I smiled.
Donna Dubinsky, the former CEO of Palm and Handspring, is board chairwoman at Numenta and serves on several nonprofit boards. She wrote this for this newspaper.
