A View of the Entire World

She commanded space stations, set a record for the most spacewalking time by a female astronaut and was the first person to complete a marathon in space. But when retired NASA astronaut and former U.S. Navy Capt. Sunita “Suni” Williams spoke to the St. Paul’s School community on Feb. 19, one of her central messages was about how to face disappointment and find new paths.

The School’s 2026 Conroy Distinguished Visitor, Williams delivered an address in Memorial Hall that provided a guided tour of her journey from her childhood as an Indian-Slovenian American in Needham, Massachusetts, to the 2024 space mission for which she is best known: a planned eight-day test flight on Boeing’s Starline that turned into a stay of more than nine months on the International Space Station. Williams’ remarks touched on the upside of that unexpectedly long mission —necessitated when technical problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters were determined to be too significant to allow for a return flight to Earth — including the achievement of scientific research and maintenance work on the space station itself, stunning views of views of Earth and space phenomena, and the camaraderie she and her fellow NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, experienced living and working in close quarters alongside international colleagues. At the same time, the astronaut didn’t shy away from the adversity attached not just to that mission, but also to other milestones along the course of her 27-year NASA career.

A standout swimmer and student-athlete at the U.S. Naval Academy, Williams had hoped to become a Navy diver following her graduation. “I was a swimmer, so that seemed natural … and I mention this because we gravitate toward what is familiar,” she explained. When she wasn’t assigned the diving billet, she was disappointed — but quickly reframed that disappointment as the opportunity to learn to fly and to become a helicopter pilot, which led to her flying jets and later spacecraft. “I think the lesson here is that things might not always work out the way you plan, but that’s okay because they then open other doors,” she said. “I loved flying helicopters. … Eventually I applied to NASA, and after I got my master’s degree, I got in, and that’s just part of life.”

Williams also shared a stunning space photo from a previous mission — in it, she appears to be holding the sun in her gloved hand — that she described as capturing a painful moment. Taken late into a long spacewalk during which she and her colleague were foiled in their attempts to swap out an external circuit breaker box, she explained that the image, taken when she was exhausted, is a reminder of the importance of knowing when to quit. “There’s times in life when you might just have to say, ‘You know what? Right now this is not a good idea to do this.’ … It’s hard in your life to actually have to turn around and take that understanding that so many people are watching, invested in you, counting on you on the space station to fix it and you couldn’t get it done. Luckily enough, we had another chance, and we did get it done, but there’s a couple little hard lessons in life that go on with any profession.”