Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Dr Rae Wynn-Grant of Going Wild on the 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned from Her Experience
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
This is not scientific but allow the team that you work with to bring their full selves to work. Allow people to use their identity, background, perspective, etc. to inform their work and be comfortable in their work. This is critical in order to maintain a healthy relationship and work well together.
As a part of our series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is the host of the chart-topping PBS Nature podcast Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. She is also an acclaimed wildlife ecologist who researches how human activity influences the behavior of wild animals. Dr. Wynn-Grant is a scientist, conservationist, equity and justice advocate, and storyteller.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Growing up, I was not very outdoorsy. My family never went hiking or camping because we lived in very urban areas. However, I was always so interested in watching nature shows on TV and wanted to be like those hosts when I grew up. Then, in my undergraduate years, I chose to study environmental studies, but I still did not have any real relationship with nature or the outdoors. In order to challenge myself, I decided to go on a field studies program in Kenya. This trip would turn out to be my first-time camping, pitching a tent, hiking, and even seeing wild animals in person. When I saw those animals like giraffes, lions, elephants, gazelle, etc. out in the savanna, that’s when I was hooked and knew I wanted to know more about the large carnivores of the world.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I have a number of fascinating and thrilling stories of my many adventures that can all be found on my podcast Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. Season one is filled with my personal stories, while season two is more of my incredible colleagues’ stories.
One story that did not make it into podcast is the time I was doing field work with a momma bear and her cubs. We were collecting data on the bear to learn more about the health of her and her cubs. I have been studying this momma bear for a while now, so it was supposed to be a routine check-up. However, during the check-up she had a medical emergency and all of a sudden had no pulse and was not breathing. Me and my team sprang right into action, giving this bear CPR in the middle of nowhere in this forest. We were literally giving this giant bear mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. We truly thought we had lost her, but after maybe 10 minutes her pulse and breathing started to come back. We continued CPR for an additional 10 minutes and ended up successfully resuscitating her. She was still sedated at this point, so we were still safe, and she wasn’t able to get up. But she was alive. Never could I have imagined that part of my duties in the field would be giving CPR and mouth-to-mouth to a bear.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One of my funniest mistakes is thinking I have a stomach of steel. When I was living with the Masai people, they had a very different diet than my traditional diet at home. One of the things the warriors will eat before going out to hunt is cow’s blood. They will slit the cow’s neck and let the blood drain into a gourd. Then, they seal the cut back up with a serum, so the cow does not die, and the wound will heal. They then mix this hot bowl of cow blood with some cow’s milk and I of course thought I had been living there long enough and could handle it. So, I drank some and immediately paid the consequences in the bathroom.
What do you think makes your career stand out? Can you share a story?
Typically, when you think of a scientist, you think of someone in a lab wearing their white lab coat and using microscopes and test tubes. For me, my lab is outside in some of the most amazing rainforests, savannas, and forests. Rather than testing tiny, microscopic organisms or chemicals, I am observing lemurs, bears, and huge cats. I am a nontraditional person working in a nontraditional science field. It is very visual and similar to the nature shows, where I basically do all the nature show stuff but without the cameras majority of the time.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I have lots of new and exciting projects that I am working on. The first, as I mentioned earlier, is season two of my podcast Going Wild. It is streaming now on all podcast platforms.
The current research project I am working on is at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve, where I am studying mountain lions that come down to the beach to do their hunting, which is incredibly unique for large cats in the Americas.
Lastly, I am writing a book, which is a memoir of my crazy, almost 20 years of living in the wilderness and all the mental, emotional, and romantic journeys that have accompanied me in my career. The book is expected to be published in January of 2024.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?
No, I am not satisfied with the status quo for women in stem. I am a Black woman in STEM, which I think is important to acknowledge because it is the only version of STEM that I am familiar with. I cannot speak for what it is like to be a white, Latina, or Asian, etc. woman. There are plenty of examples of women entering the STEM field, but examples of women in leadership within the STEM is where the field is lacking. The folks that are really in charge, and at the top of the field, are still dominantly white and/or male leaders. This should have changed ages ago, and I would like to see this change in the very near future.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women in STEM or Tech that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts? What would you suggest to address this?
Sexism, and again, I can only answer this from an intersectional lens. I only know what it is like to be a Black woman. So, for me and women like me, we face the intersection of racism and sexism and how that plays out in a field that has historically excluded us. For me the biggest challenge for my STEM career is societal issues. For example, when the president is racist, when my community is under fire, when there is police brutality. These are things that for anyone from any identity, the social issues that are at the forefront. Many of these issues are a distraction from our professional work. It is so difficult for someone to show up and perform at work when there are these pressing social issues occurring every day.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a woman in STEM or Tech. Can you explain what you mean?
The media has led us to believe that being a female scientist means being awkward, unattractive, nerdy, quirky, and clumsy. Other ones are that women are workaholics, single, and obsessed with work. Those stereotypes of what a female scientist looks like are the biggest myth. When women are shown in this light, it tells other aspiring women who want to get into the field, that if you want to have a family or relationship, you have to choose that wish over your career. It is very possible to have a rich full life and not be dominated by your work all the time.
What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in STEM or Tech” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
No rules, especially when climbing a professional ladder. For a long time, I thought the pathways in which people got to their positions were the only pathways. One of those impressions was that in order to climb, you have to stay in academia, and if you leave even for a moment, you will never get back in. However, I left momentarily to work in the non-profit space and have since returned back to academia. I am really glad that these rules are not necessarily true.
What advice would you give to other women leaders to help their team to thrive?
This is not scientific but allow the team that you work with to bring their full selves to work. Allow people to use their identity, background, perspective, etc. to inform their work and be comfortable in their work. This is critical in order to maintain a healthy relationship and work well together.
What advice would you give to other women leaders about the best way to manage a large team?
I would say delegate because that is advice I have been given. I do not manage a large team and often work by myself, but on the off chance I do work with a team, delegation has worked wonders. It is in those spaces that being able to delegate has taught me how to do so in my life, which has been very helpful.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I have had SO much help. Not at every step, but at most steps of my life. During the five years of my PhD, my advisors were so helpful and there for me in ways that they probably did not expect to be. They offered me tremendous help with basic things like setting up projects, forming my hypothesis, and choosing the population I wanted to study. They even helped me in my very first year get my hands on my first bear. All of the mentorship along the way at every step continues to impact me to this day.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
My work aims to save endangered species from extinction, so hopefully that brings enough goodness to the world. The type of science I do is to help make the environment healthier and more balanced so that we can keep this world growing, thriving, and spinning for years to come. I also do a good amount of social justice work, along with my scientific work, which is very important to me, as well.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Something constantly in the back of my mind is solving global hunger. I have always lived in communities in the inner city where there are a lot of blatant hunger issues. A good portion of people do not have access to the nutrition they need to be healthy, and there are immense amounts of inequality within this issue that arise too. This topic has been something I have always been so invested in, and I wonder if I have the capacity to tackle something so big. I encourage people to pay more attention to hunger, not just globally but also in their own communities.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There are no rules. I mentioned it earlier in terms of professional pathways, but this rule has applied to my personal life SO MUCH. Like unlearning so many societal standards that were not serving me. Especially in the last few years as a wife and a mother, so many women are socialized to believe that there is one way to be a wife and mother. This idea was not fitting with me, and I felt very guilty and selfish that I wanted to do that part of my life differently. I desperately wanted to be married and have children, but I did not want to do it in the box the society had shown. Once I realized that no one really wrote the rules and they are not real, I was able to free myself from that mindset, which absolutely changed my life for the better.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
I would want to spend time with someone that is relatively different from me career wise. I would love to spend time with Serena and Venus Williams, because we are around the same age, they have been relevant people in my consciousness for a very long time, and I think we sort of come from similar places. Being excellent in a space where black women rarely are is something we can really relate to. One of the reasons I am really notable is because I am a black woman in wildlife ecology. Rising to the doctoral level and studying these large predators as a black woman, makes me stand out for better and for worse. In some ways it has done a lot for me and in other ways it has been really painful. I would love to talk to them about their wellness practices and how they incorporate their mental health care into their career and lifestyle.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Dr Rae Wynn-Grant of Going Wild on the 5 Leadership Lessons… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.