I’ve recently gained a lot of new followers, so for this week’s episode of the Fancy Scientist Podcast, I wanted to share with you my vast experience that I’ve had working as a wildlife biologist for nearly twenty years, so that you can fully understand what this field is like.
Listen to From Forest elephants to Flour Beetles:
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My career has taken me all over the world, and I’ve been on all different kinds of adventures: from hiking the deserts of Utah to the top of Mount Kenya, and from flour beetles to forest elephants. I have worked across four different continents and in almost every type of organization that you can think of: the government, zoos, museums, universities, and alongside nonprofits.
In this episode, I break down each one of the positions that I have had in the past, telling you what they’re like and what I did, but more importantly, how I felt about the position emotionally, mentally, and what it did for my career.
This is a comprehensive, yet fun overview of my journey. It’s you and me hanging out, sharing the raw reality of these different places, so you can see the truth behind the resume. I do not shy away from discussing real challenges, like navigating toxic work environments and the “sink or swim” nature of graduate research. Chances are, you’ll find it refreshing how I don’t hold back, but also share how I pulled through.
I started my wildlife career officially in 2003 when I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree. My first position was an internship with the Bureau of Land Management in St. George, Utah, where I searched for water catchments to help wildlife combat drought and started some preliminary bat research in the Grand Canyon. This got me started in my wildlife career, but this was a challenging internship, and I almost quit!
"I thought Arizona sounded so far and exotic from where I was from in Buffalo, New York... but it was very isolating. I had a very difficult time at this job mentally and emotionally, and I felt very alone."
I’m so glad I didn’t because that experience led me to a dream internship at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, where I worked in a glass-walled lab doing endocrine research on the captive animals there, including African savanna elephants and the critically endangered cotton-top tamarin monkey. This was a total 180 from my experience in the desert! I loved Disney World and spent my days catching tamarin poop and helping to monitor elephant pregnancies. It was a supportive environment that showed me how much I loved combining science with outreach.
From there, my journey took me to Kenya as an intern for the School for Field Studies, which was also enriching but challenging. Again, I almost quit! But here I showed that I could work at a field station internationally long-term, which was a major flex for my upcoming Ph.D. research. It also gave me the invaluable experience of publishing.
"I almost quit my PhD or dropped down to a Master’s. I thought a PhD was going to be an apprenticeship where a professor teaches you everything, but it's not like that at all. You have to learn to figure things out on your own."
My Kenya internship led me into a six-and-a-half-year Ph.D. program studying African forest elephants in Gabon. I loved my Ph.D., but each step was a mix of incredible highs like observing wild elephants for months on end in Central Africa and the lows of being lonely in a field station or figuring out how to do something that has never been done before! Here, I fully understood what scientific research was really all about.
"At the museum, I worked in a 'fishbowl' behind glass where people could watch me work. The teachers were like, 'Wow, you're so fancy!' That’s where the name Fancy Scientist was born."
This episode is a must-listen to one if you are interested in going into wildlife fields, want to get to know me better, or are just curious to know what it’s like to be a wildlife biologist!
Specifically, we go over:
- How I landed my first “legit” field internship with the Bureau of Land Management in Utah and why it was so hard on me
- The inside scoop on working at a world-class zoo and in Disney World, being a Reproductive Biology intern, including what it’s like to catch cotton-top tamarin poop and monitor elephant pregnancies
- What it’s like to live in Kenya for a year, and in a remote field station
- Navigating toxic work environments and almost quitting more than once
- How I got my first scientific publications
- A brief overview of my research on forest elephants in Gabon, the “sink or swim” reality of graduate school, and why I considered dropping down to a Master’s
- How to study “disgust” in raccoons and why I drove around looking for roadkill carcasses
- My seven-year postdoc at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, running global camera trap projects, and the birth of “The Fancy Scientist”
- How these 17 years of experience led me to leave the traditional research path to start my own business in science communication and career mentoring
- Other fun experiences, like seeing a tiger in the wild or watching a leatherback turtle lay eggs
- And MORE!
Resources and Sources in From Forest Elephants to Flour Beetles:
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From Passive to Proactive: Making Your Wildlife Career Happen When You Feel Stuck: Interview with Makeela Mogomolla
No Experience, No Problem! Building a Wildlife Career from Scratch: Interview with Christina Weber
Fancy Scientist Podcast #149: From Flour Beetles to Forest Elephants: My 20 Year Wildlife Career
