By Amanda Puitiza, Hunter College
Like most, a few years ago I found myself studying and working from home. It was 2020 and the pandemic was showing no signs of slowing. Outside of our close inner circle, we were hardly connecting with others, especially through work. Isolation was the norm.
This, however, is a familiar feeling for many POC (people of color) during non-pandemic conditions as well. We are the minority in many fields, particularly STEM fields. And as you move forward in your career, often times it just gets lonelier and more isolating being the “only one”.
I actually came across the newly-formed Slack channel community called Women & Non-Binary People of Color in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (WOCinEEB) during the height of the pandemic and it was immediately a source of support. Even though I had never met any of these people in person, there was immediately this sense of belonging and community. With multiple channels serving different career stages and fields, one could easily find the resources they needed.
There is plenty of camaraderie that goes beyond the basic research/work-related themes. Some of my favorite channels include the womp-womp (where you can find the unfortunately common tales of trials we face time again) and the celebrating success. I think one of the reasons this community has continued to thrive is because even though we may be physically far apart, we often share experiences that allow us to feel connected.
One of their longest-running programs is the mentoring program. Because this community is all about providing resources for POC struggling to find the kind of support we need, this program has been crucial for many members in their career pathway. I have participated in this program for a few years now and it’s always a joy to be able to pass on what I learned through my experiences and struggles to help early-career students.
This community finally got the chance to become even more united when founders Bala Chaudhary, PhD and mentoring program director Lily Khadempour, PhD received NSF funding and funding from Darthmouth college to host the group’s first conference titled Networks of Success: Environmental Leadership Conference. The purpose of the meeting was two-fold: bringing scientists from all different career-stages to envision pathways to academic leadership and to promote science collaborations between WOC scientists. With this financial support, the group was able to fully fund 30 members to attend the 3-day in-person conference at Darthmouth College this past summer. It was an incredible experience and one that will hopefully be repeated soon. To this day, many of us are still working together on resources and papers that were first thought of in our working groups at this conference.
WOCinEEB is an online community for scientists who self-identify as women and non-binary people of color and work in ecology, evolutionary biology, and allied fields. They bring together diverse scholars to share experiences and resources. If you would like to learn more, please visit their website at www.wocineeb.org. You can join the Slack group by filling out this Google Form, use #WOCinEEB on Twitter, and join one or both of the mentoring programs on the Mentoring Page!
Also see ICB’s free to read issue 1 touching on many of the topics Amanda has written about here today.
https://academic.oup.com/icb/issue/63/1
Connect with Blogger Amanda Puitiza on Linked in
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-puitiza-2b9494ba
Integrative and Comparative Biology 