To focus on my book project, I am currently taking a step back from service and engagement roles. Since issues of DEIJB figure prominently in the book itself, I am eager to return to these spaces ASAP!

Between 2017 and 2022, I facilitated more than 60 conversations around social inclusion and discrimination with Cornell’s Intergroup Dialogue Project. I started the first series of dialogues solely for graduate students in STEM fields in Spring 2017 (see this story for more information). In 2019 I received Cornell’s highest award for improving campus climate for “women” based on this work.

I served as the Vice President (2016-17) and then President (2017-18) of my department’s graduate student association. As President, I reorganized the committee structure to balance workloads among graduate students, established a new equity committee, and instituted regular meetings with the Chair and Director of Graduate Studies. I then served as Treasurer to manage all funding requests for graduate-student related events in AY 2018-19.

I served as President of GWiS Ithaca (2018-2019), which seeks to promote inclusion in science; to that end I worked to increase collaboration among diversity offices and groups across campus. In 2016 when I served as Fundraising Chair, we secured $4,800 from the American Association of University Women to create new programs in mentoring and diversity training for graduate students in STEM fields.

From 2017-2019 I coordinated social media advertising of Cornell’s Diversity Preview Weekend, an initiative started in 2016 to share tips on applying and getting into graduate school with students from first-generation or under-represented backgrounds in ecology and evolutionary biology. Suzanne Pierre and Cait McDonald envisioned and founded this program; their leadership and the continued efforts of the grads who run DPW inspires me.

I represented my department at biweekly meetings of the campus-wide assembly of graduate students (Cornell GPSA) from 2015-2016. This assembly works directly with university administration to address grad needs.

From 2017-2019 I sat on a small committee that represents the needs of underrepresented graduate and professional students by working closely with the Graduate School’s Office of Inclusion and Student Engagement.

From 2015-2017 I planned and organized a half-day workshop on ornithology and evolution for 7th-8th grade girls, which other graduate students now maintain at EYH Cornell.

I co-led a writing group for members of GPSDC each summer from 2018-2020, where we created community accountability structures specifically for historically under-represented scholars.

As a teacher with Community Impact at Columbia, I taught high-school equivalency science lessons for TASC (GED) students and assisted in preparing adult learners for the City University of New York’s college entrance exam. I worked for Community Impact while finishing my M.A. at Columbia.