The audience included Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis and former first lady Laura Bush. And they along with a crowd of 300 sat spellbound as Rae Wynn-Grant told her story.
Wynn-Grant is a carnivore ecology and conservation fellow, and on Monday night, she was among the women who spoke at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, where the AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador Summit brought together its newly named honorees. The summit continued through today, Oct. 23.
Wynn-Grant is one of 125 ambassadors chosen as part of a women-in-STEM initiative aimed at creating a new generation of superstars in science, technology, engineering and math. Spearheading the mission is the Dallas-based Lyda Hill Philanthropies and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Wynn-Grant’s accomplishments and those of the others being honored underscore the mission of showing girls that they, too, can be players in STEM.
But Wynn-Grant’s is also a remarkable American story. She spoke of hailing from an African American family that left behind the horror of racial violence in rural Texas — one in which family members were killed — to embrace a better life in California.
Hers was one of the night’s most compelling illustrations of how far one young woman can go in reaching her dreams.
“My father’s side of the family is from a small town called Stop 6, Texas,” she said in an interview, referring to what is now a neighborhood in southeast Fort Worth. “For a long time, it’s been a low-income, African American community.”
Her grandparents left Stop 6 in the mid-1940s, when her grandfather got a job in what was then the raw beginnings of Silicon Valley. His work? Transporting toxic waste.
“It was a dirty job but well-paying,” she said. “And he and his family were finally free of the discriminatory laws and the racial violence. We lost family members."
Family members, she said, were killed.
Her late grandfather could not speak of his early life, she said, without breaking into tears.
Wynn-Grant, who lives in Washington, D.C., is a fellow with the National Geographic Society. She’s also a conservation scientist, an ecologist and a STEM advocate who specializes in the study of large carnivores.
At the moment, only 37 percent of science, technology, engineering and math professionals portrayed in television and film are women. More than a few experts see a connection between that percentage and whether young girls will choose STEM as their career.
It is time, they say, to join forces in search of cultivating a new generation of STEM superstars. Pop culture — including television and film — is one of the ways to do it.
The latest research has determined that a fictional or nonfictional role model in STEM increases the number of girls interested in getting a job in the sector by 20 percent.
That’s one of the reasons that Geena Davis was among the speakers on Monday night. She’s the founder and chair of a nonprofit called the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. And she’s a host and executive producer of a new half-hour series titled Mission Unstoppable, which will feature women “on the cutting edge of science,” including IF/THEN ambassadors. Mission Unstoppable debuted on CBS on Sept. 28.
Davis, who won an Oscar for her role in the movie The Accidental Tourist, spoke of being “dedicated to improving images of women in children’s entertainment for about 15 years now. And in the past five years or so, we have had a very special focus on STEM fields.”
Davis, who played one of the stars in a women’s baseball league in the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, quoted President Barack Obama, who said: "We are really going to shortchange ourselves if we continue to leave out half the population. We need so many people in these STEM fields that we must have women as well.”
As Davis said in our interview: “We heard that as a rallying cry. Our motto at my institute is, ‘If she can see it, she can be it.’ And it’s absolutely, literally true that, if girls see something on screen, they realize, ‘Oh, wait, girls can do that — I can do that too.’ So, it’s incredibly important that we show women in STEM fields.”
In its research, Davis’ institute did a study of the impact of the Dana Scully character in The X-Files.
“There were some amazing numbers, but we found that 63 percent of women who are working currently in STEM cite Dana Scully as their single inspiration," Davis said in an interview. "That’s extraordinary! That one character on a TV show would have that kind of impact. That’s why it’s so important. We don’t have enough real-life role models.”
As Davis said, science is a field “with a tremendous disparity. We desperately need more women scientists — engineers, mathematicians, all of that. There’s a significant gender disparity in pretty much every sector of society. But it’s particularly pronounced in the STEM field.”
The American Association for the Advancement of Science and Dallas-based Lyda Hill Philanthropies selected the 125 women innovators across the country as IF/THEN ambassadors “to share their stories and serve as high-profile role models for girls,” according to the mandate spelled out by the organizations.
North Texas is well represented, with 10 women among those chosen.
“We need as much science as we can get to help the world,” Lyda Hill said. “So, we can’t leave half the population behind. Historically, women have not been engaged in science, and we need to get more of them engaged in science. And the way you start is with teenagers. This idea that women can’t do STEM is ridiculous. And we can do it.”
Jennifer Stimpson agrees. She’s among the the local women being honored as an IF/THEN ambassador. Stimpson is a middle school educator, innovator and scientist at The Hockaday School.
“Whatever we do, we need to make sure that women have a seat at the table," Stimpson said. "Until there can be STEM equity, we can’t really have a conversation about how we make the number shift.”
