GETTING TO KNOW LINH ANH CAT

As chief of resources management and science at Cabrillo National Monument, Linh Anh Cat has a lot of fun on the job. She preserves tide pools, protects native plants and even catches lizards. But there’s another side, too.

“That entails a lot more office work than it sounds like,” Cat says. “Even though I’m an ecologist and love being out in the field, and I’ve spent a lot of time doing really cool field work and studying things, I am in the office a lot because I’m managing the division.” Cat, 28, discovered her passion for science in college where she studied microscopic fungal spores and how they travel. In addition to being a scientist who writes for Forbes Science, she’s also an activist and pageant winner. She’s the co-founder of Reclaiming STEM, which helps scientists advance social justice, and in 2018, Cat was crowned Miss Vietnam of Southern California. Cat talked to Name Drop San Diego about what a scientist is, why diversity in STEM matters and what she does in her free time. Read excerpts here or listen to the full episode in your favorite listening app.

On what drew her to science:

It’s actually something I didn’t figure out I wanted to study until the very end of high school and then into college. A lot of scientists have told me they knew from a young age — just from exploring nature and really enjoying it — that they wanted to be a scientist. I guess I didn’t really know that was a job for people who liked the outdoors. I guess I thought of scientists as people working in labs, and definitely didn’t see that as something I could do as a career. But at the end of high school I really liked biology and environmental studies, so I was like, “I like it, I might as well try to study that in college.” And my first semester in college, I took an ecology course and that’s when I totally fell in love. I was like, “I just want to take more of these courses and learn more about it.” College is where I really developed my more outdoorsy skills, learning how to ... camp and kayak and hike and basically just different ways to enjoy the environment. It’s not one of those callings you have to decide to do when you’re young.

On what a scientist is: When I think about who a scientist is, it’s anyone who is curious about a question and is dedicated to answering it in a way that’s systematic. It doesn’t always have to be the Western way of doing it, but someone who wants to gain information about a system and is just really curious. I know some great scientists that still don’t have their bachelor’s degrees, who know an amazing amount of information because they’re just so constantly curious to figure things out. So I really think anyone can be scientist. I will never deny that it is easier once you have your formal degrees to get opportunities and to move forward, though.

On her heritage and pageant life:

I grew up with parents who immigrated from Vietnam when they were 11 and 15. And I didn’t realize it until I was an adult, but even their Vietnamese is kind of rudimentary and they would speak to each other in English a lot. So I grew up understanding Vietnamese at a conversational level and I thought my parents knew Vietnamese so well, but it wasn’t until I was an adult and did that pageant did I realize that they struggle in some ways by being between two languages and not being good at either one.