‘A herpetologist can be a young Black woman’
UA grad student and “lizard lady” Earyn McGee is named a Forbes’ 30 Under 30 scientist.
Every Wednesday evening, 26-year-old Earyn McGee opens Twitter and asks her followers if they can “#FindThatLizard” in a photo of a camouflaged lizard. Hundreds of users play the “Where’s Waldo”-type game, tweeting McGee with either their excitement over being able to spot the reptile — or their frustration at being stumped again. This popular game, which McGee has played with her followers for two and a half years, is one of the reasons the University of Arizona Ph.D. candidate was named among Forbes’
top 30 Under 30 scientists this month.
“(I’m) trying to open doors for other Black and brown kids who are interested in the outdoors, and seeing that be recognized by Forbes … it was kind of a big deal for me,” McGee told The Arizona Republic. “I'm just trying to create resources that I wish I would have had access to when I was younger.”
‘A herpetologist can be a young Black woman’
For its 30 Under 30 list this year, Forbes Magazine chose 600 “entrepreneurs, activists, athletes, scientists and entertainers who made our 10th annual list of the brightest young innovators.”
On the morning of Dec. 1, when the list was published, McGee woke up to congratulatory text messages.
She wondered: “What are you guys talking about? Congrats for what? What is going on here?”
McGee had filled out the application packet earlier this year to be considered for the “30 Under 30” list but did not know when the results would be released or whether she was a serious contender.
“It was just an amazing experience to be recognized by such a major publication for the work that I'm doing to show people nature (and) educate people about nature, but also educate them about what a scientist looks like and that a herpetologist can be a young Black woman,” McGee said. “I don't really see a whole lot of people who look like me doing what I'm doing.”
When she watched shows on Animal Planet and Discovery Channel as a child, McGee, who grew up in Atlanta, New Jersey and Los Angeles, didn’t “put two and two together” and realize she too could host a similar program someday.
This experience motivates McGee to be visible on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and her own website. She prominently displays on her Twitter account that she is a “future natural history show host.”
“I feel like it's … important to talk about my experiences as a Black woman in a predominantly white field and as a herpetologist and an ecologist,” she said.
How Earyn McGee became a herpetologist
McGee has known for a long time that she wanted to work with animals and assumed she would become a veterinarian. But when she attended Howard University, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in biology, she realized that might not be the best path for her.
When she earned a position as an environmental biology scholar during her freshman year at Howard, she conducted field research for the first time and studied lizard populations. That was when she learned about health research and ecology and realized field research could be a viable career path.
It was not until she was in graduate school that she realized the breadth of possibilities for her career. Her favorite lizard now is the first one she worked with: Sceloporus jarrovii, also known as Yarrow's spiny lizard.
“It's the one that really put me on my path and helped me to figure out what I should be doing with my life,” McGee said. “I love it so much that I even have a life-sized one tattooed on my thigh.”
McGee, a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow, is in the data analyzation stage of her dissertation and hopes to graduate this year. She has been studying lizards’ diets as climate change affects Arizona’s environment, drying up streams.
“If streams are drying and lizards are eating these emerging aquatic insects, they could be losing an important food source. But we don't know that because we don't really know where their food sources are coming from,” she said.
Why you’ll find a statue of Earyn McGee at Central Park Zoo
McGee believes her social media presence was one of the reasons she was chosen for the American Association for the Advancement of Science IF/ THEN Ambassadors Program that consists of “women STEM innovators (who) are changemakers and leaders in their fields.”
IF/THEN is “dedicated to closing the gender gap in STEM careers and inspiring the next generation of women innovators and pioneers (and) aims to activate a culture shift among young girls by providing them with women STEM role models.”
As an ambassador, McGee runs a program in which women of color who work in natural resources or wildlife-related fields speak with middle schoolaged girls over Zoom. She also mentors in the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars program at UA, “which provides undergraduate students with two years' worth of research experience,” she said.
“The ambassador program has really helped (me) get a little bit of a jumpstart on opportunities,” she said. “Sometimes you walk through a department full of professors, and most of them are white and male. And just being able to find role models, even for myself to look up to, that has been a really awesome experience.”
McGee also has a statue at Central Park Zoo in New York City that is on display through Dec. 31. She is one of six contemporary women in STEM featured in a preview of #IfThenSheCan – The Exhibit, which was supposed to open this past spring.
Her statue, made possible by IF/ THEN, will be included among 122 statues in the exhibit, which is scheduled to open in 2021 at NorthPark Center in Dallas.
When she learned a 3D printed version of herself would be put up in Central Park Zoo, McGee cried.
“I was just like, ‘This is not real life. You guys don’t really mean this,” she said. “I feel like it's kind of appropriate for my statue to be in a zoo.
“It kind of took my breath away because here I am, a young Black woman studying lizards and, you know, who does that?”