What does it take to encourage young women and people of color to enter polar careers? On this episode of the Adventures in Learning Podcast, we meet Kimberly Aiken, a PhD student at the University of Tasmania, Australia, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. Kimberly is currently undertaking a research project focused on building more diverse, equitable, and inclusive extreme and remote workforce environments. She has contributed to several outreach and advocacy platforms and currently co-leads the Diversity and Inclusion Community Practice Group with the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC). In this episode of the Adventures in Learning podcast, we explore challenges and joys of being a person of color in polar STEM, skills and ideas necessary for engaging students, classrooms, and families in the polar regions, strategies for holding up diverse role models for children interested in STEM careers, and, of course, the mighty krill.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
What does it take to encourage young women and people of color to enter polar careers? On this episode of the Adventures in Learning Podcast, we meet Kimberly Aiken, a PhD student at the University of Tasmania, Australia, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. Kimberly is currently undertaking a research project focused on building more diverse, equitable, and inclusive extreme and remote workforce environments. She has contributed to several outreach and advocacy platforms and currently co-leads the Diversity and Inclusion Community Practice Group with the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC). In this episode of the Adventures in Learning podcast, we explore challenges and joys of being a person of color in polar STEM, skills and ideas necessary for engaging students, classrooms, and families in the polar regions, strategies for holding up diverse role models for children interested in STEM careers, and, of course, the mighty krill.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
[00:01] Dr. Diane: Wonder, curiosity, connection. Where will your adventures take you?
[00:05] Dr. Diane: I'm Dr. Diane, and thank you for.
[00:07] Dr. Diane: Joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. Welcome to the adventures in learning podcast. I'm Dr. Diane, and for those of you who have been following for a while, you know that I have a.
[00:22] Dr. Diane: Love affair going on with Antarctica.
[00:24] Dr. Diane: And I fell in love with our next guest over Instagram because she was posting the most fascinating, interesting things about the Arctic and the Antarctic. And I'm so grateful she said yes, because she is exactly the kind of scientist and advocate that I would have wanted to be when I was a little girl. And so I am so excited to welcome Kimberly Aiken to the show. Soon to be Dr. Kimberly Aiken. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania in Australia at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. So welcome to the show, Kimberly.
[01:00] Kimberly: Thank you, Diane. Such a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you for following along in my brief PhD journey. Thank you.
[01:08] Dr. Diane: Well, I'm so excited to have you on, and I want to get into your research and all of the really cool stuff that you've done in terms of climate activism and the polar regions. But before we do that, I want to sort of give our listeners a little bit of a sense of who you are. So can you describe your Adventures in Learning and how you wound up getting to where you are right now?
[01:31] Kimberly: Yeah, thank you for that question. I don't know. I like to think that I had a really good sort of solid foundation in terms of learning. Maybe it's also just part of my personality. But I also have, like, a love affair with just knowledge in general, which may sound a bit strange. I haven't run into too many other people who just enjoy learning, but I studied philosophy as my bachelor's degree, so for four years, all I did was maybe talk in rather abstract terms and think. And I participated a lot in the Socratic method, which is basically just engaging in discourse, conversation, discussion with one other person or a group of people, which was really good and helpful for me because it helped me sort of cultivate and just foster ideas in my head based off of just any general discussion with someone else. So I really enjoyed that process, but I didn't really come to the place where I'm at right now, I guess, you know, maybe through sort of a very traditional, if you will, track, like so many of my other colleagues. When I was growing up, I literally thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer or just an engineer in general, because I felt like I needed to follow in the footsteps of my big sister, who is a software engineer. And for so much of my life, I lived in the shadows of her, which is on the one hand is a very good thing. She's my best friend and one of my greatest role models of just women empowerment, advice, all of those things. But on the other hand, that wasn't my path, that wasn't my passion. Those were her dreams and they weren't exactly my dreams. And I struggled a lot actually trying to figure out what maybe my dreams really were. I never even had engagement or sort of knowledge at that time as a teenager or even a young girl growing up about the polar regions. I mean of course I knew they existed, but in terms of seeing myself in this line of work just wasn't a thought that I even produced. And so anyway, I was a legal secretary for eight years in New York City, worked in three of finest law firms in New York City, and I lived in New York for 15 years. And I don't know, I just got to a point later in that part of my life I was sort of in my early thirty s and I was like my work just didn't feel self gratifying enough for me. And that's no offense to all the women and men that I worked with who were legal secretaries. It just personally for me wasn't enough. I always had this drive sort of within myself that I get to some points where I'm like, this is not enough for me and I need more. And so I think that's where my love for just knowledge and other things sort of come in. But really, I guess this journey or this life of mine as a polar professional and now a PhD student, was really birthed in my apartment in Brooklyn, I think, back in 2016, where I was watching the Dr. Sylvia Earl Mission Blue documentary. And then I think the Polar Regions, I think documentary that was narrated by Sir David Attenborough. And that was really the thing that sort of I think ignited something in me that I was you know, there's a lot know, not so good things happening in the environment or in the know in the world. I mean of course a lot of people in the US politicians, of course the NGO community have been sounding this alarm for a very long time. And I think like many people, myself included back then, I just kind of maybe ignored those alarms and was like, oh, there's someone else working on this, I don't need to get involved. And then I was like, no, I think I need to get involved. But I also was interested in a career change, just kind of being upset maybe both with myself and my life at that then time and feeling like this wasn't enough for me. So then lo and behold, I just really decided to do a master's degree. I moved to California, so across country and started my master's degree in international environmental policy, where I met today one of my now mentors and friends that I work with, dr. Brendan Kelly, and all of my colleagues in the law firm that I worked in in seven World Trade Center. They all thought I lost my mind because I went to work. I told my most senior partner that I was quitting on this day. I cut my hair, I dyed my hair. And everyone was like, well, I think she's too young to be going through a midlife crisis, but that's what I did. And they were just kind of like, okay. Things were a bit of a rocky start. Of course, any change, you always feel maybe a little bit reluctant because it's different from what you know, for so long. But that's another thing, I guess, about me. So not only do I just embrace knowledge and epistemology, which is the study of knowing in philosophy, but this desire. I just love change, really, even though sometimes you get all those butterfly feelings inside about change because you're like, am I making the right decision? Am I making the right move? But I think I see so much beauty in that because there's so much opportunity in being able to discover and see things that you otherwise wouldn't see or discover if you just stay in the same place all the time. And I'm also a person who gets bored easily. So with the change in knowledge and learning things, I never feel bored. And I always feel like I'm just somehow another moving forward and progressing forward just in my own thoughts, which sounds maybe, again, very strange to a lot of people. So, yeah, lo and behold, I got started on my Master's. And at my institution, we didn't really have a specific concentration in Arctic policy. I kind of sort of added Arctic or Polar or an Arctic policy lens on top of my work. So every paper assignment that I had to do, I would kind of do it through an Arctic lens and looking at it that way. And I was particularly interested at that time, and I'm still interested in it, the science to policy interface, integrating Indigenous traditional knowledge in that space as well. So I learned a little bit about that and engaged with some Indigenous colleagues through my then graduate supervisor, Dr. Brendan Kelly, as I stated before, who is now the scientific director of the Study for Environmental Arctic Change. He's still in that position, in that role. And yeah, so I don't know. I just kind of got I don't know whether they thrown into the deep end, but I attended my first conference in Alaska, which was the Alaska Forum on the Environment, where I met so many lovely, wonderful people, many Indigenous colleagues throughout the Arctic, particularly in Know. And we talked a lot about the changing in Know climate and the environment, particularly looking at permafrost, looking at sea ice and a lot of those things. And it just met a lot of wonderful and beautiful people along the way. And then shortly thereafter I think I probably was in California for maybe ten months. And then I went off and did an Arctic field summer school which was that was, I guess, a reoccurring thing. Pre COVID they would have a lot of field summer schools, arctic field summer schools. People would go out and do field work and look at specific elements of the environment in that space pertaining to say, a much larger scope of an idea. So in my case, I attended the 2019 Arctic Field Summer school that was a partnership between Norway, Canada and the United States and I was in the third year of that particular field school. And so in each school each cohort was looking at a particular part of the Earth's cryosphere. And so the first year I think they were in Spalbard in Norway and they were looking at sea ice. And then the second year I believe it was maybe in Barrow, Alaska, and they were probably looking at like landfast ice or something like that. And then in my cohort we were looking at permafrost, which is another part of the cryosphere in permafrost basically is ground, I mean excuse me, soil that's underneath the ground that is frozen or at zero degrees below and it's frozen soil underneath, which is very important, I guess piece to indigenous way of living. And not just that, but just many parts of soil and land throughout the circumpolar Arctic. And so now that permafrost actually is thawing quite a lot due to climate change, warming climate from above and also below when the soil becomes very warm from underneath. And then, of course, from above, with that heat landing down onto the soil and the surface itself will actually cause some cracks and things to sort of happen in the permafrost and then as a result of that, it will break apart. And then depending on the location, it may fall into, say, the ocean or you'll see a lot of coastal erosion or land erosion and that sort of thing. So that was a great experience for me. I was the only policy student that was present with my colleagues at that then time. Some of my master student peers, they were all from the natural science world and I was the only policy student. So I felt very fortunate to kind of be able to get involved with a lot of the natural scientists and engage also in their work from that side and bringing in that policy element to the importance of that. Scientific work and being able to communicate that work to policymakers or to other audiences and groups about these changes that are happening in these areas and things that we can do to help. And then I guess. So from there I moved to Germany for about three and a half months and I started working for the Alfred Wigner Institute German Arctic office that's located in Pottsdam, germany. And that was a wonderful experience back in 2016 when I started having all these ideas about my new life, even though I wasn't sure how I was going to put all of that together. I said, I want Ben to work for Avi. But at that time, I couldn't exactly figure out how to work for Avi because the Institute, you know, they do a lot of research and work on polar research and are, you know, very specific in that area. And they know the Arctic Council, they also inform the Antarctic Treaty system, of course, the German government and a lot of other different audiences about things that happen in the polar region. But because I'm not a natural scientist, I didn't think that I had anything to offer to the Alfred Vignette Institute or to the German Arctic Office. And I was I how do I connect myself in this way again to the natural science world? But as luck would have know, I wrote to the head of the German Arctic Office. His name is Dr. Folk Rockhold and he's still there and he's actually a geologist by trade. But he was at that time and I think currently still was working a lot on that science to policy interface again. So when I wrote to him as a policy student doing my masters, I was like, hey, I want to come and work with you guys. And I think no sooner than I hit the send button, I received a response from him instantly. And it just lit up the biggest smile on my face. I felt like a kid in a candy store. And I was like, I can't believe it. This man said yes. He was so happy and delighted that a policy student had reached out to him and wanted to work with him because he often would get emails or applications and responses from natural science students. And so he was like, yeah, we would love to have you. And all of that good stuff got fast tracked. And before I knew it, I was in Germany and I worked on Arctic governance, producing fact sheets with Folker and his team, because there was a lot at that time, there was a lot of discussion or questions being asked around, particularly who owns the Arctic? And it was very important that we put into a fact sheet or indicate that no one specifically owns the Arctic, right? Like when we think about ownership, we understand that to mean like, maybe someone physically owning, having rights to a plot of land or whatever. But I guess we would probably use the term rights in this way for in terms of who know rights to land or to fisheries know to certain things throughout the circumpolar Arctic. And the Arctic is shared by eight Arctic nation states, as we call them, that border the Arctic. So that would be the US, Canada, Denmark, for Greenland, Russia, Norway, Finland, Sweden. And I'm missing one at the moment, but in any event, yes, exactly. So Iceland might be one of them. Yes, that is correct. Those nation states, they govern within their, I guess, if you will, economic exclusive zones, which is 200 nautical miles off the coast of their land into the Arctic or the Arctic Ocean. They are, I guess, if you will, responsible or have an obligation to sort of manage those areas. And then, of course, there are over some 4 million indigenous people who live throughout the Circumpolar Arctic who also have equal rights to this land and to these spaces, and they also do their own traditional ecological governance of these regions as well. That looks very different from the way in which, say, international leaders may sort of govern and manage these areas. And of course, that also looks a little bit different and sometimes not sometimes, but always complementary to Western scientific knowledge in the way that we look at the landscape in the Arctic. So those are the very important components to Arctic management and environmental. So I started working with Know on that, and we thought it was very important to just sort of kind of articulate everything I just stated into a fact sheet of, I think, no more than four pages about each of these actors, these stakeholders, and their contribution and significance to the Arctic and to Arctic policy in general. So that was a very great experience and opportunity for me. Folker, again, has become another good mentor and friend of mine and always very helpful in just advice in terms of my career and my journey. And I don't know, maybe I've heard from quite a few of my mentors nowadays, like, it seems that I'm always surprising them about what I'm doing and the next steps that they probably didn't think of or I probably didn't even envision for myself, which is really great. And then I moved directly to Norway, where I worked for Grid Arundahl, which is an institution that creates a lot of different communication products and projects around different environmental issues that happen throughout the world. I specifically worked in the Polar and Climate Program as a project assistant. And at that time we were focusing on Arctic plastic pollution because Iceland had the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, which is based in Trompsa, Norway, and one of the priorities of the Icelandic chairmanship in the Arctic Council was Arctic plastic pollution. And so that's how we ended up, or that's how Arctic plastic pollution became a part of my remit and my portfolio as something to work on. And there was actually a project that Grid Arendol and my focus group actually specifically worked on with the Sami indigenous people of Norway on looking at alternatives to plastic, which was a really fascinating project and idea, which as many people have heard. I think it's been in existence not necessarily since the Industrial revolution. But we understand, of course, in present day that there's so much plastic in our oceans there's so much plastic on land. And we were particularly looking at that in Arctic areas. And that led also into other issues of waste management and pollution just through different avenues of like streams and rivers or landfills and all these sorts of things. And so that was a very interesting, also work experience for me. I'd never been to Germany before, I'd never been to Norway before. I moved to both of these countries, having no family and no friends there beforehand. That was of course a little scary. That was change again happening. But alongside that change was knowledge. I knew that I again was going to be learning so much experience, so much different cultures, different language. I do speak a little bit of German language so that was helpful. I don't speak any Norwegian, but I can manage in the society. I lived in Norway for one year and I met so many wonderful people and had such very heartwarming experiences in Norway, particularly with the Sami indigenous people that I met in Norway and Trumsa and in Buddha. And we just really had an amazing time together. And we're able to sit human being to human being and have both serious discussions, but just lighthearted discussions of being able to I learned more about their history and their culture and their land. And I recognized, of course, that we had a lot of similarities in common and of course, we have a lot of differences, but I think that was the beauty of it. And I think for me, for sure, just being with them, I felt like I was home. I felt very welcomed and very comfortable with them. They were always very welcoming of me and just the way we were able to just engage together was just a very beautiful thing that sometimes I face quite a bit of adversity in trying to have that same type of experience with some of my polar know in the sort of professional space. I wasn't always mean. I've had people tell me that I need to go back to the US or whatever or I don't fit in, I don't belong in this space. It's not the right cultural fit, it's not the right personality fit and all those things. And I felt really discouraged a lot of times. And that has sort of carried with me. I guess I was a wee bit naive maybe going into as a professional into the polar community because it's not a very diverse community, it's not racially diverse, it's not necessarily culturally diverse. It is certainly diverse linguistically and of course based on nationality and perhaps maybe even ethnically, but it's not racially diverse and it's not in a lot of different ways culturally diverse in terms of welcoming maybe some black and indigenous people or other people of color like myself. And so that's often heavy to carry and I've carried it quite a bit. I hope sometimes I carry it well. But because I'm only human, I have struggled a lot in the way in which I have to carry what feels like a burden sometimes. But I guess having really great mentorship, I guess a lot of different people embracing me not just as a person of color in the space, but just as an individual and a human being has sort of helped carry me on my way and uplift me and encourage me and remind me of the badass individual who I am and that this is just only one part of my story. This is just the beginning of my journey. And I will carry certain things. It may get a little bit better, you figure out along that way different, I guess, tools and mechanisms and ways of trying to, I guess, let some of that adversity and challenges just it sits there or it rolls off and you just find that strength again to keep going. So I'm very grateful to my past and current mentors still today who help me carry this and remind me that I'm not alone in this space and who make me feel very welcome and who are some of my biggest supporters. So I'm very grateful to them. And then from Norway, of course, COVID happened and so on. And I was unemployed for five know, which really wasn't, I guess in hindsight wasn't a bad thing. I mean, of course at the time I was very know like, I think everyone else in the world because you're like, oh my God, the world is falling apart. What are we going to do? And I returned back to the US. And I sort of squatted on my sister's couch for about five months. But I couldn't think of a better place to be again. My sister is my best friend. I'm always happy to be with her and we have such great times. You know, we were separated, of course, when COVID started because I was living in Norway and she was living in California where she still lives. But then we came back together and that was a nice sort joining rejoining together again and kind of going through some parts of COVID together. And I think for a lot of people, and particularly the world, there are a lot of silver linings that can be found in really awful instances like COVID and things that happen. And I'm not in any way diminishing the impact that COVID had on us both as a community, as individuals and just as the world in general. But I think for me particularly, it allowed things to slow down very much to the point that I could take stock of myself, some of my personal choices, life choices, career choices. I had a chance to sort of rethink career trajectory, maybe what I wanted to do, didn't want to do and those sorts of things. And I also felt like it was a perfect opportunity for us as the world globally and from an environmental perspective to really sort of take stock in just what we had been doing in terms of emissions. And we were able to see great air quality across many parts of the world, which was phenomenal. So that's another subject and maybe we probably just went back to business as usual. But personally, for myself, even though I was struggling with or processing a bit of trauma that I had previously experienced through a lot of adversity that I experienced in one of my work environments of harassment, sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination, I was trying to process a lot of stuff and sort of, I guess, rebuild myself in a way. So being with my SIS for those five months and being back around someone who I know is very genuine and is very real, sort of helped embrace me and cultivate and help build the inner parts of myself so that I can become whole again. And like I said, I was unemployed. But then in January of 2021, this great opportunity came across my email, where I then got employed with the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, which is a US based NGO that's based out of Washington, DC. And then I joined on sort of doing some part time work in the beginning to see how things would get on. And then I became full time quite quickly. And then, of course, my formal title was Research and Policy Associate. And then I worked on some really amazing environmental campaigns with my colleagues at ASOC, as we call it, for short. And ASOC really works on the protection and conservation of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and the entire you know, I worked on, again, phenomenal campaigns with a lot of the NGO community on climate change, on marine protected areas. In the southern ocean on fisheries management, particularly the Krill fishery in the southern ocean, which is a significant and crucial part of the entire southern ocean ecosystem. And shout out to World Krill Day, which is on August 11, that's coming up this year. Just to give you kind of sort of a background of ASOC. ASOC is a coalition of a bunch of NGOs. So, for example, like Pew Charitable Trust, WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth Renovation Hub, et cetera. ETOC is the observer or excuse me, ASOC is the NGO voice of the entire NGO community in the Antarctic Treaty system. And there are two parts to the Antarctic Treaty System, which is the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, which also has the Committee for Environmental Protection, which is the CEP, a part of that. And then there's Kamlar, which is the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources that governs and sort of manages fisheries in the Southern Ocean region. And so ASOC is the NGO voice that speaks on behalf of all NGOs in the ATCM, which is the first half of the Antarctic Treaty system. And Kamlar it is the only NGO observer that has that capacity to speak and have rights to speak in that way. So ASOC has a really important role and plays a very important role in the Antarctic Treaty system, bringing also not just that NGO voice, but, I think, sort of the civil sort of service voice, if you will, into these spaces about and reminding international leaders of their objectives to the Convention and Treaty of the Antarctic Treaty System and reminding them of their obligations to follow in the footsteps of conservation first and foremost. And in addition to rational use of being able to extract marine I hate to say living resources, but marine species from the so, you know, I had a great run with ASOC. I worked with them for two years. I'm no longer affiliated with, you know, just because now I have a different set of obligations. And the PhD, which is where I'm at now, currently takes up quite a lot of time. PhDs are, I think most people would probably say they're very hard, very difficult, but very fun and challenging. And again, knowledge. You're learning so much. You're learning a lot about yourself. You're learning a lot about your topic, about other people and their topics. And a lot of it can be interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary. So it's all of these wonderful knowledgeable things happening in this one big space. And if you're a person like me who really enjoys knowledge and a lot of learning, you're like that, I don't know, almost a come to Jesus moment where you just in this space where knowledge is in abundance. I applied to the PhD, I think it was in maybe I think it was March of 2022, and I met one of my current supervisors, actually, over Twitter. That's how I found the PhD position that I have now over Twitter. Because with COVID Australia was closed, their borders were closed to the international world, and no one could come in or go out and that sort of thing. But lo and behold, my PhD really started off as a conversation with Dr. Meredith Nash, who is one of my PhD supervisors, when she posted it on Twitter. And I didn't really want to do necessarily, and I didn't write to her because maybe I wanted to do the PhD. I wanted to have a conversation first and foremost. And so the PhD was advertised as recruiting the polar workforce. And I read the description about what that entailed, which really was looking know, how can we recruit underrepresented and historically excluded groups of know to the, say, Antarctic or Arctic workforce, if you will? And that could be in research and science, that could be in policy and governance, or that could easily be trades, operations and logistics, because a lot of people work on the continent, they work in Antarctica as a tradeswoman or a tradesman, or they do a lot of logistical things, plumbing, whatever you name it. And. A lot of people don't really either recognize that or remember that. So in any know, Meredith and I, we got to chatting and talking, know just what is all required really to sort of be able to recruit the next generation for the polar workforce. And so I was just basically explaining to her that a lot of this really looking at we used to talk about the pipeline, which means how people are able to enter into the polar workforce, or just any workforce for that matter, when you think about it. And it's like what does that pathway look like? So I think I stated at the very beginning that my pathway into the work that I do right now, or just all of the work that I've done thus far in the polar community was not a traditional pathway in the same way of a lot of my colleagues, PhD colleagues or polar colleagues. Like maybe many of them had a father or great grandfather or someone who was previously worked in this space, was able to come back home and possibly tell stories or they went with them maybe on a vessel somewhere or something. So they had sort of kind of a first hand experience or knowledge about the space already. Whereas for me, I sort of kind of did a lot of personal reading and knowledge gathering on my own in addition to my professional education that I acquired, so that I can have a better understanding of this space. So that's what we mean by traditional access or just access in general to a community, the polar community, that's already very niched and it's a very small community for those of us in it. So I was explaining to Dr. Nash that we need to go all the way back to early elementary or to educators or to teachers. We need to go into those schools and into those communities and bring that awareness to these young kids, to teenagers, even to the teachers, because a lot of teachers, this is not their scope necessarily and not necessarily saying that we need to make it as part. But I think it's really about just educating that entire community of educators and students and parents which are really the general public about that. These spaces, I think they all know that they exist. But what's important to articulate is that you can work in this space and that you can see yourself in this space and that it doesn't matter your pathway of coming into the polar community, we welcome all of that. And so I think a lot of that was really missing. And sadly, maybe we fail a lot in the polar community to sort of go into these communities and show that these people, people like myself or black, indigenous and underrepresented communities belong in this space as well. So we're doing a lot more of that work. And that brings me actually to present day, which is my PhD my PhD actually looks at diversity and inclusion in extreme and remote workforce environments. And so Antarctica is one of my case studies. And fly in, fly out, remote underground mining in Western Australia is also one of my case studies. And so, you know, when we think about extreme and remote workplace environments, we tend to think about, like, say, outer space, for example, aerospace, or sometimes even military. If you're in defense and maybe you're way overseas and you're in sort of remote locations in areas, or if you're working on the continent or you're working in the Arctic, for example, where it's very isolated, it's very extreme and remote. Harsh conditions, these are non traditional, know, compared to working in an office space, for example. So that's what we mean by extreme and remote. And for sure, there's a lot to be learned from these environments. And either what they are doing, can be doing, haven't done, need to do in terms of diversity and inclusion. And so that's in nutshell, what my PhD research is about. And I will also be using the intersectionality framework to sort of situate my research in what the role is of intersectionality and what it plays, the key role that it plays in terms of recruitment and retention, how certain groups of people in the world are either more advantaged or disadvantaged based on their intersectional social identities. Now, I know I just said a mouthful there, so I'm going to break this down really quickly. I know I feel like I've been talking a lot, but I'm going to break this down in the most simplistic terms so that people understand what I'm saying. So intersectionality, what that means? First, it's a term that was coined by Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, who is a professor at Columbia University. She does a lot of work in critical race theory and intersectionality. And intersectionality really is a framework and the term that looks at and addresses overlapping social identities that we all ascribe to. And what I mean by social categories or identities is, for example, like someone is a woman, they are a man, then maybe what their racial identity is. They could be white, they could be Asian, black, et cetera. Second, and third to that, they may have a sexuality preference, they may identify as being a part of the LGBTQIA plus community. So right there, we already have three social identities that someone may identify with. They could be a woman, they could be a man. They could be black or white or Asian, et cetera. And they could also be someone who is a part of the queer community. And looking at those overlapping identities at different times in different contexts, maybe different geographical spaces and just differences throughout the world wherever you are. One of those identities or those multiple identities can be compounded to either put someone at an advantage for, say, employment opportunity or just their positionality in the world where they are, or it could put them at a much greater disadvantage again in the world, or for employment opportunities, et cetera. And so that's really what a lot of my PhD is going to be looking at, is how can the polar community recruit more underrepresented people like myself into this space? And what does that entail? That means looking at, okay, well, if you have a candidate that may apply and they could be black and they could be a woman, and they might be in the queer community, and then you have another candidate who could be white and they are probably a man, and maybe they are also part of the queer community. Why is it that maybe we are only looking at a specific racial group or ethnic group of people as opposed to someone else of a different racial or ethnic group that could be equally as qualified, but maybe you may not think that they're a good fit for this workspace environment because the demographic makeup is traditionally and predominantly white. So it's sort of separating these things and looking at them individually but collectively of how multiple identities can have compounded impacts on someone's lived experience in the world and any aspects or opportunities that they may have for employment. Et cetera at different times can be a tough PhD for me because of the nature of the work and my own personal experiences as an African American who oftentimes see myself in my own research. So a lot of times I see myself, I am the researcher, but different times I feel like I'm the subject of my own research. And so that can be sometimes tough to grapple with. But I work with a psychotherapist who I've had for three years. I'm a strong advocate also for mental health on every level, even outside of PhD. Just in general, I think the world could benefit from some talk therapy, psychotherapy, whatever. But in any event, I work through these things and I have good mentors and people, a good group and team of people that work with me to help me just position myself and be also safe and healthy in my PhD work. But just in general. So yeah, I'm very happy, I guess overall, maybe with my journey where I'm at, I never really wanted to do PhD. Even now as a PhD candidate, I don't do this PhD just to have two letters at the front of my name or three letters at the end of my name. I do it because know, this work is important, particularly in the Australian society. Intersectionality is not something that's widely understood and talked about in Australian society in the same way that it is in the US. For example. And race and race relations or racial diversity is also very different here in the Australian society and not really talked about also openly in the same way as it is in US. And so I think that there's a lot that can be learned and borrowed from other places, both that I can apply in my research that will inform the Australian Society and these extreme remote workforce environments about what they can be doing better and differently, to sort of create safe, inclusive and diverse workspaces. And so, to my polar colleagues, they have done very well, actually, in terms of gender diversity. The polar community is very gender diverse. We see a lot more women now working on the continent and in the Arctic than we've probably ever seen before. But what I want to point out is that gender diversity is not the end all, be all. There's so many elements to diversity that I just mentioned class, age, disability, accessibility, language. There's so many things that we can look at and that we probably need to take on if we're going to do diversity right and adequately. So I do want to congratulate us as a community for being able to move the needle, if you will, on gender diversity. But we still have a long way to go in terms of gender diversity, overlap with, say, racial diversity on top of that, et cetera. So I hope that that's where my PhD work can come in and inform not just my polar colleagues in the polar community in general, but the Australian society and other environments, workforce environments, extreme and otherwise, just in terms. Of how we need to be more conscious when we look at our recruitment practices and strategies and when we see certain papers resumes and CVS before us and sort of check maybe some of our unconscious bias when we do these things. And that's very important. So I hope the future for me in terms of my research and work, I also think that my PhD is an extension of myself, but more importantly, it's a body of work that's not finished. I'm only in my first year PhD, but it's a body of work that, for me, I would like to give a voice to that vulnerable and underrepresented community to speak through my words or through my thesis in terms of what's missing here from industry representatives as well, in terms of what they can be doing. How can we bring these communities together and address these gaps that are in between? So that's my hope and my goal and my vision for my PhD research. And I'm not sure what's next after that. Right now, I'm just trying to take.
[46:28] Dr. Diane: It one page at a time.
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[47:45] Dr. Diane: We hope to be in your school sooner. And you got me thinking as you were talking, there's so much I want to unpack, but one of the first things I was thinking about is I read recently that kids today are going to be going into jobs. That aren't even invented yet, that 65% of the jobs out there don't exist, and they're going to be facing a world that neither of us could have imagined when we were children. I mean, today I would give anything to figure out a way to be able to teach in the polar regions. But how do we prepare kids and you alluded to that how do we help teachers and families prepare kids for job descriptions that aren't even written yet, but to open up their eyes to the possibilities that are out there?
[48:46] Kimberly: Okay, yeah, I think that's a very important question. It's a lot, really, to think about. Like you just said, preparing kids or the future generation for a world that to some extent, we're not even sure how it's going to look. I mean, I think, though, from the climate science perspective or just environmental change and all the scientists, they are informing us right now of possibilities of what that world will look like. Let us just take climate change or global warming, for example. I think July, I read recently, was the hottest month recorded across the entire world. And so this is already the scientific community sounding the alarm yet again about what the scenario of different worlds are going to look like. And of course, that climate again, is going to influence the type of workforces that we have. People who work outdoors, construction, how do we keep people safe and healthy on site, all of these different things. So it really is a lot. But, I mean, the science community, as a matter of fact, this evening here in Ipaluna Lutrawito, which is Hobart, Tasmania, where I'm currently based, I will be going to a talk on climate change and how we can prepare for the future, actually. And so, I mean, a lot of what we've been learning and some of the research here that's been happening in Australia through the scientific community, they've actually been looking at psychological and mental health impacts on the younger generation coming up into this world and how that's impacting them now and what we're actually leaving behind for them. What are we preparing and leaving for them right now? It seems like a very big mess. And so that is a lot to take on and grapple with. And so that's, again, I think to something that I mentioned about the mental health I'm very happy about this is that the scientific community has understood that the changes and things that are happening are not just impacting, people say physically, but also mentally. And so they have been embedding a lot of that work and working a lot with the social science departments and disciplines, for example, psychology, and explaining to kids and working with educators about, okay, how can we still progress and move on and not feel like everything is falling apart? I think that I don't particularly have that answer of how we can really prepare younger generation for a world that's going to look very different. But I think we are doing it to some extent right now, like between the science community, the social sciences community again, psychology, humanities, sociology, political science. We're working together now to sort of, I guess, sort of package, if you will, a way of understanding how we're living right now and how we may actually be living a bit later and what they can do to sort of make an impact, to make things a bit better. Unfortunately, the effects, the climate effects that we're seeing, it's really hard to sort of dial or draw these things back, right? It's possible. But the problem is that it takes a long time for us to see these reverse changes. It's not something you can do something today and you're not necessarily going to see that change tomorrow. You may see it 20 years from now. So that's where the issue comes in at. But nevertheless, I think just sort of mentally preparing the younger generation for what's to come, which we already see a lot of the younger generation actually being very much involved in climate advocacy, different protests and marches. There's something called the Arctic Angels that is through Global Choices Organization, where there are a lot of different young women and men who champion for the Arctic region and the importance of why we need to conserve these spaces. And these people are all over the world. They're not residents of, say, the Arctic days. Many of them are right there in the know, probably in, you know, couldn't be further apart from the know. This has become an obligation of multiple communities, including in your household with your parents and so on, and just kind of staying educated about what's happening and making sure that young people understand these changes, both from a science. Perspective, from a human health perspective, different roles that they can play, no matter how small, but also reminding them I think it's really important that we can't give up. We can't just say, Well, I can't help, or I feel like nothing is contributing to the greater good. The smaller steps actually will add up to some very big impacts and changes. This young generation will be where I am. They will be policymakers, they will be the scientists. They are already in the community. They are the community. And so my hope, and that I hope as a social scientist with my natural science community and everyone, is that we give them the tools that they need to do better than maybe we're doing right now. And I think that's really a strong message to leave with them is that for wherever we may have failed and not have gotten it right. Plus they are coming up in a world with technology that we didn't have, like you said when we were kids and all of these new technological advancements that are cutting edge and that will come that hasn't even come yet, but will come. They will have all these other different tools and sets of things on top of what we believe that hopefully they can look to for answers and they think differently than us already. They are like a technologically savvy sort of generation whereas many of us had to learn through different ways. So I hope that as educators and just community advocates and environmental advocates, that we can encourage them to tap into things that they have before them and utilize in very good ways to sort of prepare for the unknown futures that we don't know. So it's both exciting and scary. Again, that's change, that change can be very scary. But with that also comes a lot of knowledge. Again, you're going to learn so much more there. We're going to learn from them. We will actually probably even look to them for answers that we can't provide and different things. So I think that's something we can do now. We don't have to wait. We can do these things now.
[56:11] Dr. Diane: Absolutely. And as I'm listening to you and sort of thinking about your story and thinking about my own experiences as an early childhood and elementary educator, I'm realizing that the mental health is absolutely important, that we're facing a critical crisis in terms of mental health, certainly in the United States, and I think worldwide, post pandemic. But it's been building up for much longer than that, I think. And so we need to make mental health a priority and provide people the resources to be able to process and to build resilience. But I think in education we need to be working on things like perseverance creative problem solving, on being able to collaborate and work together to celebrate our differences, to recognize that we bring different strengths to the table and how do we use those appropriately. And I think if we can focus on those skills, then we're preparing kids to be able to be the problem solvers that we need them to be.
[57:16] Kimberly: Absolutely. I agree with that 100% because it really is a collaborative effort. It really takes everyone exactly and role models, good mentorship, good leaders to look to and work alongside and help educate us because it's going to take a very collaborative, diverse, like you said, creative and even radical perspective to deal with some of the issues that we're facing now and probably different issues that they will face later on in the future. So yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And just to something that you were saying, you mentioned that you're an educator. I am also an expert, part of the network of experts with the Oregon State University Polar Steam program.
[58:11] Dr. Diane: I was going to ask you about that.
[58:14] Kimberly: Yeah. And so actually I believe it is tomorrow or the twelveTH I can't remember off the top of my head, but they're actually going to host a sort of introduction into what this program does and what it looks at. And what it really does is just try and bring educators or people from different educational backgrounds with the polar community and pair them together and sort of merge science with say, art or with music or with teaching or it could be anything. And to your point about these creative ideas and solutions, this is where we're hoping to be able to foster a lot of those ideas and creativity that can happen in the classroom, both with teachers and educators, with their students alone, or just with the students alone or just with the educator alone, also with that science. And we're doing that on both sides of the poles. So the Arctic and the Antarctic, which I think is a fascinating idea in combination, know, both merge science with social sciences and humanities and arts. And I have quite a few friends actually who are part of the Antarctic Artist collective organization. And what they do, a lot of them are just artists. They write books, they write comics, they draw cartoon related things and it's a different way of telling stories and narratives about a place and making it relatable to the, you know, so that they can understand it. And it's so beautiful and it's amazing. And I'm very excited about what the OSU Polarstein program can do with educators. And I would encourage everyone in education, no matter your field or discipline, to really have a look at that and see how you might be interested in collaborating with an Arctic scientist or with an indigenous traditional knowledge holder on being able to tell different stories and create, again, creative solutions around some of the very complex problems that we're dealing with today.
[01:00:27] Dr. Diane: That's incredibly powerful. And it actually connects back to something else I was thinking about while you were telling your story, which you were talking about being a policy person in a natural science field. And it struck me as you were talking about the different jobs you had done that so much of it involved storytelling and being able to help people understand these complex issues in a way that connects and makes it real. And you first fell in love with the polar regions from a documentary and it's that storytelling, it's that being able to see and to understand it. And I think that when we can put these things into words, then we can take action that you don't protect what you don't know, and you don't know it until you hear about it and you fall in love with it.
[01:01:19] Kimberly: Right. Or until you see visual imagery, photography. All of these things are equally important. You can even hear it through music. I know that only one, I guess, renowned polar photographer Paul Nicklin, and I believe his wife, excuse me, Christina Middlemere, they work together, know, photographing a lot of these places that many of us will probably never get to. I mean, I've been in the circumpolar arctic, in the arctic. I've never been to Antarctica yet, but it's like being able to see stuff like you said through a documentary or sometimes. I know that there will be a lot of maybe, say, immersive events that maybe even the Smithsonian may hold at different times. Maybe they'll know an exhibit in know that people can either maybe get access to. And a lot of my colleagues are also thinking about looking at virtual reality and how can that help get people involved and how can we make things accessible to them via online? Everything's online now. So how can we bring the polar regions to people who are so far away from it, which I think is incredible. We can do so much incredible things now and get other people, I guess, actively engaged or involved or excited about something that they're like, wow, this is just amazing. So I'm really hopeful and just with the capacity of the things that we're able to do and how we can connect the educators and the educational world in a different way with what we do now and just meet the young people now when everything is so impressionable and just hear their thoughts and ideas about what we can do that maybe we're not considering. Right?
[01:03:21] Dr. Diane: Yeah, absolutely. And I know I was fortunate enough to get to go to Antarctica in December, and so I've been trying to pay that forward wherever I can. And I've been including the pictures and the videos that I took as part of the educational stuff I'm doing with kids. So they have to learn push and pull anyway in kindergarten, first grade. So we've been doing penguin push and pull.
[01:03:47] Kimberly: Oh, I love that.
[01:03:47] Dr. Diane: Using the penguins as an example for them to know they learn habitats. So why not start with polar habitats and compare and contrast to other habitats? When you can show real life examples, they get excited. And so one of the things I did is I'm in Winchester, Virginia, so we actually compared and contrasted habitat from Winchester to habitat in Antarctica so they could really visualize what was the same, what's different, and why do we protect both?
[01:04:16] Kimberly: Right, exactly. Yeah. And it's examples like that that really make it real. It's like maybe something, what you're doing in your community or something that's happening elsewhere in the world is equally important. All of these systems and everything that we do, no matter where we are on the planet, is interconnected. And I think that's important. And like you said, in that know is a really good way of explaining to people know what is happening. Maybe say, in Antarctica can have a know, big impact on say, Winchester, Virginia, for example. It's going to have an impact on the entire so and that, I guess, comes back into just my point earlier about when I was know. It doesn't matter how know of something you may be doing at that time, it's going to have an impact somewhere. And I think that's important also to just remember that these impacts, they can be tenfold even when you can't see them, but it's important to just remember that you're leaving a mark and an impact on your community, on the world in general, in your own environment, in your own backyard. Those things are really important to just sort of remind people about and think about as they go forward in their actions and what they do. Yeah, I just think it's great with just the things that are on the horizon and all of the fabulous opportunities that sometimes we sit. I'm with my colleagues about what can we do? There's a few Arctic and Antarctic car games that have been floating around. I actually have two of them here in my house. Sadly, I don't have anyone to play with though. But there's board games even and we test some of them out and see, okay, how can this work? And how can we get younger age groups engaged in this? And so we play them and we give feedback and stuff like that. Can you imagine saying to a young kid or something in school like, hey, one of these days you could be someone to count penguins. People actually.
[01:06:27] Dr. Diane: And that's a real job.
[01:06:29] Kimberly: And it's a real job, as cool as it sounds. Maybe one of the coolest jobs in the world. But I mean, it's just so many things and so many opportunities out there and I think it's really just important to let them know that these things exist. And if you want to do them, you can. And not only that, you can, but we will need you. All of us aren't going to live forever. Someone will have to carry on this work.
[01:07:01] Dr. Diane: I think that's where the intersectionality you were talking about is so important too, though, is to be able to show them those jobs like counting penguins and the things that exist, but also to show them people who are diverse, who are in those jobs, that it's possible. It's not just aspirational it's real. And by truly diversifying the workplace, by making sure that people feel invited and welcomed into those spaces, you're building that workforce for the future as well.
[01:07:35] Kimberly: Exactly. We can continue to build along the way and make adjustments of course, along the way. We're never ever going to get it maybe perfect and 100% right on the first go route. But again, that's with the change and the knowledge, you're constantly learning and constantly changing things to fit to make it better. And so yeah, we can do these things along the way. I think many of us are starting to realize that now. And we're working and having different discussions on ways in which we can continue to build and do these things along the way so that we can kind of close up a lot of these gaps, if you will. And become a more representative community of our ideals and values that we want to see in the polar community, or just in any space for that matter. Absolutely, yeah. It's like we have an obligation I think to that and I look forward both myself as being a change maker and working with my colleagues on being this representative change. I don't personally think you need to have a PhD to do that. I think just me already being in this community is already a symbol of change and I encourage everyone to create safe, both physically safe and psychologically safe, diverse and inclusive environments for people to thrive in. And that the work itself that we do to protect such sensitive areas as the polar regions for that work to be able to thrive as well. I mean our work and everything is only as healthy as we are. So if we're not incredibly at our best then maybe neither can I work be. And I think these regions obviously are deserving of us at our best and it is our duty and responsibility to make sure that we create the best possible environment for the people to work in and for the work to be able to speak from that. I think many people are working on that and trying to get us closer to that. And so I encourage all other aspects and workforces to probably have a look at that and be the same as well.
[01:10:06] Dr. Diane: I think that's universal and.
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[01:11:20] Dr. Diane: I appreciate the work that you're doing. You were talking about climate action and policy changes and things like that. And I think sometimes we can look at climate change and look at climate action, and I think you said it correctly. We feel helpless and feel like I need to have a PhD or I need to be out in the streets protesting or writing letters. If you could talk to teachers and kids right now and tell them, here are some actual things you can do that would be helpful, what would be some of the things you would throw out on your list that would be doable and useful?
[01:11:59] Kimberly: Wow. Yeah, that's a very.
[01:12:03] Dr. Diane: At least to get them started.
[01:12:06] Kimberly: Yeah, gosh, let me see. Well, I would probably first encourage them to have a look at these regions if they've never seen them before. Maybe they can also just find some really incredible children's book and different educational resources that they can use that explains the significance of these regions and what's happening in them right now. It's really almost hard to pinpoint what someone could really do who's so far away to sort of help with the issues that we're grappling with because the umbrella issue really is climate change, which is the thing that not only just affects the polar regions, but is affecting everywhere on the planet. It's like, even oftentimes myself, as soon to be 37 year old, I think to myself, what can I do? How can we deal really with climate change? But I don't know. Sometimes even having kids maybe write a letter, I don't know, to their local mayor, to a policymaker somewhere, even to a scientist. For example, say maybe that Oregon State University polar steam program that I mentioned. You can write letters to scientists in Antarctica. We can actually get those letters there. Now kids can actually see their letters on the so in that way, it would seem like while something is so far away from you, but what you may write in that letter or what you say to someone else can also be impactful. Kids have a voice even when they're young, so it's really hard. But what they will say and what they will do will be encouraging. And that is also very helpful because it helps keep the momentum and it helps those that can do now grapple with discouragement. And maybe they can, I don't know, create a little ice show or create an origami frill or origami penguin with their parents or with the teachers. There's a lot of crafts and arts things that they can do and that can be very sort of exciting and fun filled on that level. And of course, all of that can be adapted depending on what age level of kids and educators and so on that you're dealing with. And I think just tapping into some of that creativity, I don't know, say if you're dealing with middle schoolers or high schoolers, and maybe they can create, I don't know, some creative video, like, what would you want to say to a policymaker? Or what would you want to say? What conversation would you want to have with a penguin? Or what conversation would you want to have with a scientist? So I think stuff like that or even, I guess, some educators, they can also turn to the scientific community or the social science community, like myself or whatever. If you can't physically be there in person, invite someone to speak to your class.
[01:16:15] Dr. Diane: And Zoom gives us so many opportunities to bring the world to us these days.
[01:16:20] Kimberly: It really does. We can utilize the technology and access to things that we have to bring some of these things in that space and allow the kids to be able to ask questions of us and just sort of start a discussion. I think it's really important. So there are quite a few, I think, things that can be done. I hope some of the examples and things that I just mentioned could be some of those very helpful things. But I would encourage, if you're nearby, a museum or something to that effect. Even maybe a field trip to something to a polar exhibit or something like that could be also very helpful. Maybe turning your entire classroom using a projector and turning the room for a day or two into a polar region. You got penguins swimming around and you could see whales and so on. So in that way, it feels real, like, oh, my gosh, I'm in the ocean.
[01:17:28] Dr. Diane: When I was thinking you could also learn about how different people have made an impact. Like the humpback whales were saved because one man was listening to the sonar and kept those recordings and made humpback whale recordings that became so popular in the greenpeace, adapted it and used it as part of their whole Save the Whales campaign. And that was what got people interested and aware and ultimately made a difference, turned the tide, and it started with one person. So finding those stories of what could we do that could raise awareness that would tell the tale exactly.
[01:18:10] Kimberly: Yeah. And I think it's so fascinating and cool, even I still get just stoked out about it when I can hear whale calls underneath in the water, and occasionally a colleague may circulate something like that. That's what they're working on. And it's just so fascinating to be able to hear underwater, how they communicate with each other. So, yeah, I think that's another perfect example as well. It's like, wow, they actually talk, like, how kids talk to us, like, how we talk. It's just a different language. I love that too. It's really fascinating. Yeah.
[01:18:50] Dr. Diane: Two more questions for you the first one is what is the coolest polar experience you've ever had?
[01:19:00] Kimberly: Oh, man. Let's see. Well, I think the coolest polar experience for me thus far would be when I was visiting Asami indigenous camp, when I was in Trompsa in Norway, and I fed some reindeers, and they're just amazing creatures for me because it's like I see their migration and stuff like again in documentaries. And I couldn't believe that I was there feeding reindeers from my hand. And I actually slept outside with them in a labu, as it's called in Sami language, which is, I guess, maybe the equivalent to a native or indigenous Native American kit. And so I was able to stay outside and sleep outside with the reindeer. Yeah. And I remember waking up at like three in the morning when I had to feed the fire because it got really cold and in all white landscape, and the reindeer were fighting, like how you see on Smithsonian or a Nat Geo documentary. And I just went out in the cold, I bundled up a bit.
[01:20:14] Dr. Diane: Wow.
[01:20:15] Kimberly: Went out in the cold and just watched them do what they do in nature. And to me, it was just the coolest thing ever that I'm like, I have to pinch myself that there's reindeer right next to me and they're doing what they do that I see on TV. So for me to be able to see that with just my actual eyes and not over a TV screen was just so fascinating.
[01:20:39] Dr. Diane: That is amazing.
[01:20:40] Kimberly: Yeah. So that was probably one, I would say maybe one of my coolest Arctic experiences. And of course, alongside with that was the education and knowledge that was imparted upon me by the Sami indigenous family that was there. So that was really one of the coolest moments of my journey.
[01:21:09] Dr. Diane: And then the last question I want to ask you is what brings you hope today?
[01:21:14] Kimberly: What brings me hope? I think, you know, some of the well, a lot of the stories that I hear, for example, there was one, I think it came around last year or maybe 2021, like when I hear the rebounding stories, for example, and what I mean by that is, of course, we know the history of whaling. There were certain whale species and populations that hadn't recovered or rebounded. And then recently some polar scientists were able they just actually accidentally happened upon a feeding, actually by humpback whales in the Southern Ocean, feeding on krill and so on. And the numbers were in abundance of whales. So it's like when I hear all of these stories, these rebounding stories of whale populations and different species, whether they're in the polar regions or elsewhere, that are recovering or coming back from either changes or the adaptation to certain changes that are happening, I think that kind of gives me hope. It also gives me hope that all of the people that I work with, I know that there's so many people in the world working on very complicated, complex issues, and I think the fact that so many people are devoting their lives to change gives me hope. I think that's a really powerful thing. People get into it for one reason or another, but ultimately, whatever that reason is, I think towards the end it's a change of something, and that's mostly for the better, and I think that's a beautiful thing. And so that change, and I think that knowledge gives me hope. We learn more. The more we learn about something will change maybe the way we think about something and how we move forward and how we articulate that change to others, I don't know. I try to ground myself personally in just, you know, understanding my position in the world, in our universe as a whole. The impact from the sun onto the Earth and the impacts that we have on the Earth and so on. And how many of us are looking at those cumulative impacts and driving a shift in paradigm that we need to move in a different direction or move differently than what we were before? A lot of that really gives me hope that people that it may not be a lot of it, but you have to start somewhere and it's out there and we will get louder as we already are, and that paradigm shift will come. And I think the more we work on, really, that gives me a lot of hope.
[01:24:56] Dr. Diane: Kimberly Aiken, thank you for being an inspiring change maker. I am so thrilled to have you on this program. I'm going to put your contact information in the show notes so that people can continue to follow your journey, not just through the PhD, but through all the change that you're having in the world as well. And there will also be links to some books and some resources and the Oregon Steam program as well so that teachers and educators will be able to start making that change.
[01:25:26] Kimberly: Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me and inviting me to be a part of your wonderful podcast and following whatever small part of my journey on social media. I really am grateful to you for just following along and all the people that I meet along the way and who support me in this journey. And yes, I do encourage everyone to have a look at that Oregon State University Polar Steam network of bringing educators and the science community together. And don't forget, World Krill Day is on August 11 this year, so everyone can get involved over social media or even at home. I will be posting a lot of things on my Instagram and my Twitter feed about how people can get involved and there will be a lot of nice videos and things. So Krill again, very important species in the Southern Ocean ecosystem, but just important in general. They sequester a lot of carbon that comes out of the atmosphere. And although they are tiny, but they're mighty in their work and what they do and their impacts and benefits, not just to the Southern Ocean region, but to the entire globe. So I leave you all with and again, Diane, thank you so very much for having me.
[01:26:41] Dr. Diane: I'm so glad you were on. And I think we should all go out and become like the mighty Krill.
[01:26:47] Kimberly: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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[01:27:18] Dr. Diane: If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianadventures.com. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.https://marinesocioecology.org/team/kimberly-aiken/