So today I’ll touch on how I think about the 3.

1. The Ally

An ally is someone who “puts you on,” according to the young(er) people. They ride alongside you, recommend you in casual conversation, and genuinely want to see you win.

This might look like a supervisor introducing you to higher-ups and going the extra mile to highlight your best work and why it matters.

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You’ll come to find that your ally advocates for you and sometimes speaks up when you do not have the capacity to defend yourself. It’s a “we ride at dawn” type of energy.

It’s very easy to spot an ally by the way they naturally advocate for other people.

In return, though they never explicitly ask for anything in return, you’d jump at the opportunity to put in a good word for them.

2. The Mentor

A mentor provides the roadmap for the journey ahead, offering wisdom across various pillars of life, from your finances to your personal growth, because they’ve walked a similar path before.

Having that roadmap means you aren't just guessing. You’re moving faster. You’re avoiding common pitfalls. You’re making informed choices based on a broader perspective.

You may have multiple mentors at one time.

3. The Academic Advisor

In graduate school, an advisor is often the Principal Investigator (PI) on your project. Their role is primarily functional. They are there to help you choose the right classes, highlight funding opportunities, and ensure that you meet graduation requirements.

While these relationships can transition into mentorship, it isn’t a given.

In undergraduate studies, this is even more primitive. You may only meet with your academic advisor once or twice a year for a reality check.

The Reality Check

Many people mistakenly expect their academic advisor to be their mentor or their ally. While it’s absolute gold if you find all three in one person, this is rarely the case.

Understanding the difference early will save you a tremendous amount of heartache.

I know students who were crushed when they realized that their academic advisor was neither an ally nor a mentor.

This realization is usually revealed in the most critical moment. For example, when a request for a recommendation letter is met with a flat-out “no,” or worse, a negative or lukewarm letter that does more harm than good.

I think being an ally is a personal calling.

It isn’t written into an advisor’s official job description.

Finding a Mentor

In the same token, you should 100% have a mentor. You do not know everything. I guarantee you, every “successful” person has had a mentor, or still has one.

It is your responsibility to find a mentor.

How to find a mentor:

• Know where you want to go/ what you want to accomplish

• Find someone who does that thing

• Ask the right questions (because everyone isn’t cut out to be your mentor)

• Stalk (I say this lightly and in the most legal way) LinkedIn posts

• Have the courage to reach out and ask to be mentored

It is an active search. It requires you to move. Don’t let that fly over your head.

The Delicate Dance

To build these networks, you must show up to the best of your ability. It is important that you give the person the confidence to recommend you by your demeanor and/or work ethic.

It’s a delicate dance of being personable without oversharing, unless it’s your spiritual mentor.

I’ve been fortunate to find advocates and mentors who have helped me navigate the complexities of business, my environmental career path, and life. Without them, the journey would have been far more difficult, and I am eternally grateful.

I am always willing to be an ally or a mentor. If you’re looking to connect, let’s chat in the comments or find me on LinkedIn.

How did you find your most impactful mentor or ally?

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Last week, someone asked me two questions that really got me thinking…

“How did you end up in ecology? Are you happy that you chose this career?

Honestly…wow. What a loaded question!

In high school, I never imagined I’d be where I am today. I was certain I’d become a doctor. In a way, that instinct wasn’t wrong, but I had not yet understood what that path would look like.

When I started my bachelor’s degree at the University of Arkansas, I majored in Biology and was on the pre-med track. I was convinced that medical school was theeee ultimate goal. The dream, even.

By my third year, that hadn’t changed, but something else had.

I couldn’t work off campus, for reasons I might share another time, so gaining experience in a hospital wasn’t an option for me. Instead, I told myself, “I should get some research experience, just to be more competitive.”

That fall 2017 semester, I took a plant pathology class. It intrigued me. The labs were hands-on, and the class was challenging. I knew this could be an opportunity to do something interesting. So I aimed for an A on the first test, because I thought,

“Surely, you can’t refuse a student with an A in the class.”

I was right.

With my 92% in my hand, I walked up to the professor and asked her to join her lab. She smiled, and said that I should come to her office so we could talk. Needless to say…she said yes.

For the first few months, I was mostly working the autoclave, cleaning, making mediums, organizing, and labeling chemicals.

Soon after starting, Hurricane Maria hit Dominica. It was quite devastating. I remember sitting through my classes, unable to concentrate, and sitting in my apartment, with no sleep in my eyes.

I was worried about my family. My friends. My country.

After a few days, the news reaching was dreadful, and the pictures knocked the wind out of my lungs. My home, Dominica, was brown.

We -my family- lost our home, like so many others on the island. We lost the family business. And we lost people. So many people. It was heart-wrenching.

In the midst of that loss, something shifted within me.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that, despite contributing so little to global climate change, the Caribbean could experience devastation of this magnitude.

Picture of my dad in front of our home after Hurricane Maria.

On the international stage, we talked about the 226% loss in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We talked about how we felt.

However, we could not adequately account for the loss of biodiversity and forest cover, and how that affected the people, land, and water.

I think quantifying these aspects was a critical component that was missing.

That gap stayed with me. I knew it mattered. I just didn’t yet know what I could do about it.

That spring semester, I got my first real taste of research.

I learned how to knock out genes using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). I also looked at how the fungus, which causes rice blast disease, Magnaporthe oryzae, affects different varieties of rice.

Being in the lab, working through questions, and discovering things felt great.

Looking back, my introduction to research came at a critical time, when I was trying to figure out what life after my bachelor’s degree would look like. And quietly, something in me was beginning to wake up.

During that spring semester, I enrolled in a landscape ecology class simply because it sounded interesting. I had no idea what it really was. I just thought, “General ecology wasn’t too bad.”

Ecology can be broken down into eco, meaning nature or environment and logy - the study of or the science of. So in short, we look at how the arrangement of the environment (landscape), influences processes, organisms, and where they can live (species distribution).

Fun Fact: A waterscape could also be a landscape.

The professor, Dr. Kusum Naithani, was also quite invested in her teaching and the students who attended her class. She met with all her students one-on-one. I can’t speak for them, but in our first meeting, you could feel her warmth.

Funny story, I was afraid of her when we first met. It was her first year teaching at the University of Arkansas and my first year attending. She taught the second half of the General Ecology course that I took. I thought she was was strict…and I did not like doing homework then. Hahaha. So the math was not mathing.

Dr. Naithani reminded me of a more mature version of myself. We connected on multiple levels, and over time, she asked me a question that would stay with me:

Have you considered graduate school? Or research?

She saw something in me that I hadn’t yet recognized.

I just thought the R assignments were easy and the readings were interesting. I didn’t realize I had stepped into my zone.

Still, I had medical school on my mind.

Picture of rice blades inoculated with varying concentrations of growth-inhibited M. oryzae.

That summer, I received a scholarship to work in the plant pathology department. I conducted research on inhibiting the fungus that causes rice blast disease and presented my findings at the end of the program.

I invited Dr. Naithani to my presentation. She didn’t have to come, but she did.

After my presentation, she asked me a simple question:

“What was your favorite part about doing this work?”

That question stayed with me.

I took some time to work and reflect. I asked myself what excited me, where I saw myself, and what kind of impact I wanted to have on the world.

I kept coming back to that question about graduate school. I kept coming back to the possibility of working with Dr. Naithani, not just because she was kind (which she is), but because she’s brilliant! She doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff. Plus, the work itself felt meaningful and full of possibility.

As for graduate school… that came with its own set of challenges, pivots, and lessons.

Stories for another time.

So my answer was:

I can say that I’m genuinely happy I chose the environmental space, even though the journey hasn’t been easy. Most things worth doing rarely are.

I often describe myself as a “jack of all trades.” I’m curious by nature, always exploring, whether that’s through food, travel, data analysis, mapping, modeling, or something entirely new.

Somewhere along the way, I found my way back to my “why.”

I leaned into open data, sustainability, conservation, connecting people, and ecology. I taught myself how to process remote sensing data, among other things.

As you read this, I am on my umpteenth iteration of a scientific paper that is rooted in disturbance ecology, the very thing that first sparked something within me years ago.

In many ways, it feels like everything has come full circle, and yet it feels like my career has just begun.

Sometimes, the things that stir you most deeply - what frustrates you, moves you, or won’t let you go - are pointing you toward what truly sets your heart on fire. Pay attention. This “conviction” might be leading you straight to your purpose.

Let’s Interact!

I want to hear about your journey. Drop a comment below and let’s chat:

1. What are three words you’d use to describe your career journey?

   Mine are: Messy. Pivot. Purpose.

[Leave a comment]

We cycle through spring, summer, fall, and winter just buzzing about our lives, not necessarily stopping to ponder the meaning of it all. What is the meaning of the season and the time of transition from one to the other, literally and figuratively? Personally, my favorite time of the year is Fall.

In Fall, the days are not so long, the summer heat is in the rearview mirror, the temperature is just right, and the leaves are the most beautiful blend of colors.

The answer is quite poetic, in my opinion. Without getting too technical, the green color we see isn't from a stable pigment, meaning it breaks down easily. This pigment is called chlorophyll. It is essential because trees need it to make food and oxygen through photosynthesis.

During summer, the tree keeps producing more chlorophyll to replace the pigments that have broken down. When the days start to shorten and the temperature begins to drop, the deciduous trees say, “Maybe making this pigment is not the best idea right now.”

Side note: Deciduous comes from the word decidere, which means to fall down or to fall off. This is exactly what happens to the leaves of deciduous trees during fall. They fall off.

These deciduous trees realize that their environment is changing, so they must change as well. They hunker down and conserve their energy for the season that is more suitable for growth. They shed the weight of the leaves for winter and wait for the spring.

During that time of shutting down, the green fades, not because it was replaced, but because it was never the whole story. In the process, those orange and yellow pigments that have been in the background, silently assisting chlorophyll, become visible. In this way, the full truth looks like this:

In nature, when the seasons change, we marvel at it, at least I do. I embrace the shift. I expect it even. We understand that seasons come and go for a reason and that each season looks different, even though some things remain the same. We accept it as beautiful, natural, and necessary. Nature doesn’t resist these changes. Nature understands seasons.

But when it comes to our own lives… we don’t always do the same.

Speaking from experience, change can feel unsettling. Especially the seasons that feel like winter. I’m talking about the times of loss, uncertainty, or waiting.

A contract ends. A job is lost. Love flees. The next steps are hazy.

In a season that is supposed to bring repose, we begin to question our worth in the silence. We feel stuck, or maybe some sense of shame, hurt, disappointment, or worthlessness. Against our will, we are forced to hunker down.

We can all admit that it’s hard to see the beauty while we’re in this season.

In the morning, we jump out of bed, and it’s go, go, go… every day, not a minute to rest. We move through periods of high productivity, feeling guilty to pause because we have “so much stuff to do.”

However, we must remember that rest is essential for good fruit. Rest can be deceiving because it may appear as if nothing is happening. However, behind closed doors, we are repairing, recovering, and quietly preparing for our next season.

As I type this, I feel like I’m in my season of fall. There is a vibrant, outward expression of new motherhood. It feels fiery orange, burning with new energy. My postdoc has come to an end. I’m forced to hunker down. The green is fading, but the vibrant colors that were there all along, the passion and the zeal for life, are shining through. This season has revealed my creativity.

1. I am writing my blogs again.

2. I am producing daily vlogs.

3. I am thinking of innovative ways to communicate science.

This is the same creativity that has helped me produce fruit during my growing season. This is the same creativity that has pushed me to invent a biodiversity index and structural complexity metrics from remote sensing products.

It never left.

So today, much like the tree, the potential for fruit is still there. Like a tree preparing for winter, I am drawing inward, holding on to what matters, and letting go of what no longer serves me. It feels natural, there is less resistance now.

But then again, I have spent a lot of time observing each season in nature and in life.

I understand seasons.

In this season, I am laughing more. I am dancing wildly with my daughter in the kitchen. I am moving slowly. I am present.

Beneath the surface, there is still life. There is still growth.

So maybe it’s true…sometimes growth looks like letting go.

Maybe growth isn’t always about becoming something new.

So… I only have one question:

What season are you in?

Leave it in the comments. This is a safe space. :)

PS. I purposely did not touch on the red pigments (called anthocyanins). Scientists are still trying to figure out why some leaves make the red pigment, and others do not.

We’ve all heard the saying,

“Forests are the lungs of the earth.”

I mean, the saying has been around for about a century - no kidding. I get it, the saying covers a lot of ground here… it is memorable and simple.

Much like the lungs take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide, forests -the plants- take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Fun fact, they also use oxygen and release carbon dioxide, especially at night.

As an ecologist who has done most of her work in forests, I’ve had many years to sit with this idea. The more I think about it, referring to forests as just the lungs of the earth seems like a rather incomplete picture. Looking at other parts of the body can give a more complete idea of the forest. Here, I will touch on 3 other parts of the body that I can easily see the forest in.

The Spine

The forest is the spine of the world. It supports about 80% of plants and animals that live on land. Trees within forests provide structure that allows animals to occupy different parts of the forests. You can think of this as different people living in an apartment building - if those people were wild animals (because we are classified as animals). In this apartment, we would have deer on the ground floor, lizards in the middle, and birds on the top floor. This is an oversimplification of a phenomenon called vertical stratification. This is something I talk a little bit about in my paper on structural complexity and biodiversity.

The Liver

Forests are the liver of the earth. The liver performs many important functions in the body. One of the main functions is to filter impurities from the blood. If there is a body of water moving through a forest, it doesn’t just pass through unchanged. It gets cleaned. The soils in the forest trap pollutants. The microbes (those tiny organisms that you cannot see with the naked eye) in the soil break down many impurities, and roots absorb and store excess nutrients.

The Brain

Just like the brain has many neural connections that communicate with each other and tell the body how to function, a forest operates in the same way. Both are very complex. You can think of the forest as a series of networks, including trees, fungi, animals, soil, microbes, and much more. They are all interacting, silently exchanging signals and redistributing resources. As I show in my research, complexity doesn’t come from one point; it emerges from all of these connections between soil, plants, and animals.

Another key function of the brain is emotional regulation.

Forests are like our personal AC units. They play an important role in regulating the temperature. But here’s the part that feels less scientific, but is quite the opposite. It is just as real as the former.

When you step into a forest, something changes.

Your thoughts slow down.
Your breathing deepens.
And the noise fades.

This is no accident. Our brains respond to our environment. It is well supported that Nature has a positive effect on your mental and physical health.

I don’t know about you, but when I am at home deep in the rainforest of Dominica on a hike to Middleham Falls - don’t mind me, I’m reminiscing right now - the world around me quiets down, and all my troubles fade away.

Image of my beautiful view while hiking to Middleham Falls, Dominica, Caribbean Sea

Forests aren’t always stable, oxygen-positive systems. Like a damaged liver, a collapsed lung, a unregulated brain, or an injured spine, sometimes, the forest loses its ability to function as it normally would. Disturbances can be a nuisance if they are too frequent or too extreme. In defeat, the forest lets out many huge sighs, a sign of distress, releasing more carbon dioxide than oxygen.

So it makes sense that we should protect and care for these systems as we would our own body. Cutting down our forests is like removing vital organs and expecting the body to function.

We are removing the liver and expecting purity, the lungs and expecting clean air, the spine and expecting stability, or the brain and expecting regulation and a peace of mind. It is quite simply, a bogus ask.

Forests are complete living systems that, when not stressed or in a changing season, filter, regulate, connect, and stabilize life in and around it.

Maybe the reason forests bring us peace isn’t just aesthetic. Maybe it’s not just because “nature is nice,” or in my case, “trees are beautiful.” Maybe it’s because we’re stepping into a system that is doing exactly what we wish our own minds could do:

Balance.
Regulate.
Hold complexity without collapsing… on its good day. :D

How do you think about the forest? Let me know in the comments.