Episodes

I’m dropping this quick minisode to invite us all to jump joy first into a creativity challenge: 15 minutes a day. 30 days. Just…explore the thing you’re curious about. Maybe you take an intentional break at work. Maybe you write the things that pop into mind on a sticky note and you do a deep dive at the end of your day. Curiosity and creativity are STEM super powers for us scientists and engineers, but the busyness of our days can stifle those sparks. It doesn’t matter when you find this episo...

Dr. Zitely Tzompa Sosa is the bright light we need in science policy. Trained as an atmospheric chemist, Zitely has navigated several international moves for school and work. Along the way, she found that working in policy is her guiding light for showing up to work as her most authentic self. Song of the week: The Wild Rover by Lankum More about Ravi, a true hero of atmospheric chemistry! Navigating finding yourself in your career doesn’t have to be a solo sport. Would you like to have me in y...

Groundhog Day: it’s a holiday AND a movie! (Movie spoiler alert ahead FYI - it’s been out for >30 years so I don’t apologize.) For those of us who know the 1993 movie classic starring Bill Murray as grumpy TV weather forecaster Phil Conners, we’ll remember that poor Phil got himself stuck in a time loop, forced to relive Groundhog Day over and over and over and over again. And ultimately, only through growth and change did he find his way out of the time loop. And….I can almost guarantee that e...

There’s almost no way to get most of our pulses racing faster than the thought of public speaking. We all have to give talks, both big and small and for many of us, talks of any size spiral us into fear and self-doubt. There are a lot of tools out there to deal with nerves, and this episode goes into several practical tools you can deploy to move from panic to ease when speaking. This episode is the second of two parts with part one diving into how to level up your talks by treating them like p...

We all have to give talks - whether it’s a big conference talk in front of hundreds of people or quick meeting presentations. And even though we only spend a small fraction of our time speaking in front of others, our talks are one of the main ways people we don’t directly work with can get to know us. Talks are also one of our fastest ways to communicate the amazing things we do - and can be the most engaging way to get others’ attention! So why shouldn’t we treat talks like any other performa...

I’m so excited to bring you this conversation with my very good friends, Taylor Christenson and Tim Remkes! Taylor and Tim met during their bachelor’s degree program in Botany at Weber State University and married shortly after school. They’ve successfully explored several career paths and keep finding themselves back doing what they love with being outside and teaching. Tim has built his own amazing environmental services company for native landscapes - https://remkesenvironmental.com/. He wor...

Welcome to STEMdentity Journal Club! Every month, I find an amazing peer-reviewed journal article and interview one of its lead authors. We talk about their paper, their work, and their STEM identities. My guest today is Dr. Eric Boyd, a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology at Montana State University. We talk about his group’s paper "Seismic shifts in the geochemical and microbial composition of a Yellowstone aquifer" (2025, PNAS Nexus). We also talk about how he landed...

Sometimes life is like learning to drive a car in flat, dry conditions and then all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of the mountains, trying to navigate curves and learning that you might just burn your brakes out if you don’t use your car’s other tools when you’re careening downhill. Just like you needed to shift into a lower gear, we all need tools that help us become more resilient towards work’s (and life’s!) stressors. Today I talk about two major categories of tools: tools tha...

We are all scientists, engineers, and artists, and we can use this innate curiosity and creativity to keep pointing ourselves towards the life we want. We all know about frameworks like growth mindset, but sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the flurry of work pressures and before you know it, work feels stagnant and the farthest thing from magical. In this episode, I dig into core values versus limiting beliefs, growth mindset, and how we can apply tools to move towards the jobs and careers we ...

Five jobs in five years was a whole lot and a complete life-changer all in one. In this episode I walk through how each job came about and highlight some of the key lessons I took away from each one. This episode is all about putting sampling and ikigai (episode 1!!) into practice. Want to work with me one-on-one? I’d love to do a free, 30-minute intro Work Audit call with you to discuss your top blockers at work and start to come up with actionable steps towards your most STEMtastic STEMdentit...

What if you’re in your STEM career path (school, first job out of school, nth job….) and you don’t feel like you’ve found a job that lights you up? Or like you mostly like your job but something(s) is missing? This is so normal AND we can actively start moving ourselves towards jobs and careers that let us shine at what we love. In this episode, I go over techniques for starting to figure out what makes you light up at work. Loving this but listening while on your dog walk/commute/cleaning/etc...