When you ask Chandler Puritty who she is, she’ll give you many answers: Ecologist, social justice advocate, plant lover, cat mother, artist, psychic medium.
Puritty cares deeply about the environment and climate change. She was primed to be an ecologist from a young age. She was only allowed to watch "Animal Planet" and the Discovery Channel. In grad school, she studied how drought followed by dramatic rainfall affect native, versus exotic, plant species in Southern California.
But she also cares about the environment, or culture, within STEM that makes Black scientists feel uncomfortable. After attending an HBCU for college, transitioning to the largely white space of her graduate program was difficult. Puritty takes many steps as a writer, professor, and healer to make the experiences of early career Black scientists better. This semester, on top of a course on environmental science, Puritty is also teaching a new course she devised called “Blackness in STEM; a complex relationship.”
To learn more about Puritty’s journey and other Black scientists, listen to the latest episode on "Rad Scientist," a KPBS Explore podcast that makes the scientist the subject.
