What is your favorite part about being Latina?
I’ll start by saying that being Latina is just a piece of my identity. My identity combines all these experiences and circumstances that make me who I am. I identify as Uruguayan, as Latin, as American, as an Estadounidense, and as a secular Jew. My favorite way to be Latina is to embrace all parts of my identity unapologetically and openly.
Tell us more about your background and these multiple identities you hold.
My family has shaped me deeply. All my grandparents are European. They made their way to Uruguay from Poland, Latvia, Italy, and Turkey. Thanks to their courage and resourcefulness, almost all of them made it out alive between World War One and World War Two. All except for my grandfather’s sister, whom I’m named after. She was killed by the Nazis in Latvia. I have history very present as a result of this. I’m only a second-generation Latin American, and yet, I think I’ve absorbed a lot of Latin American culture. There’s a sisterhood or brotherhood you feel with other Latinos in this country, a warmth, an openness, and a love of family. And, of course, music and food are big parts of my cultural identity as Latina.
Tell us about a time that you were underestimated.
I’ve been more underestimated as a woman than as a Latina. When I was just a graduate student and already here in the museum, there was a visiting scientist who was an eminent evolutionary biologist. I had heard so much about his research, and I was honored to meet him. I told him I was about to go to the field in Bolivia to collect data for my dissertation. His first reaction wasn’t to ask what I was working on. His first question was– are any men going with you? Which was shocking to me.
What is your superpower?
I like to create inclusive spaces. I lead with vulnerability, which I hope makes other people comfortable to be authentic. That, in turn, leads to authentic communication, which can result in much better collaboration.
How do you explain to people what you do for a living?
It depends on who I’m talking to. Sometimes, I say I direct a research center at the American Museum of Natural History focusing on nature conservation. Sometimes, I say I’m a scientist at the museum, and I lead a team that’s trying to transform knowledge into conservation action around the world. Recently I’ve talked about spending the first part of my career trying to understand biodiversity, and in the second part of my career, I have been trying to conserve it. Now I’m really interested in how to promote transformation in society to sustain biodiversity in the long run. For a while, we were focused on conserving wildlife or ecosystems, and now I’m more interested in the root of the issue, which is human behavior.
How should we think of human behavior and the ways it affects biodiversity?
It’s an interesting time to be alive and observing the world. In the last 50 years humans have profoundly transformed our planet. I’ve been working in conservation and watching and enacting conservation efforts, which have had a big impact and have made a big difference but clearly haven’t succeeded at stemming biodiversity loss. We continue to lose ecosystems and habitats and degrade them more than ever before, placing species at threat of extinction. The drivers behind this, the phenomena that are making this happen, are accelerating, not slowing. So clearly, the strategies that we have employed have been good up to a point. But we need to start using new strategies; we need to start rethinking our relationship with nature. When you look at what we’re seeing, they’re mostly symptoms. But when you go to the root causes of this, it’s our values, our mindsets, the way we see our relationship to nature, the way we see humans as separate from nature. There are specific value systems that have promoted this and have become dominant in this global society of today. And I think that’s why rethinking human relationships with nature and expectations about how we can live, and how we should not be allowed to live on the planet is really at the root of this.
Where do we begin this rethinking of our relationship with nature?
There are important efforts out there to protect more of the planet. This has been, for example, implemented through new laws, like the Biden administration’s America The Beautiful, which aims to increase the number of areas under protection in the country. But there are a lot of different ways in which people are tackling this. Some of it has to do with who is involved in conservation and who’s making decisions about their land? Data shows that when indigenous communities and local communities –which manage most of the biodiversity on the planet– are allowed to manage their land, biodiversity fares better. This makes sense because outsiders may see nature as resources for the taking or for profit. And yet, we need prosperity, but I think we need to question what we mean by prosperity? We need to examine the expectations of consumers on producers, as well as our patterns of consumption — our needs and wants are a big part of the problem.
Where can each of us as individuals start to institute change- and change that actually makes a difference?
It’s important to remember that we are consumers and citizens. You can make change as a consumer, and you can make change as a citizen. And both are necessary. There’s only so much you can do with your individual behavior as a consumer. I would say the first thing is to imagine this future you want and visualize the possibilities. Because if we are always in a place of fear about the future, change will not happen. Then ask yourself- what are you passionate about? What can you do as a consumer? And what can you do as a citizen? Knowing we can’t do everything, do what feels right for you.
Who is someone else we should feature on Informada?
I would recommend my dear friend Dr. Natalia Dorf. She’s a physician in Minnesota, but she made a career pivot a few years ago and has been working to promote physician mental health.