Corina Newsome

I’d love to hear your origin story — how have you gotten to where you are?

 

“I grew up in Philadelphia, inner-city Philly. Despite the fact that I was living in a concrete jungle, you could say, I had a huge interest in wildlife. I had lots of wildlife encyclopedias and I would get National Geographic magazines from my grandma every time she was finished with them. I had all these books on wildlife, but I had never really seen any, and I also did not know what a person who really likes animals does for a career except being a veterinarian — so that’s the trajectory that I had worked hard to pave for myself. One day my senior year [of high school], a Black woman who was a family friend and a zookeeper at the Philadelphia Zoo, Michelle Jamison, reached out to me and had heard about my interests. She invited me to come see her behind-the-scenes work at the Philadelphia Zoo and invited me to intern there, so I did both of those. That is what set my trajectory in wildlife conservation. 

 

I went to college for zoo and wildlife biology, and before I graduated, I took ornithology, which is the study of birds. I became obsessed with birds. Prior to that, I had no particular interest in birds specifically, and definitely not native birds because as far as I knew they were all small and brown and not very diverse. But as soon as I took that class and had a teacher, Dr. Jason Courter,  who taught it with such enthusiasm, I caught the bug. I went on to be a zookeeper for almost four years, and I worked with a wide variety of animals, but birds were always my favorite: a wide variety of parrots, raptors, and everything in between. 

 

Then, I decided I wanted to get more experience in research and so I decided to go back to school. I’m in grad school for a master’s in biology and the reason why I chose Georgia Southern is because there is a professor, Dr. Elizabeth Hunter, who is doing research that interested me in avian conservation. I reached out and asked if she had any money for a student and if she was she accepting students, and she took me on and it’s been great ever since.”

 

What specifically are you studying and what do you love about it?

 

“So, my study system is the seaside sparrow. They live on the coasts of a variety of states in the United States. I’m studying nest predation in particular. I’m trying to understand if the threat of nest predation varies across their breeding habitat —  if you’re in one place versus another, are you more likely to have an increased chance of your nest being depredated? The reason why that’s an important question for this species is because they are naturally exposed to nest flooding because they live in a tidal environment. But, sea level rise raises the height of high tide, and high tide happens twice a day here on the Atlantic coast, and so increasing heights of high tide is expected to result in increased nest flooding events. These birds are already behaviorally adapted to nest flooding. If their nest fails because of a flooding event, they will re-nest right away and they’ll nest higher off the ground because that reduces the chance they’ll be flooded again. But when they nest higher in the grass, they are more exposed to predators. So, they are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. There’s a natural threat, predation, it happens to just about every bird that nests, but it’s acting synergistically with sea level rise. So I’m studying that element, in case wildlife managers want to use predator control as a way to help conserve this species in the future.”

 

I wanted to talk a little bit about Twitter. When did it become a tool for you to promote your work and conservation causes?

 

“It was kind of by accident. I was never really into Twitter, but then I was taking a science communication course in grad school, it’s like a seminar, and as a joke the professor was like, “Your homework on the first day: tweet me.” I thought it was a ploy for him to get followers. I had an account but I wasn’t really doing anything on it, so I tweeted him, and then I started finding all these scientists and I was like, wait, Science Twitter is popping. 

 

What really got it started was that we had to make a blog as part of the class, so I started writing about issues in science that concerned me. For me, that includes the intersection of science and systemic oppression. So I’ve written about that a couple times and I think that’s when people started being interested in hearing what I had to say. I talk about anything from strictly science, to little discoveries I make as I’m walking around outside, random wildlife encounters, to human rights issues. I feel like I’ve been able to connect with people from all those spheres and it kind of just grew from there. Obviously, people shouting you out on Twitter who have a lot of followers does a whole lot, so it wouldn’t have happened without a few really awesome, key people doing that for me.”

 

How did you make the choice to be so open on Twitter? What are some challenges and benefits of making that choice?

 

“In real life I have a very open book kind of personality, and I feel like I suffer when I keep things in my body or in my mind that I believe need to be said. I think that has translated to Twitter and social media in general. I would share these thoughts and I found that I got really good conversations out of them, and people seemed to learn from them. Previously, my idea of social media was like, you say something that’s controversial or that upsets anybody and it becomes this burning house, but it turned out to be something that was very fruitful for myself and others. Of course you do have the challenge of people who are thumb soldiers on the internet and say all kinds of stuff they would never say to you in person, and there’s a boldness that people feel. Sometimes that does really get to me and I have to do things on purpose to shield myself or prevent myself from responding the way I want to. I would consider myself a confrontational person, so when I am hindered from fully confronting someone in the flesh it does something to my body chemistry. I’m like, okay, I cannot let these people steal my peace. So I’ve just been intentional about keeping my own peace and doing things to prevent people’s words online from affecting my emotions.”

 

You use the #BlackAndSTEM hashtag a lot! Can you talk about the community that’s come up around that hashtag and why it’s so important for folks who may want to join wildlife science to see people like themselves succeeding there?

 

The only reason I ever went into conservation and zoo science was because a Black woman reached out to me. It’s not that I’d never heard of a zookeeper — I mean, I didn’t know what they did, to be honest, I’d never been to a zoo until I was 18 and did this internship. But I had no interest until someone like me showed interest. I’d never had any desire to go to the zoo, I also couldn’t really afford it, and I genuinely thought zoos were a joke. It wasn’t until I saw someone like myself in this career that I even registered it as possible for myself. It wasn’t a conscious thought — it wasn’t like, ‘everyone I see working with wildlife or working in zoos is white so therefore me, a Black woman, couldn’t do this.’ It’s never that conscious. It was totally subconscious. And then I realized how powerful that one interaction was with her. You hear all the time that representation matters and until you feel that, until it’s mattered to you, it’s hard to really conceptualize how powerful it is. 

 

Once I got on Twitter and I understood how hashtags worked I looked up ‘#BlackAndSTEM’ on Twitter and I was overflowing with joy. I have often done a lot of work just to psyche myself up to think that I can do something simply because I don’t see other people doing it, and that’s an energy expense that a lot of Black people experience. You have to convince yourself that you can do it because you have not seen it modeled, whereas if you saw someone like you doing it, that’s an energy expense you don’t have to do. You no longer have to say to yourself, ‘just because I don’t see anyone who’s like me doesn’t mean I can’t do it,’ anymore. It actually works wonders. 

 

There are a lot of messages that are very under the radar to the general public that Black people, and other people of color, see and take in constantly that are telling us that we’re not good enough. For example, when I see these pseudoscientists online, who definitely have Ph.D.s and work at universities, publishing papers about how people of African descent are less built for science or less built for critical thinking — their message isn’t necessarily noticed so far and wide, but I see it and that impacts me. I need things that counteract that message and so do all of us, whenever we see something that tells us we can’t do something. That’s why occasionally even now I type in #BlackinSTEM to see if anyone new has popped up, because every new person just gives me a rush of confidence for myself.”

 

You’ve founded some programs yourself to fill in that representation gap. Can you talk about those programs and their impact?

 

“I was reflecting on how powerful that single interaction was that I had with a Black woman who’s a zookeeper at the zoo. If that single interaction for me was enough to completely derail me in a good way, completely change my career trajectory, I know that same power can be experienced by other people of color. 

 

I started a program when I was in college, it used the animals that we had on grounds to go to schools and community groups to do outreach education. I would target school groups that were largely of color or lower income education facilities, and we also went to nursing homes. Then, the first major program that I started was while I was a zookeeper at the Nashville Zoo, and the program is called Pathway to Animal Care Careers — thankfully, it’s still going. Essentially, it’s reaching out to Title I high schools in Nashville, which means 70 percent or more of students are on free or reduced lunch. It invites them to apply to spend one day shadowing a keeper, participating in keeper activities, and then getting a tour of different major facilities on grounds so they can see all the different kinds of careers that exist within a zoo’s conservation mission and participate in some of those activities. 

 

Then, I was able to start one in conjunction with my undergraduate university and the local high school, where students can engage in a variety of different activities like animal care and a camp that’s part of the program that I ran, and still runs, where they get exposed to a variety of wildlife careers.”

 

You’re also involved in the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. Can you explain what the organization is and what you do?

 

“I’m a person of faith. The school I went to for undergrad is an evangelical school — evangelical is not a denomination, but it’s usually associated with white middle-class Christian Americans. One thing I noticed from people that weren’t in science, there was this complete disconnect between their theology and how they treated the earth and people around them, regarding environmental issues. There was this idea that God would fix it. There was one moment where one of my friend’s mothers said, “Corina, do you believe God created the earth?” And I was like uh, what — we were at a bachelorette party! I’m like, “Jackie, what are you getting at?” She goes, “don’t you think that he’ll protect it?” She was trying to talk about environmental issues. At that point I was like white middle-class and up Christians are a lost cause. 

 

But the problem is that while I want to throw that demographic away because of how they use their “faith” to justify wasteful, mindless living, they are a really powerful demographic politically in this country. They are using their faith as an excuse to not act on climate change, but our faith actually compels us to act on climate change — our Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself and steward the earth and care for those who are oppressed. You can’t ignore climate change because climate change is a justice issue. It is disproportionately impacting the oppressed. 

 

Young Evangelicals for Climate Action essentially exists to bring that message to specifically white middle-class evangelicals. We say, if you really want to engage your faith in this topic and this issue, you need look at it correctly and justly and recognize that your faith actually does compel you to do something about this. We try to mobilize Christian communities to be civically engaged, so we’ll hold protests, we’ll help develop voter guides, get people paying attention to local elections and get people to hold their representatives accountable for acting on climate change.”

 

You have a lot of passions in a lot of different fields across both research and advocacy. How do you balance your research interests with your science outreach and communication?

 

“Every time I am looking closely at anything outside, it’s so that someone else can look closely too. It’s not just for me. My end goal is not to be the most world renowned specialist on nest predation and seaside sparrows, I want to answer that question and I want to do it rigorously and thoroughly so I have the best information as a result, but I’m doing it because other people need to know. Those people are not just other scientists who might read the papers I publish, but the general public who are contributing to the health of the ecosystem in which my study system resides because those are the actual people who are making the biggest difference and the most ecological impact. 

 

I did science communication that wasn't online — that was my job as a zookeeper, doing animal training and shows and education face-to-face. I’ve found that doing it online is actually less time consuming because I’m thinking about it in advance. Sometimes I have a crazy experience that I just want to share in that moment, but generally I’m accumulating things. If I’m outside and I see something cool, I take a picture, I take a video, and I’ll save it and have a nice stockpile of cool information I want to share. I’m not the quickest replier on Twitter when it comes to comments and that’s okay, the comments aren’t going anywhere, that’s the nice thing. If I can’t get to someone’s comment or question until 48 hours later, they’ll get notified when I answer. That’s the really cool thing about Twitter, you don’t feel like you have to be on all the time.”

 

Looking at all of your accomplishments and where you are today, what would you want to tell past-Corina, before she had that experience at the zoo in high school?

 

“If I had the resources to see other Black people earlier on doing science, that would’ve changed everything. I’ve had an incredible series of experiences that happened in their own time but I would’ve gone out of my way to find Black examples of scientists for my younger self. In school, the teachers have PowerPoints or there’s textbooks with pictures of scientists and they are almost always white, certainly never Black. I think that teachers and people who have the power to show images can do so much good just by showing people that look like the people they’re talking to. I would’ve done that for me. I would’ve just slipped younger me examples of people of color who were doing all kinds of crazy science, because even now it still has an incredible impact on me. It encourages me to keep going in what can feel like a very lonely field — not that I don’t have friends, but lonely in that there aren’t many people who have my background in some capacity. That’s what I would’ve done — I would’ve slipped me a few pictures, a few little blurbs about some African-American scientists.”

 

Is there anything else you want to share?

 

“There are scientists on Twitter who are sources of information for people, but frequently I see that the manner in which information is shared or people are corrected, it shuts those people down. Do not attack their opinion, do not attack them at all, don’t try to make them feel intellectually inferior. Graciously, in the same way that people educated you, educate them, that’s it. If you’re in a relationship with somebody, talking to somebody, sharing information about literally anything, you have to think about the exchange of emotions. It’s more than half the battle, especially when it comes to changing people’s perceptions or trying to change behavior. Think about the emotional transaction you’re having, and not just the transmission of information because that is a very important part for someone having ears to hear what you’re saying. 

 

When someone is excited about something that’s super common, don’t come in and try to let them know that they are late to the party. When I was learning about birds, 100 percent of them were new to me except for robins and cardinals — those were the only two birds that I had ever even noticed. So when I was in class and my professor was introducing us to the 10 most common birds in Ohio, where I went to school, the first one he put up on the screen was a blue jay. I was like, ‘what is that?’ I was hype in class and people kept asking, ‘you’ve never seen that before?’  I’m the kind of person who does not get emotionally shut down very easily, my vibe does not get killed very easily, but I see it happen to other people. Don’t do that, don't do that on Twitter, don't make it seem like you are the superior person because you’ve had the privilege of being able to explore your surroundings. Just share their excitement and move on, especially online because even if you don't mean to sound curt or short with somebody, it can come off like that if you're not paying attention to your punctuation or your sentence structure. It’s just something to think about when you're doing this kind of work online.”

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