- I really never thought I would be here.

Never thought in a million years.

I feel so lucky and blessed to become a salmon ecologist, highlighting the human dimension and what salmon means to different cultures and populations.

I didn't even know that there was professions such as water quality experts and fish ecologists cause it was just not in my context.

I don't see anybody like me in there.

It must not be for me, you know, that's my psyche playing on me, but it's powerful.

Right?

These John Adams and these Tom Jefferson white boys clubs, it's just like a band of brothers.

We need to enter into these homogenous dominated white fields where we can have such incredible positive input into the strategies and practices in solving these really complex problems.

I don't see any harm in diversity at all, but people are scared of it, are resistant to change.

And we have to get down to the bottom of that.

Like why?

Because honestly all it can do is cause great things.

Welcome to the Cedar River.

I studied the preferences of spawning Sockeye Salmon.

I feel kind of intimately connected to this major tributary here that provides much of our drinking water.

An excellent, excellent place to witness the phenomenal behavior of Sockeye Salmon spawning.

Meaning breeding and courting, which is the last phase of their life cycles.

I started off as a cultural communications educator and linguist and international studies.

I'd had this really, really neat opportunity to go to Bangladesh.

And I just happened to be assigned a project working with these women agropastoralists and agriculturalists.

The Bangladeshi women and Bangladeshi communities were so in tune with being in rhythm with your specimen.

And that was something that I wanted to add to my toolkit.

The first things I think about when I'm in this particular spot is think like a fish.

Where would I go when I finally come home to where I was born?

Where do I want to lay my 17,000 eggs and hope for the best that maybe three are to survive?

I guess I'm like the lone ranger in this because there aren't many African-American women in fisheries ecology, you know, like less than 1%.

It means so much to when you see someone out there who looks like you doing what you want to do in life.

Having a person like my mom, she paved the way for me.

My mom's name is Dr. Lorraine Howard.

She's just a phenomenal, visible figure.

She's not hidden.

She's an awesome mathematician.

And one of the first to get a PhD in Mathematics and also MBA at Wharton, at University of Pennsylvania.

If I wasn't at that penguin volunteer program, I was at some random archery program where I was the only black person.

She just wanted me to be like, Hey, you can do all this stuff.

And that was monumental.

I mean, it shaped my life.

It shaped my thinking.

I embrace that my education and personal life trajectory is different than many other people.

The common thread is that, you know, it's really hard to accept, acknowledge, appreciate, and celebrate differences or diversity or various social identities.

It really makes it hard to do something I love at times.

I've traveled to over 50 countries.

Exploring, going to school, and also working.

And just putting all of these individuals who just come from different walks of life, putting the different canons of knowledge and information together will come up with a more robust solution.

And when you have a collective bunch of people as if it's like a cultural background, linguistically, from experience, you're able to catch those gaps that maybe it weren't identified or someone wasn't really thinking about.

I am a member on the Rainier Beach Link to Lake committee, that's been around for a few years and we've been for awhile illuminating inequities in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

We are restoring our local creek and transforming our entire park.

We didn't have any picnic tables, barbecues.

We didn't have any lights.

These basic amenities, you name it.

You would have never seen this up in Ballard.

You would never see this up in Queen Anne.

I've used everything I've learned to help obtain over $700,000 to restore my local beach that's been neglected.

So I represent the Rainier Beach community but also can speak in scientific terms.

So that's kind of my tool that many other people in the community don't have that I try to use as much as I can.

Another reason why I moved here was that environmental adjusting was all about owning the solution.

We know how to solve our own problems.

We can.

So just give us the space, give us the platform.

Perhaps give us the resources and the support for us to, again, elevate ourselves.

- [Narrator] This series is made possible by the generous support of the Port of Seattle.