Episode 233: Dr. Carlotta A. Berry on Diversity in STEM  ## Metadata - Author: [[Sustain]] - Full Title: Episode 233: Dr. Carlotta A. Berry on Diversity in STEM - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/3c1a7f14-5eae-44c3-aa4a-6d5f53b50b4e ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Motivation Behind PhD Journey** - Carlotta Berry pursued a PhD to become an engineering professor and represent diversity in the field. - She wanted to show students that engineering is exciting and diverse, beyond common stereotypes. Transcript: Speaker 2 Was it in to where you are today? Speaker 1 Well, I actually only got my PhD because I wanted to be an engineering professor and I wanted to be an engineering professor because as an undergraduate student at Georgia Tech, I rarely Saw black and brown professors or black and brown students. And I rarely saw women or female students. And so as an engineering student, I was like, they're not making this look exciting, fun, diverse, any of the above. So I decided I wanted to be an engineering professor. And so I figured to do that, I had to get my PhD. So a lot of people get their PhD because they want to do world class research or they want to live in a lab and change the world. I got my PhD because I just wanted to be an academic and show students the coolness of engineering and that Dilbert and MacGyver are not the only engineers in the world. They're not. Speaker 2 Can you tell me a bit the PhD process is horrendous. Speaker 1 It's normally very hard for people. People have a difficult time. It sounds like you did a PhD because you wanted to have fun and be a role model. Did that help you get through that process? It 100% did. And I like to say that I had such a difficult time getting my undergraduate engineering degree at Georgia Tech that I think the gods looked down on me and said your PhD program will not Be nearly as difficult, not saying it was easy. But I think I experienced all of my challenges through undergrad. So grad school was a cakewalk. I sometimes tell students grad school is sometimes easier for you because it's more focused on what you're most interested in. Whereas in undergrad, you may have to take some humanities, some social studies, some government on top of your STEM, your science, technology, engineering and math classes. And sometimes engineering students, they're like, I'll take that other stuff, even though we know ethics and all of that is important in engineering. Well once you get to your graduate program, it is extremely focused. So I'm a controls engineer. So it was all controls and robotics. So it's all the stuff that you love. Yeah, writing a dissertation is no cakewalk. The fact it took six years was not fun, but it's six years of you doing what exactly you love to do that and having a vision, a mission and a purpose. So I recently put on TikTok because somebody said, give some advice to some new PhDs. Have a mission, vision, purpose and goal for your PhD program. And if that happens, when it gets rough, you hold on to your ([Time 0:02:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8dea9ff2-9518-4425-a8da-54b1790a2430)) - **PhD Success Through Purpose** - Have a clear mission, vision, and purpose during your PhD program to persevere through tough times. - Holding on to your personal why helps prevent quitting when challenges arise. Transcript: Speaker 1 And a purpose. So I recently put on TikTok because somebody said, give some advice to some new PhDs. Have a mission, vision, purpose and goal for your PhD program. And if that happens, when it gets rough, you hold on to your why and you won't quit. Whereas if you're in school for someone else, if you're doing it for somebody or something else, it's very hard to keep going. Speaker 2 I appreciate that. I accepted a PhD position on Monday yesterday. So that is very timely ([Time 0:04:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2efb901a-83f2-412a-b332-47a2fd1b4088)) - **Founding Nonprofits Amid Protests** - Black in Engineering and Black in Robotics nonprofits started during the George Floyd protests to unify voices. - These groups address challenges like cultural taxation and marginalization faced by Black engineering professors. Transcript: Speaker 2 Which one is your favorite child? Speaker 1 I have to say robotics. I have to tell me about it because I am a roboticist. But interestingly enough, they both started around the same time. It was during the George Floyd protest in the Black Lives Matter movement. So it was during the pandemic. A lot of people were working from home and right around the time that black bird watchers started Black Birders Week because of Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and some racial profiling That had happened in Central Park. And so out of that, we'd like to say that the Black and X movement was born on social media. Before that time, we had Black and STEM. We had Vanguard STEM. But all of these affinity groups basically were birthed on what I now call musky Twitter because I will not call it X. And from that, that's where Black and robotics came from. That's where Black in computing, Black in engineering, Black in Astro, Black in it goes on and on. But that's what's how the nonprofits came about. And it was a way for us to speak with one collective voice about things that affected our communities. For example, Black in engineering had a media campaign where we talked about being Black in the ivory and what it's like to be one of only Black engineering professors on your university's Campus about things such as cultural taxation, the double bind, marginalization, microaggressions, et cetera. And it was a way for us to represent those interests without an untenured professor who was somewhere in Indiana and maybe the only Black woman professor on campus such as myself to speak On some of those issues without them being targeted because you wanted to talk about those things that are important. So that's where Black in engineering was born out of. And one of the things we did is we had a call to action about becoming an anti-racist institution. And we shared it. We shared the video campaign and people would sign on to implement some of that. It's kind of funny that here we are four years past that when we had this great racial reckoning around these organizations and now the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way Because of all of this critical race theory swill and the banning of books that have ([Time 0:05:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9b31c1b0-96f7-4389-af41-72347bbfa1fb)) - **Importance of Sustained Diversity Efforts** - Recent backlash against diversity shows the need for sustained commitment to equity. - Genuine allyship is crucial, not just performative support via statements or temporary actions. Transcript: Speaker 1 That have diverse characters. So now that work is needed even more than it was back then. Speaker 2 There's a lot to unpack. That is awesome. I'm so glad you started that. Before I go anywhere, I have to say I'm a massive bird watcher. It's one of the diseases I have. I love it so much. So I'm really glad you brought up Christian Cooper. I read his book recently. I hope you have to. I thought it was great. No. Speaker 1 OK, I do apologize, Christian. I will put it on my list. And I love that after all the drama, National Geographic, I believe hired him. Yeah. Yeah, that shows you how you can make lemonade from lemons and something good can come from something so horrible. Something else recently happened. Michael three two became famous because he's the guy who was promoting the library and kids and librarians and he had to quit his job and get off social media because he was being bullied Has now been hired by PBS to promote literacy. So it just shows. Yeah, people do this ignorant stuff and then a real blessing comes from it. So that's just awesome. Speaker 2 You mentioned that the pendulum is swinging the other way and you've already put in all this very hard work, both personally and professionally and in your spare time. It's not easy starting a nonprofit and historically there's been so much work put into the civil rights movement into elevating black voices, all of the George Floyd protests, etc, Etc. It's infinite. What do you do when you see a pendulum swinging backwards? How do you cheer yourself up and get back to work? Speaker 1 I think you think about who came before you and all that they did. And no matter what amount of effort we put into it, it's nothing compared to what they did. I haven't had far hoses sprayed on me. I haven't had dogs let loose on me. I haven't had people trying to assassinate me. So if I get in a little Twitter bicker with a bunch of white supremacists, that's nothing. That's baby cake. It's just really about having allies, allyship and people who are being more than performative. And I think that's important. We now found out these years later that although they were supportive, some of these people were performative because I was it's so easy for them to be releasing statements of support. And then immediately go, Oh, well, no more affirmative action. Rip all that diversity stuff off your website and just only give the scholarships to the kids who are coming in because their granddaddy gave money to the library or their mama photoshop Their face on the crew captain being sarcastic. I think you understand the point. If you really thought diversity was so important that you were willing to give out scholarships and have programs, how can just one statement come out and I understand you don't want To get sued. But you immediately abandon all this work that you thought added so much value to your university as opposed to saying, let's get creative and come up with a new way to do that. It's kind of like, especially on social media, you know, you get a lot of, Oh, you were a diversity hire. Oh, you were an affirmative action student. That's how you got your PhD. Yeah. And is that supposed to be a problem? So I got my PhD because of affirmative action. Is that better than your Twitter scholarship? I say yes, your PhD in tweets. I say yes. You're never going to have me be ashamed of being a diversity hire or an affirmative action recipient, if I was or if I was not, because all of that made me who I am. And now from where I am, I'm changing the world. So it's just that important. But I just think having ([Time 0:07:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/12c90434-7dd1-4c84-95b3-5b2b45e08709)) - **Leveraging Open Source Hardware** - Use open source hardware to democratize STEM and robotics education widely. - Fully document your designs so others can build, modify, and learn from your work. Transcript: Speaker 2 Working for robotics and engineering? Speaker 1 So I was actually already a STEM communicator. I was already a social media communicator. I do engineering professor advice. I do engineering professor quizzes on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram. I share my robotics work because no, our STEM is is my company and the model is my STEM is for the streets. In my mission to diversify STEM, you have to go where the people are. And I can't just give STEM to my students who pay my high price tuition and for people who pay to go to these expensive conferences or pay the page charges for journals. So in doing that, I had somebody who followed me who worked at Ross. Her name was Kat Scott. And she saw the work that I was doing and she recommended me to apply for the open source hardware trail, Blazer, fellow program. I didn't know what that was. And then once I read about it, I was like, well, I do that anyway. This is baby cakes. I need stuff saying baby cakes. And so I apply to be an open source hardware trail blazer. And at the time, I'll be honest, I knew what open source software was. Everybody, I think does because it's been around as ubiquitous. It's been used forever. Wasn't totally clear on what open source hardware was. But once I discovered it was basically the same tenants, except now you design hardware where you completely document all of that. So for me and robotics, that would be the CAD files, the 3D printer files, all of the code that I write, the assembly. So I have videos on YouTube. I have the instructions and tutorials on instructables on HACSTER. I owe on my website. I have blog posts about the journey to my open source robots, which are called the flower bots. They grow with you, Lilybot, Daisybot and Rosiebot. And the other thing about it is I have Lily infinity bot because infinity means that you can do whatever you want. There's an infinite amount of ways to engage with my robotic platform. And so I was like, that actually is robotics for the street. So now the thing for my open source hardware is an intersection of the tenants between open source software and open source hardware to make open source robotics. And you can make the robot what you want it to be. And so my robots have been used by everything from K through 12 teachers to middle school to college to university to makers to do with whatever they would like. Although my research was human robot interaction and robotics education, I now say open source robotics is my research area as well, because it encapsulates all of that. I now use open source robotics to educate anyone who wants to be educated about STEM. I use robotics to bring STEM to people. And I bring people to STEM and robotics to them in order to diversify the perception and I cannot do that if I make all of my robotics work so that it is trademarked or so that it is patented. So open source is the way that I get that done. Excellent. ([Time 0:10:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26822079-4477-4af5-b5fe-d4169b49846c)) - **Open Source Robots Impact Many** - Dr. Berry gave away many of her open source robots for free before transitioning to selling kits. - The flower bots engage diverse learners from K-12 to university and makerspaces. Transcript: Speaker 2 Those awesome flower bots? Speaker 1 I have probably more than a community is just people engaging with my stuff on social media. I gave away so many free robots that eventually I had to just stop doing that. I now sell them on my platform. I sell the kits and I sell the assembled robot, but then all of the materials to make your own are there. So you can get a free one just by doing it yourself. If you have access to a 3D printer, so probably more than the community, I have started doing way more in person and online workshops in order to grow people using STEM because I'm more About the using the robot to engage in STEM than the robot in and of itself. You can design your own robot for all I care, but are you learning something about STEM you did not know before so that it is not such a foreign concept like it was for a lot of people before. Even some young ladies, I've done Girl Scouts, boy Scouts, etc. And I've ([Time 0:13:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/27d95d37-8500-4ecb-ab56-7a5d2dfcefc8)) - **Supporting Women in STEM** - Be honest with young women in STEM about challenges they will face but provide support and community. - Encourage thriving rather than just surviving in STEM education to foster positive experiences. Transcript: Speaker 2 When you're coming already at it with disadvantages? Speaker 1 You want to be fair and you want to be honest and you want to equip them with the resources. One of the big challenges I had at Georgia Tech is I really struggled until I was able to identify a support group, identify a community, learn some of the cheat codes for how to study for Exams that I didn't know coming from another liberal arts university that had a completely different mindset for how you engage with your professors and professors having office Hours. So I don't ever want to feel guilty. Like I encouraged, for example, a black woman to go into engineering without understanding some of the challenges we face. So I give a lot of presentations about the journey, the obstacles, the leaky pipeline. Some of the challenges you will face, but I also talk about how to build community, like black in engineering and black in robotics, having a mentoring program. Some of the resources I share as my engineering professor advice YouTube channel. I talked about some of those things and I tell them why it's so important for you to be there. We look at things like bias and AI, like the work of Joy Bummo-Wimi that looked at facial recognition systems that did not adequately recognize black and brown faces and then police Departments were using them to arrest people for crimes they didn't actually commit. So I talked to them about why it's so important for you to be here, but also you being here, you have to understand that this community is not ideal quite yet. And so because of that, let's support you through it because I don't want you to be anywhere where you're going to be traumatized. So I'll tell students, I want you to graduate from college, but I want you to thrive in that journey, not just survive. Because what happens is when you just survive, like I did at Georgia Tech, I will never come back to homecoming. I will never give you money. So stop calling me and asking for it. But you want to say, I got there. It was a positive experience. I'm better because I went through that and I now am equipped and ready to give back to my community. So that's what I tell them. I'm never going to say, I want you here. Don't worry about all the bad things that happen because no, you have to know about those things because they will affect your physical and mental well-being. I have ([Time 0:20:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7c5db30b-6710-4a29-867a-315da30d7639)) - **Designing Inclusive Open Source Communities** - Break down silos and educate about open source hardware to increase diversity in STEM. - Recruit from diverse institutions like historically black colleges and women's colleges to enrich communities. Transcript: Speaker 2 It's not the case, but I'm saying outside of your angle, I'm just curious, what would you like to change about the ecosystem as a whole? Speaker 1 Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. I think not being so siloed. I worked a lot during my Trailblazer Fellowship with Open Source Hardware Association. And a big part of what we did were these very conversations. Like, how do I educate people who don't know what open source hardware is about what it is and what it is not? How do I educate academics, professors about why they can do open source hardware work and still get tenure and still get promoted and still get their work published in journals? And I think a big part of that is educating the community about what it isn't. Like, some things we've done in black and robotics is we have made a black and robotics reading list so that when people go, I can't quote anybody black, I don't know anyone, or I can't Find a black person to interview for my podcast or interview for my article. We know, like, I can give you five names if you just asked. Right? So a big part is educating people about getting outside of their silo and really looking for other members of the community, learning to speak the language of people beyond yourself So that if your work is open source, what does open source mean? Open source for who? And if you're who is not you, then how do you make it for those people? You have to speak to them because when you don't do that, and I talk to my students, this is why you need to take ethics in class. If you are designing a product and everybody in the room testing it looks exactly like you, you have failed at your job. And why should it take that product going live? For you to get embarrassed when, for example, Twitter releases a deep pixelation software and find out that it's turning every pixelized picture, including Barack Obama into a white Man. Or if somebody says generate my AI picture to make it more professional so I can get a job and it's turning images of Asian women into white women with blonde hair. Well, if you're testing your algorithms on someone beyond your uniform, white pale male community, then you see that those things will happen. Like at my school, because I'm the only professor that looks like me, any work I do immediately is being tested on my students and none of them look like me. So you have to make sure that your work is doing that, bringing some interns from some historically black universities or women's colleges. Go there and recruit. Don't always recruit at the Ivy Leagues or don't always recruit in Silicon Valley. That's a great way for you to get your community ([Time 0:24:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d34fabf5-cbcd-45fd-ae6e-417fde938008)) - **Mastering Communication for Impact** - Learn to code switch and mirror others' values to communicate effectively in diverse environments. - Listening more and knowing yourself helps build authentic connections and engagement. Transcript: Speaker 2 That? Do you keep like a log of like what you want to say when you enter any conversation? How would you help people who aren't as articulate as you to become more articulate in these spaces? Speaker 1 Great question. And I hate to say I just shoot from the hip. And I think a large part of being a black woman in STEM because we are so rare is code switching. So because you have to code switch in professional environments, because I didn't mention this, but I worked as an engineer at Ford Motor Company and at Detroit Edison before I went Back and got my PhD and became a professor. So having the ability to move in those different arenas and be able to be impactful so that people want to engage with you or want to buy your product or give you money to design something, You have to be able to speak their language. But also I think a big part of it is connecting with people's heart. I probably always was not as good at this, but most people like to talk about themselves. So talking to someone and understanding what their value and mirroring that back to them a little bit, I think is really a big part of being able to do that. You mentioned your PhD, for example, that you're starting graduate school. So I now know that when I'm talking to you, I'm going to slide in some of those grad school nuggets for you because I know that's something that you value and you find important. If I knew anything about bird watching, I would do that as well. But being a listener more than a talker, and I will say, and I tell people this all the time, I am a bit of anomaly in engineering. There are still a lot of engineers with the pocket protectors and who look at their shoes and can't speak to you by catching your eye. But that's a big part of the work that I try to do is I love it when I hear a student go, you're not like my other professors, and you don't act like my other professors. That exactly, that's exactly why I did this because I did not like how stale and boring engineering looked. I knew that it could be engaging, exciting and fun. How am I going to ask you to come join me in this community when you don't even want to talk to me? And so I think that's just a big part of it. But it's learning to ([Time 0:26:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/59b4f28a-080e-4049-a5eb-15f3fa3121a7)) - **Hip Hop Poetry Makes STEM Fun** - During the pandemic, Dr. Berry used hip hop slam poetry on TikTok to teach robotics concepts to young people. - She made STEM fun and relatable by turning technical topics into catchy educational songs. Transcript: Speaker 2 Tell me about hip hop slam poetry. Speaker 1 Yes, I'm glad you asked. So during the pandemic, I was really trying to come up with ways to make this stem for the streets thing fly and connect with young people. I was posting videos everywhere and I had a parent say to me, you got to get on TikTok. Your target audience is on TikTok. And I know TikTok right now is all the rage because they're talking about in the Senate and making them sell it and all kind of craziness. But I honestly got on TikTok only because I was trying to find a way to take my stem to the streets and go where the young people were. So that was the teenagers or the tweens. So the hip hop slam poetry was a way for me to now. I know I'm not Grace's corner or anything. But a way for me to now share things about robots with young people. And I know when my daughter was young, she's a teenager now, I taught her a lot with songs like her address. I made it into a song spelling her name. I made it into a song. So I thought if I could make a song about what a sonar is, it'd be easy for them to understand. Or if I made a song about photo resistors, they could do it. So I've played some of those videos for Girl Scouts. And then afterwards, I would say, what is a sonar? And they could tell me. But I think if I just sat there and talked to them and said, a sonar is a thing that uses sound in order to project or nothing. But if I say a sonar uses the Doppler effect, you know what animals do that? A bat, a dolphin. So when you put a sonar on a robot, it's moving around the world like a bat or like a dolphin, they can get that. So the hip hop slam poetry was a way for me to share and bite size chunks. Some ([Time 0:29:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb7c5d2e-ae98-459f-9844-68baba48b009)) - **Black STEM Romance Novels** - Dr. Berry writes black STEM romance novels to increase representation and engagement. - She shows black women engineers as protagonists with everyday lives and love interests to inspire others. Transcript: Speaker 2 Since we're talking about being your authentic self, tell me about your books. Speaker 1 So my books, I have several. Another thing that has always driven me crazy is I love romance novels ever since I was in high school. After flowers in the attic, romance was my jam. And I mean romance, not 50 shades of gray. Because some of my students found some of my romance. Oh, Dr. Berry writes romance. No, baby. I write romance. I don't write erotica. I write romance. So I write happily ever after not that other stuff is I was like, God, I never see any black women engineers. I never see any black women scientists. It's very rare. So I started writing black STEM romance novels, because everything ties back to my mission and maybe crazy to see it, Richard, but it all ties back because I wanted to amplify showing Black women living their everyday lives, black women as a MacGyver with a love interest. So that's where the black STEM romance novels came from. It's I wanted to read what I wanted to see. It's the same way I started my Giffy channel. I got so sick of constantly scrolling looking for black women, Professor gifts. Where if I put in Professor, it was all white guys with the tweet jacket and the pipe. So the books, the gifts, all of it was because I want to see the people I want to see doing the things that I love to get other people excited about it as well. Same for my children's books. I wanted to see children's books about kids and their robots, not just kids and their robots, but programming the robot, building the robot, designing the robot, taking care of the Robot because that then translates to I can do STEM. STEM looks like me because representation matters. And when I ask you what an engineer looks like, I want you to say it looks like me. Speaker 2 This might be a personal question, and ([Time 0:31:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1bbf41e0-94d5-4a1c-9e78-23f7732bd23d)) - **Mission Beyond Self Drives Impact** - Find a mission outside yourself to create meaningful, lasting impact. - Helping others provides internal validation and drives sustained commitment to change. Transcript: Speaker 2 Mission is to get more people in STEM. That's actually about other people. It's your mission, but it's for other people. How would you suggest that open source developers or people in general, everyone? I mean, I'm not just talking to open source developers on this podcast. I hope people realize that. How do you just the people realize that they can have a mission that's outside of them? Did that come easily for you? Because that's really awesome. I just I don't know how you got there. Speaker 1 It's because it's self serving and it's for me. The things that I'm doing is because I am sick of hearing even 20 years later, female students and black and brown students and engineering classes having some of the same experiences I have, where if the humanities professor is talking about slavery, they're the first person who gets asked, how do they feel about that topic? Or if they're sitting in class and they know they're going to be asked something first or that if any black or brown personal campus does anything, then they're going to get looked at Like it's affiliated with them or that they have to represent their entire race when they walk in those spaces. So although I talk a little bit about it being external, it's actually internal validation as well because I will be internally validated the day that a student tells me I went to class And I wasn't called on as the only black person to represent the black voice because we are not a monolith, right? So although I say it's all external, it actually is internal validation for me because of the experience of kids in STEM gets better than I know my mission has been achieved. If I now know as my little old lady self in the future will know that diverse teams of engineers are now designing these assistive robots for the home, the assistive robot will be able To recognize my brown vase or my female sounding voice or if I have an accent, then the things that I have doing have been achieved because I've helped diversify these teams to create Better solutions for a more global and diverse world, which I will be in. So I've now create the community that ([Time 0:33:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f7af2983-59ed-4c78-9628-832703d27af6))