Herpetologist Earyn McGee is on a mission, using social media to get more people, specifically people of color, interested in science. And she does it with a game.
Every Wednesday evening, McGee posts a photo of a lizard that has camouflaged itself. The game is simple enough: Can you #FindThatLizard? People are loving it, with hundreds if not thousands logging on each week. And many will retweet their triumph with the hashtag.
McGee’s goal with #FindThatLizard is to help build a more diverse scientific community, getting Black and brown people interested in pursuing science as a career. “It’s about understanding who is going to be our next generation of natural-resources scientists, and how to make that generation more diverse,” she said. And with more than 60,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram, she’s well on her way to doing so. She wants to see people of color in “the rooms where decisions are happening, and change who is the behind [the] natural resources workforce, because it’s not just white men being impacted.”
