Celebrating Women in Data Science
What does the KBO Data Science Team do?
KBO’s Informatics and Data Science Team is part of the Avian Knowledge Network (AKN). For over two decades, this network of partnerships, data, and technology has worked to improve bird conservation, management, and research across organizational boundaries and spatial scales. AKN offers both data repository and decision support system solutions designed to leverage partnerships, data, and science to benefit bird conservation and management.
Klamath Bird Observatory’s (KBO) Data Science Team works with individuals to get their large or small datasets into the AKN. To help partners best take advantage of AKN capacities, the Team works with biologists from many organizations and agencies to meet the AKN’s data management, analysis, and delivery needs. This involves consulting on field methods and study design to ensure bird monitoring efforts best address the most pressing and relevant natural resource management and conservation needs, providing in-depth training to empower new users in managing and analyzing their data, and creating data products with direct conservation applications, such as species-centered distribution models.
As part of the AKN, KBO staff helps ensure valuable bird monitoring data collected across the country have an impact on avian conservation. Together with our AKN partners, we are opening the door to answer more conservation-relevant research questions to make a difference for birds.
The Data Science Team:
In celebration of International Women’s Month, we would like to introduce you to some of the amazing women who make up the KBO Data Science Team. Here, they respond to a series of questions about their experience as women in science.
Caitlyn Gillespie
Career Journey: Can you share your journey into the field of science? What inspired you to pursue this path?
I wanted to be a scientist pretty much as long as I can remember—it was always my favorite subject in school because I just loved learning about the world around me, how things worked, and why things happen. I distinctly remember my 7th grade science teacher introducing us to Darwin and his observations of the Galapagos tortoises and just how cool it was that all life was constantly evolving and adapting. In college, while majoring in biology, I gravitated towards classes with labs that required wading into streams and hiking through fields rather than sitting on a lab bench. That led me to internships monitoring birds, which then led to grad school in applied ecology, and eventually to KBO!
Challenges and Triumphs: What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a woman or not in science, and how have you overcome them?
I think I’ve been pretty lucky in that I’ve found mentors in college, in grad school, and at KBO that were supportive and encouraging. One of the biggest challenges I’ve found is finding a voice and finding confidence in myself when trying something new. This has never been easy for me, and I think I think other women sometimes struggle with it, too. I think it’s common to internalize a lot of doubt and just let other people do more of the talking when they exude more confidence than you do. Good mentors help you learn to trust yourself and take advantage of opportunities you might not otherwise think you’re ready for.
Diversity and Inclusion: What changes do you believe are necessary to promote greater gender diversity and inclusion in the scientific community?
Good mentors are critical. Both women and men can be good mentors for young women in science, as long as they provide space to listen and recognize challenges that may be different for people with different life experience, in different generations.
Work-Life Balance: How do you balance your scientific career with personal and family life? Do you have any tips for others?
Having a supportive family really helps, and also a supportive work environment where it’s ok to discuss that balance and make adjustments when needed. There are some aspects of our work that may require travel, or fieldwork, where it can be hard to find balance. So it’s good to keep talking about it, because I think there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone and every situation.
Career Advice: What advice would you give someone just starting their career in science?
I think early in my education and career, I sometimes got hung up on the notion that I had to be passionate and excited about my work all the time to justify being here, which is not very realistic. Science can be tough, and not everything will feel like a passion project. So I think recognizing that there are good days and bad, some successes and some failures, is important. Talk to your friends, family, and mentors—having a community in science is what keeps it sustainable.
Current Work: What impact do you hope your work will have? What is the most exciting part of your job?
Honestly, I think the most exciting part of my job is that I get to keep learning. Part of dealing with data in the AKN is learning about all the really cool work that everyone is doing across our country. Plus, I am immersed in a constantly evolving and growing field of species distribution modeling, analysis, and developing data-rich tools. It’s really cool to be learning about all of that while also staying engaged in bird conservation, still getting out into the field once in a while, and pausing to recognize that we live and work in some really unique natural areas.
Nora Honkomp
Career Journey: Can you share your journey into the field of science? What inspired you to pursue this path?
I’ve loved birds ever since I was a kid, but I thought the only way I could work with them was by becoming a zookeeper or veterinarian. Then, in college, I learned about ecology and conservation biology and realized that this was what I wanted to do and that it could involve birds. I love the exploratory aspect of science and the empowerment that comes with asking questions and finding the answers. I also love knowing that my work is helping improve the world for birds and people.
Challenges and Triumphs: What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a woman or not in science, and how have you overcome them?
I’ve been fortunate to have lots of support on my road to becoming a scientist. There are many incredible women to look up to in this field, and I’ve learned a lot about standing up for myself while also caring for others. We’re really fortunate that science is moving away from an exclusionary, competitive nature and instead embracing collaboration and inclusion. When we support others’ work and build relationships, we benefit everyone, ourselves included. Even though we’ve made progress on the inclusion of women in science, gender is only one piece of the puzzle. We have a lot to gain from further removing barriers for people of all identities in this field.
Diversity and Inclusion: What changes do you believe are necessary to promote greater gender diversity and inclusion in the scientific community?
There are many systemic issues that make getting started in science and being able to stay in this field hard for people that don’t fit the (outdated!) mold of what a scientist should be. Often times, there are a lot of financial and time-intensive requirements to becoming a scientist. Higher education is prohibitively expensive without supplementary funding. Too often, the intro-level jobs that are required for gaining experience do not have the means to provide all the financial resources necessary for living and working. The time needed to complete research, mentoring, project planning, funding acquisition, skill growth, and many more aspects necessary for advancing a career in science goes well beyond a 40-hour work week. This is often extremely difficult to balance for people with families and loved ones to care for. A large part of getting new opportunities in science is based on networking and connections, and bias can greatly inhibit individuals’ chances for support, mentorship, experience, and collaboration. And the scariest barrier, in my opinion, is that many of the remote places that field biologists travel to within the country may not be safe for individuals with minority identities to work and live.
To change the system, we need the people with power in organizations, governments, and communities to prioritize conservation and environmental stewardship, diversity and inclusion, and compassion for people and our planet. I’m glad to already see many shifts towards improvement, like increased amenities and support in introductory job positions, caregiver and travel grants at conferences, and funding opportunities in education dedicated to underrepresented groups. But many more changes are needed. Education and outreach are important tools for promoting an inclusive culture in science and helping everyone appreciate how beautiful and important our communities, both ecological and human, really are.
Work-Life Balance: How do you balance your scientific career with personal and family life? Do you have any tips for others?
I always think of work-life balance like what they say about the oxygen masks on an airplane. If I’m not taking care of myself and my well-being, I won’t be able to take care of others or put energy towards my work. This mentality helps me to avoid feeling guilty about taking time off or away from work. It can be really hard to take time for a hike or to travel to see family when I think of all the things I “should” be doing in my spare time to advance my career. But being outside and sharing my excitement for nature with family and friends is what got me into science in the first place. I always feel more excited and motivated to work after I’ve taken time to enjoy a break and watch some birds.
Career Advice: What advice would you give someone just starting their career in science?
Don’t feel like you have to learn everything at once. In school and in introductory-level jobs, there is often pressure to learn many skills as fast as possible, and it feels impossible to ever master any of them, let alone all of them. Experience is something that comes with time, and there will always be more skills to learn. It’s important to only compare yourself to your past self, rather than comparing yourself to everyone around you. You will always be impressed with how much you’ve learned compared to where you were a few years ago. So, take your time learning things and enjoy the process. You have your entire life to learn new things, so it’s ok (and better) not to rush through all of them at once.
Current Work: What impact do you hope your work will have? What is the most exciting part of your job?
I’ve been lucky to have a great education in some of the more technical aspects of being a biologist. I really like coding, statistics, and study design. These are skills that all biologists are expected to have, but when there are a billion other things you are expected to learn about science, it’s hard to become an expert in math and computer science, too. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I’m hoping my skills can be useful in supporting other biologists’ work. I love working with people with more experience than me in project planning, data collection, community outreach, and the many other important aspects of conservation science and KBO’s work. It’s great to work with a team of people with diverse skill sets because everyone has useful things to contribute and learn from. I hope my work contributes to the common goals of increasing scientific knowledge and protecting the environment, and that I can make things easier for the other incredible people working in this field and at KBO along the way.
Kate Halstead
Career Journey: Can you share your journey into the field of science? What inspired you to pursue this path?
I’ve always had a deep love for nature. When I was quite young I wanted to be a marine biologist like Jacques Cousteau, and I have loved David Attenborough as long as I can remember. I got very interested in birds when I was about ten years old. I’d spend hours alone in the fields and forests around my family’s home in New Hampshire with an old Peterson bird guide, chasing down flying creatures to identify them and observe their behavior – sort of doing amateur field ornithology before I knew what that was. After high school I decided to study fine art, but that didn’t work out. I worked as a landscaper and at plant nurseries for a while, I think because I still needed a connection with living things. In my 20s I started becoming more aware and concerned about the environmental issues we were facing, and decided to go back to college so I could do something to help. I ended up at The Evergreen State College in WA. There I took an Intro to Environmental Studies course co-taught by Dr. Alison Styring, the first professional ornithologist I’d met. Working with her made me realize that one could study birds for a career, and adventure across the world while doing it – well, that was that!
Challenges and Triumphs: What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a woman or not in science, and how have you overcome them?
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, and in my cultural surroundings, it was still pretty expected that the primary purpose of girls and woman was to marry and have children. My family encouraged my education and interest in science, but it felt like no one expected I could/would actually become a scientist. It was also uncommon for me to see women represented in the sciences – though I’m grateful for the example of Jane Goodall, who planted the seed that it was possible. I didn’t get much encouragement when I decided to pursue science as a career, especially given how disruptive all of my eventual field biology adventures were to a “normal” life. As excited and driven as I felt on this new path, I had to work on my self-doubt and what I now understand to be internalized misogyny, and I had to let go of caring what anyone else thought of me. Encountering other women doing what I wanted to do (Dr. Alison Styring and Dr. Nalini Nadkarni at Evergreen, Jaime Stephens while I was her intern at KBO in 2008, and many amazing fellow female students) helped me come to the deep personal conviction that I could be an excellent scientist, and that I had as much a right to do so as anyone else. And I’m proud to now be raising a young girl who has no doubt that she can be and do anything she wants.
Diversity and Inclusion: What changes do you believe are necessary to promote greater gender diversity and inclusion in the scientific community?
It’s clear that there are still structural and cultural shifts that need to happen in our society, and of course, this feeds into the sciences. Too many remaining barriers get in the way of little kids who love asking questions emerging into adulthood as the scientists they might have dreamed of becoming. The way our society is structured makes it really hard for many families to access resources of money, time, connections, education, and health. These resources enable opportunities for exploration that might eventually lead into the sciences and sustain that path. And it’s crazy that we are still here in 2025, but I’ve heard way too many stories of young people being deterred from scientific education and careers by encounters with the misogyny, racism, and other prejudices we still harbor. However, I believe in the power of small actions across many people to change the world. Those of us already in the sciences – as well as those in the education systems that feed the sciences – need to keep talking about these issues, to ensure that the work of the scientific community benefits from incorporating the spectrum of humanity, and also just to make life better for everyone. We all have the ability to look around us and prioritize acting in ways that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and accessibility within our own sphere of influence. And we can do that no matter which way the political winds are blowing.
Work-Life Balance: How do you balance your scientific career with personal and family life? Do you have any tips for others?
Having a family and building my career has been a true challenge, complicated by health issues that have caused me some disability recently. It has been both helpful and difficult having a partner who is also a wildlife biologist. I have never needed to explain why I had to take one temporary job after another, always in a new location, because he was doing the same thing. But keeping a long-distance relationship going is difficult, especially when at least one party is always out of cell range! Navigating this while getting into and completing grad school, then deciding how to prioritize each other’s careers when we couldn’t always get a position in the same city, was often stressful. But we were able to make it work and mostly had a grand time in those years. Deciding we wanted to add a child to the mix did mean that one of us was going to put their career on the back-burner for a while, and since my spouse was making progress with his career in the federal government, we decided I’d stay at home for a bit. Working remotely made it possible for me to start up my career again when I was ready (thanks, KBO!), and to afford a pre-school program that our daughter has benefitted from immensely. For me/us, the keys have been high-quality communication, deep consideration of the implications of making big changes to our lives together, an ability to set healthy boundaries at work, and access to remote ways of working. And very importantly, extreme flexibility in taking new positions and moving to new cities has been key to us maintaining our quality of life given the lack of child care, universal health care, and universal parental leave in the United States.
Career Advice: What advice would you give someone just starting their career in science?
I’ve found that being an absolute pest (albeit a pleasant one) served me well while building my career. Talk to as many other students, professional scientists, and professors in your field as possible to gather data about what among your options (for schools, courses, training, types of research, locating jobs, entities you might work for, etc.) might be a good fit for you. Especially during undergrad, there are a lot of “invisible” opportunities that will become open to you by being an engaged student, making yourself helpful to professors, asking lots of questions, joining clubs and societies, volunteering within labs or external organizations, and making friends with people doing cool stuff that you’d like to do too. Word of mouth and personal connections are THE thing that I’ve found makes the difference getting a foot in the door. And if you aren’t sure where to focus, embrace the adventure and try as much as you can. Inspiration often comes from unexpected quarters. The more exposure you give yourself to the many questions, study systems, locations on the planet to work, and methods for doing that work that encompass every field of science, the more chances you give yourself to find the thing(s) that set a fire burning in you. Some phases of your career will be a slog, and I’ve found that internal fire is critical in these times to keep one motivated. And remember that you are the sole master of your career; you are allowed to make small or big course corrections if you make new realizations about what you love to do and what is sustainable for you.
Current Work: What impact do you hope your work will have? What is the most exciting part of your job?
Conservation of biodiversity across the planet becomes a bigger concern every day, and birds are such an important part of the webs we must keep intact. It’s a true ‘all hands on deck’, ‘team work makes the dream work’ situation. Most simply I want to be part of that team, and want my work to be useful in moving the needle on bird conservation. Practically, I want my work to help us better understand how individual bird species – and by extension bird communities – respond to the way human activities have configured their habitats across large landscapes. When first getting into landscape ecology, I was pretty surprised at the lack of clarity we have about the impact of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity, and got interested in the ways that computing tools and remote sensing technologies (for example, satellite imagery) were being used to address this problem. This is where I’ve been focusing recently, and it’s been quite exciting to help KBO take a leadership role in that innovative work.
