“If you got a problem, I got a problem too”: working toward making academic science more equitable

I am extraordinarily grateful and humbled to win the ASCB Prize for Excellence in Inclusivity. However, even as I continue to center equity in all aspects of my work as a scientist, educator, and professor, I hope that we can make this award, and awards like it, obsolete. To do that, we need to recognize all the ways that academic science, and our society in general, is structured to limit who gets to fully participate as scientists and scientific leaders, limiting true innovation and advancement of science and technology. This essay is an attempt to illuminate those connections.