The first Black woman to co-host a national broadcast nature show shares what it really takes to lead in STEM
Long before Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant became a nationally recognized face of wildlife conservation, she was a little girl in San Francisco telling anyone who would listen that she wanted to be a nature show host. That dream, which others may have dismissed as youthful fantasy, turned out to be prophecy. Today, Dr. Wynn-Grant is a wildlife ecologist, the author of the memoir Wildlife, and the first Black woman to co-host a national broadcast nature series Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom: Protecting the Wild, airing every Saturday morning on NBC and streaming on Peacock. She also hosts the PBS Nature podcast Going Wild.
Her path from a lower-income upbringing in urban San Francisco to the halls of Emory University, Yale, Columbia, and the American Museum of Natural History is not a straightforward one. It is marked by rejection, reinvention, and an unwavering refusal to shrink. Now, Dr. Wynn-Grant is turning her platform into a pipeline, using her visibility to dismantle the barriers that kept wildlife conservation a predominantly white, male space for far too long.
In an exclusive conversation, Dr. Wynn-Grant opened up about the weight of being the first, why representation in media matters most, and the three non-traditional strategies she believes women especially Black women must embrace to sustain meaningful careers without losing themselves in the process.
You’ve described your work as bigger than just research. What was the moment you realized your career had to become a platform for representation?
I started my research career working in East Africa. I went into grad school saying I want to study lions, and within a couple months I was in Tanzania studying African lions. As a Black American woman, I was the only Black American doing that work that I knew of in that space, but I was surrounded by Black African ecologists and scientists.
A few years later, I started studying North American bears, black bears, and that’s when I realized, I might be the only Black person doing this work. There’s not a lot of women, not a lot of people of color, and certainly no Black folks. I’m spending so much time telling my friends, my partners, my family members my aunties and cousins and everybody about what my life is like and what I’m doing. And everyone’s interested. So, I realized Black folks are really into this, and so my work has to be more than research. It also has to be showcasing this work in case there’s more folks who want to get involved with wildlife conservation.
You were a little girl who knew exactly what she wanted. How did you hold on to that dream long enough to make it real?
I’m one of those people who knew what I wanted to do for a living when I was, like, 5 or 6, and I have done it. That’s pretty rare. When I was a little kid, I loved watching nature shows on TV – name the nature show, I loved it, including Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I would see these hosts, and they were British, or Australian, or American white guys, middle aged, and they would go all over the world and be with tigers, koalas, gorillas, whales, or whatever it was. I loved the idea of adventure, I loved the idea of very purposefully working with wildlife to save them.
I was going to kindergarten saying, teacher, I want to be a nature show host. I went to high school saying that, and I went to my first day of freshman year of college saying that. I didn’t realize for many years that there was actually a science behind it. I wasn’t aware that wildlife ecology, wildlife conservation, is a scientific field. We think of science as wearing a lab coat and using pipettes for chemicals. I didn’t know that science could be outside, in nature, working with animals.
It was in college that a professor said, there is actually science going on there, let’s get you into environmental science and ecology.
What does it feel like to carry the distinction of being the first Black woman to co-host a national broadcast nature show, while also making sure you won’t be the last?
It means a lot to me. It matters to me very, very, very much. And at the same time, I really want everyone to know that I didn’t necessarily give myself this opportunity. I made myself very qualified, but if I had the power to put me on a nature show, I would have done that 20 years ago. If that power was within me, I would have made it happen.
As much as I worked my butt off, made sure I was qualified, asked, tried, auditioned, pitched, it took a Fortune 500 company to decide: we’re going to create this TV show, and we’re going to choose this person to co-host it.
For so many Black folks, there was a door that was shut, and someone else opened it. We didn’t necessarily open it. Sometimes society literally prevents things from happening. It doesn’t mean Black folks aren’t interested, or qualified, or there for it. It’s necessary for society to open that door.
When I talk to young people and they’re like, I want to do this too, but there isn’t enough room I always want to say, that’s not you. It doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough. It doesn’t mean that you’re not ready. It means that society hasn’t caught up to where they should be yet. All the companies, all the TV networks, Black folks should be all over natural history television, but we’re not. That’s not because of anything about us or about me. It’s about where society is.
I’m working my butt off to make sure that people know that I am Black, that I’m proud of being Black, that I do not accept being the only Black person in this position. Now that this door has been kicked down, I want everyone else to have that chance too. We need a pipeline and more opportunities here.
You’ve walked a road that many young women dream of, from San Francisco public schools to Emory, Yale, and Columbia. What do you want students to know about that path?
I grew up rural-urban, in San Francisco, lower income; we didn’t have a car, we didn’t have a TV. I went to public school, kindergarten through high school, regular public schools. I always want people to know that I was not an A student, I was not a B student. I was more of a B and C student in high school. When I was applying to college, I was like, ‘oh boy, we’ll see’.
I went to Emory University in Atlanta, I majored in environmental science. After college, I took some time off and worked in Washington, D.C. at the World Wildlife Fund. I was a secretary. I made people coffee and took notes in meetings. But I looked around and saw all these scientists. What do they have that I don’t have? And they had gone to grad school. So I was like, guess I’ll do that too.
When I was applying to grad schools, instead of looking at the schools that I thought I was qualified for, I decided to reach for the stars and just apply to some of the top places. I got into a lot of those top places because of my passion, I believe. I went to Yale University for my master’s degree. I went straight into a PhD at Columbia University, in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. After that, my postdoc was at the American Museum of Natural History.
I always share with students: apply to the Ivy League schools, apply to the big, fancy private schools. My entire Yale experience was free. I did not have money to afford the education, and I got a full ride, because schools like that have a lot of money. They have a lot of room for financial aid. You can apply, and if you get in, you can get that funded.
Catch Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom: Protecting the Wild, airing every Saturday morning on NBC and streaming on Peacock. Follow her on social media at @RaeWynnGrant and listen to her PBS Nature podcast, Going Wild. Her memoir, Wildlife, is available now.
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