We Won’t Forget Lynika Strozier

Published Oct 20, 2020, 10:16 PM

Lynika Strozier was a promising scientist who died of COVID at age 35. Her friend and colleague Dr. Corrie Moreau remembers her friend and talks about efforts to keep Lynika’s legacy alive.


Read more about Lynika: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/obituaries/lynika-strozier-dead-coronavirus.html


Gofund me for Lynika: https://www.gofundme.com/f/552b3q-lynika039s-funeral-expenses


We hope you enjoyed season 1 of TANGOTI. We’re taking a break but watch this space because we’ll be back with more real soon.


In the meantime, say hi at hello@Tangoti.com

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There are no girls on the Internet. As a production of I Heart Radio and unbost Creative, I'm Bridget Todd, and this is there are no girls on the Internet. Worldwide, we've lost over a million people from COVID, and here in the United States, we've lost over two hundred thousand people to COVID according to the A p M Research Lab. One and every one thousand and twenty Black Americans is now dead from COVID. Let that sink in. It's an absolutely staggering figure. Yet we've had no national, large scale mourning of these deaths. Earlier this fall, Trump even said that COVID impacted quote, virtually nobody. Mickey mckella, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut and author of the Politics of Mourning, told CNN that instead of more ing, Americans have been fed a kind of wartime attitude about how he must defeat the virus and must not let the virus win, and that that response has largely been about not marking death, not marking tragedy, and not marking the horror of the ongoing lack of meaningful response, but instead focusing on that this is what Americans do, but that's now what we should do. Collective mourning is important, and mourning is an important step of dealing with grief. We can't just pretend these people never existed. They did, and they're more than just data points on some chart about COVID. There are mothers and daughters, and friends and family and colleagues. This week, faith leaders from all over the country held visuals in person and online to mourn those we've lost to COVID. And I wanted to tell you about someone we lost to. Lunika Stroser was just thirty five, and she died from complications of COVID. She was a gifted scientist and a researcher in the DNA lab at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, one of the largest in the world. She didn't have an easy life. Her mother struggled with drugs, and Lenika lived with her grandmother. A learning disability made math and reading a challenge, but she found creative solutions to manage these challenges. Rather than working out complicated math equations on a calculator, she did them on paper by hand, which helped her visualize the numbers. She worked with a visual learner, drawing pictures and diagrams helped her map out her lessons. She went on to successfully earn two master's degrees. She wasn't really sure what she wanted to study until in college, her mentor, Yvon Harris, suggested she think about exploring the sciences. My philosophy is that we're born scientists and mathematicians, and we experiment and observe the world around us all the time. Harris explained. Having the a student is nice, but we want people who have tenacity and determination and of refusal to fail. Harris told the Chicago Tribune in a profile of Lenika's academic success. When Lenka got involved in the science is it just clicked and she loved it. One of her professors even nicknamed her Golden Hands because she was able to get DNA from very small samples, a difficult task. Everyone who talks about Linika was struck by her determination. You get knocked down so many times. You have to learn to pick yourself back up, and sometimes it's about hard work and faith and having people who can help you push forward. Sometimes that's all you have to go on, she explained to the Chicago Tribune. Field Museum president Richard Lavier calls Linika's death a devastating loss, both to her own family and to her museum family and all who knew Linika. Her life goal was to be in front of a classroom teaching the sciences to others, and right before she died, that goal had actually become a reality. Who knows how many more lives Lenika could have touched? Who knows how this loss will reverberate for generations. A gifted scientist who overcame so much to accomplish so much, a teacher, and a black woman excelling in a field not traditionally known for its diversity. How many lives because she have gone into shape? And how can you even begin to measure such a loss? Like she really just had this fire in her that she always wanted to to succeed. Lenka's scientific research involved bugs and plants and other kinds of organisms. It's a pretty particular subject matter and that's something that her colleague, Corey Morous has really brought them together. How did you get involved in being a scientist? I wouldn't have predicted it from being a child. I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and um, neither of my parents went to university or graduated college. So despite the fact that I knew that I wanted to go to college, I didn't necessarily know what I could do with that degree when I got out. And I always loved nature and I always loved UM science, and so I knew that I wanted to study biology when I went to the university, and and insects were always my favorite. UM but I thought that, you know, the options for me probably were limited in the sense that the only people I knew with college degrees UM that I interacted with personally were my high school teachers. So I thought maybe I could teach biology, or since I liked insects, maybe I could work for a pest extermination company, because those were the only people I knew who had jobs to play with bugs. UM But I loved PBS, and I sort of always wished that I could be one of the explorers on you know, the television shows growing up, And essentially my dreams come true when I got to university. The world was opened up to me in the sense that there's so many ways you can use a science degree, UM. And now I get to run around jungles all over the world, collecting bugs and it's I have the dream job. What was it about bugs for you? Why did you like bugs so much? I think because I grew up in a city and I loved nature. I you know, there wasn't a lot of it outside. I also liked that there was just so much diversity with insects. You know, you could go outside and catch dragonflies or beatles, or or flies, or watched the ants on the sidewalk. And I just think it was that there was so much wonder out there that I could sort of take advantage of no matter where I live, and that's true anywhere. So how did you wind up at the Field Museum? Yeah? So I've always been associated with natural history UM collections throughout my entire career. So I started as an undergrad working in the um entomological collection at San Francisco State University. I then did my master's UM, also at San Francisco State, but in collaboration with the California Academy and the Sciences, again using their scientific research collections for you know, my master's thesis. I then went away to Harvard and I was UM using the collections at the Museum of Comparative Zoology on a daily basis, and so I've always had this connection with um natural history museums and the cool science you can do by using them. So UM, when I finally, you know, finished all my schooling and did a post docet at Berkeley, I started a position at the Film Museum in Chicago. And and although most people think of natural history museums as places to sort of go and you know, have educational and entertainment um, what most people don't realize is that almost all natural history collections have scientists working behind the scenes, using the vast collections to ask scientific questions. It was during this time playing with bugs and answering questions behind the scenes at the Field Museum that Corey met Lnika and right away they clicked. So is that the first time that you met Nika? That's absolutely true. So I met Lnika in two thousand eleven. She had done an internship with a colleague and was looking for another internship and he knew that I was looking to hire someone, and so um he introduced us in Linique and I hit it off right away. What was it about her that that made you hit it off? I think it was her openness, her honesty, and her tenacity. Like she really just had this fire in her that she always wanted to to succeed. And I don't just mean be a successful scientist, but like even with an experiment, if she couldn't get it to work, it would really like kind of not away at her and she had to figure out not just how to make it work, but why it wasn't working. And that is something And as a scientist, you can't teach that sort of drive or that creativity to someone. She just already possessed it. Yeah, and reading about her life, it seems like that kind of drive was a defined I think that really defined her. You know, she was someone who based a lot of limitations growing up and still managed to get to where she was at the end of her life. Absolutely. I mean, she was really a very thoughtful person. She was incredibly hard working, and she was such a loving person. She you know, anyone she came across in her life, she really wanted to connect with them. And I mean, I think one of the things I always respected the most about her is her her openness and honesty about both the things she's experienced in the past. But you know, you know, some people would have shame over things that they can't control. She didn't have that at all. But the flip side of it was she also loved to share her successes. And so I think when you have someone who is willing to let you see when they're down but also let you see when they're succeeding, they're an inspiration. Can you tell us a little bit more about her research. Yeah, So you know, when she was at the Field Museum, she did lots of different projects, um, because we have, you know, dozens of scientists working on pretty much every kind of organism you can imagine. So I know she did a bunch of work on early land plants and on fungi. And for me, she of course was sequencing DNA of ants. And in that project, essentially what we were trying to understand is the diversity, um, both genetic diversity, but also the host associated microbiome or the microbes living in ants from the Florida Keys. So for me, she did a lot of sequencing of DNA of ants. But you know, she went on to do a master's degree, um, a research master's degree as well as an educational master's degree, and I was on her master's committee, uh, where she was studying the philo geography of these birds from Madagascar, and she did a bunch of beautiful work on that and even published that research. Let's take a quick break and we're back. Women being in community with one another is a powerful force. Not only did their shared interest in science unite Corey and Linika, but it also created the conditions to bring more underrepresented women into the field. And the more Linika came into her own as a scientist, the more focus she became on bringing others with her. As a teacher and a mentor. Linika didn't have the picture perfect a student story. Her openness around her background and her struggles allowed others to see science as something they could do too. I just can't get over how interesting this body of work is. You don't even like, I'm not a scientist, but you don't. You never think of like someone studying birds and aunts and you know, these very specific types of organisms. It's so interesting, how I mean, I guess I can imagine you finding another woman who is captivated by all of these things that you're captivated by and really just sort of clicking absolutely. And and that's the thing is that, I mean, what I loved about Lenika is not just that she had this general awe of the natural world and wanted to learn everything she could about it. But one of her other passions was she loved sharing it. So you know, if I ever needed people to be trained in the lab, she was my go to person. And not that other people didn't have the skills, is that Lenika had joy and showing people how to do science and helping them succeed and overcome hurdles. And you know, she was just spectacular, and you know, there's not a lot of people like her in the sense that you know, she could pursue a scientific question, but she could also talk about it to the public and she could share her enthusiasm and get other people to essentially want to do the same things she's doing. Was she did she have a like a position as a role model for other students, other students from marginalized backgrounds. Absolutely, And that was one thing she was very vocal about and I absolutely loved about her, is that she wanted to make sure that we had opportunities to engage other underrepresented, you know, students in research. And so she was instrumental in making sure that we always kept that as on the forefront of our minds as we were thinking about, you know, what programming we were creating or which positions we were hiring. UM. You know, she was heavily involved in the field museums Women in Science program Uh. You know, she often was the sort of point person that was training the interns we brought in for the summer. And you know, she was a role model to many people across the museum. What is your I you don't have one particular one, But if you had to think of one of your favorite memories of her, or the most vivid memory of her, does anything come to mind? I think, of course I have many. Um. I think that the thing I remember most about Lenika is that even after she had you know, not worked for me for a while, she had gone on and done all these you know, amazing things, gotten these two master's degrees, she would always pop in my office just come by to talk to me, either to share some success she had or if she was struggling with something, she would often want to come and like bounce it off of me, just to sort of, you know, have another perspective. And most of the time she didn't need advice. It was like she needed a sounding board. She would say it out loud, and she would reach a conclusion that she probably already knew herself, but she felt like having someone else hear it, you know, gave her the courage to come to the right decision. And I liked watching her go through that, you know, essentially this vocal thought experiment just right in my office. And it was kind of you know, every time she came in, I would kind of get a small smile because I knew I was going to get to sort of see her, you know, think through a problem and reach a conclusion, and that she didn't need me. It was just she needed a space to do it. And I just really loved that about her. Lenika's friends and family raised almost eighty five dollars on go fund me for funeral cost and to establish a scholarship fund to help support young black women with internship opportunities at science and technology institutions in Chicago. Because Linika was so passionate about both science but also in including marginalized communities and science, it only seemed absolutely the right decision to do is to sort of create a scholarship and you know, we're able to do that because we had a very successful go fund me on campaign um and the you know, museums and the institutions she's been involved with are all on board. And so we're going to make sure that the next generation not only knows about Linika, but they actually continue to to you know, benefit from her impact in the world. More. After this quick break, let's get right back into it. And this time of COVID is it's been kind of heartbreaking to see the amount of people who have lost their lives to COVID and yet we have not had any kind of official, you know, large scale memorial for these people. And sometimes it can sort of feel like these people weren't people. They were sort of you know, numbers or you know, data points. How can we get to a place where we remember that these were people. They were friends, colleagues, daughters, sisters, loved ones, and not just you know, another number on the news. You know, I wish I knew the ant or to that. I mean, I remember early on in the pandemic, you know, I didn't say it out loud to anyone, but to myself, I had said, I really hope that I get through this, not knowing anyone who's personally been severely affected, And that was like this weird internal wish I had for myself, and then when when Linika passed away, I was absolutely devastated for days. I mean I couldn't stop crying, and even now thinking about it, it's tremendously sad. And to think that we have hundreds of thousands of people who are dying and we just sort of chuck it up to like, well, at least the infection rates low and the death rates low. But if it's even one, it's too many. I mean, these are people and they're they're important than they have contributions to give to the world, and so I just hope that we can control this soon and we don't have to lose any more beautiful, inspiring people like Lanika. Yeah, I mean that was one of the reasons I was so moved by her story, because I thought, you know, and obviously one life is too many to lose, but when you look at people and you think all the lives this person could have continued to touch, all of the sort of you know, generations of people who are missing out on knowing this person, getting mentorship from this person, being inspired by this person, and really taking a bird's eye look of that. At that scale of the loss that we can't even calculate, Like if you can't even really fathom it to say, to say how many people are going to, you know, could have benefited from knowing her or working with her, learning from her, seeing her. It's it's just sort of we'll never know that that the loss. That's absolutely true, and I think that's why we were all so moved to make sure that there's going to be and opportunities for other people to still have some of those experiences at least to have access to learning what sciences and getting hands on experience through these internships that we're creating, because her legacy is just so impactful, and we want to make sure that even though she can't be there to inspire them, they'll still know about what an amazing woman she was. M I'm so grateful that you all are doing this work. Lineka touched so many people's lives that it's such a loss to have her not here anymore. I'm so sorry. It's it's it's you know. I think that's another thing that really moved me about her story is I was reading an article that said that she always wanted to have this classroom of her own and that she was finally on track to make that goal a reality and then this happens, and it's just so yeah, yeah, yeah. It's somebody who had so many hurdles and none of them stopped her, and that is remarkable and everything she wanted to come true in her life, despite the fact that when she first started dreaming of them that was such a far like reach. She reached every one of them, and that to me just shows the kind of amazing person she was. And she got there not by like stepping on others or you know, throwing other people under the bus. She did it by being a loving, caring, compassionate, dedicated person. Through this scholarship, Lineika's colleagues are using the tragedy of her death to inspire the next generation of girls to fall in love with science, just like Lineka did. What do you hope the scholarship achieves? Like the like when the scholarship is up and running, what kind of impact do you hope that it has? In her name? I know that the young women who will receive this scholarship will benefit immensely, mostly because they'll have an opportunity to continue in her footsteps. Right, they will essentially be the first in their family to do research or to learn how to educate and mentor others. And and the most important thing I think for us is that we want to make sure that the work Linika was doing continues and it continues to impact the next generation of scientists. I'm I have no doubt that it will already already. I think so many people are moved by her story and her legacy and the work that you and your colleagues and her family are doing to keep that alive. So I'm I'm so grateful that you all are doing that work. Linka isn't really gone, not really. She'll live on in classrooms wherever little black girls are getting excited about science or bugs or any other subject that she's realizing could be hers to master. People like Lenica mattered, we won't forget about them or the way they shaped our lives. Their names won't be forgotten. We won't let them. We hope you've enjoyed listening to season one of There Are No Girls on the Internet. We're taking a short hiatus, but we'll be back real soon with more. In the meantime, keep in Dutch, stay hi at Hello at tangodi dot com and follow me Bridget at Bridget Marie in DC on Instagram and at Bridget Marie on Twitter, and we'll see you real soon. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, you can be just at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me bridgetad. It's a product iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget DoD. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

There Are No Girls on the Internet

Marginalized voices have always been at the forefront of the internet, yet our stories often go over 
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