The Role of Role Models | StarTalk

[Music] It's often said that it's easier to be something if you can see it; if you can imagine yourself in that position. Role models have always played an important role in that. Role models have that role.

I have a slightly contrarian view of role models, where if you need someone who looks exactly like you to do something you want to do, but no one has done it before you, then you would never do anything new. So for me, in my life, I assembled my role models alart. I found this scientist who had a total command of cosmology and the universe. I said, "I want to one day be that smart, and I want to know that much.”

There was an educator who taught with such enthusiasm and humor, and with such a sense of caring. I said, "If I'm ever an educator, that's the kind of educator I want to be.” My parents, they were active in the civil rights movement, and just their general life's concern for other people, people less fortunate than you, and the concern for humanity. I said, "If I ever want to know what kind of a person I should be, I like that model."

So I pieced it all together, and I said, "This is my role model, this sort of Frankenstein assembly of parts." In that way, if there's someone who struggled through whatever bias or resistance that's out there, you talk to them about their struggles, whether or not their struggle happened to be in the field that you're interested in entering. Because struggles have a way of manifesting similarly, no matter the field.

So, in terms of gender parity in various fields that do not yet show it, I think if you want to go someplace where others have never been before, talk to people who have struggled, whether or not they're in the field you're aiming for. They will have stories that you can use and tap in, fully exploiting them in the service of your ambitions.

And don’t let the absence of someone who looks just like you be the reason why you don't become what you've always dreamt of being. [Music]