So when we were younger,
I think it wasn't just me, I think all of us,
our impression of an explorer was always a white guy,
usually in his 40s or 50s and he had a beard,
like pretty much always had a beard with some ice in it.
And that image of an explorer being a woman,
or being a bit tanned,
um, was never a thing, you know?
And so, I--I just, I--I genuinely had no idea
that I could be an explorer.
(female vocalist) ♪ You set the record, I'm gonna break it ♪
People still come to me and they say,
isn't that a man's job?
EARLE: I had to make my own door,
but it never occurred to me that I couldn't.
Open that door for the women
and they become role models in their communities.
GRIFFITHS: Glamour magazine called me a camera-toting badass.
I am Dominique. I'm an Ecologist.
My name is Asha de Vos. I'm a Marine Biologist.
My name is Jennifer Doudna.
I'm working to cure genetic disease.
I'm Intan Suci Nurhati.
I'm a paleoclimate scientist.
ALL: I am a woman of impact.
NARRATOR: It all starts with one question.
How will you make the world a better place?
I became a photographer because I wanted to change the world.
I mean, that was, you know, that was the whole point.
NARRATOR: Jodi Cobb is literally one of the first ladies of photography
using images to make an impact.
In her 40-year career,
Jodi has visited 65 countries and produced dozens of stories
for National Geographic Magazine.
I was one of the first photographers
to cross China when it opened to the West,
and then the first photographer allowed inside the world
of the veiled women of Saudi Arabia,
and the first photographer allowed into the secret world of geisha.
I photographed the first woman jockey,
and the first woman coal miner,
and the first women longshoreman,
and all these women who were doing firsts
because that's the time that it was.
Women were breaking into all these professions.
I was the first woman of color to be an anchor at ESPN.
The first woman of color
to be a morning show anchor in 2005.
I'm the first one to acknowledge the accomplishments of others.
It's astonishing to me what women can do.
I photograph the-- a celebration of the joys
of being a woman but also, you know,
the real tragedies and traumas that can affect the women.
You put all those emotions
and all the sadness and despair into the work.
You know, you just think, "I'm here for a reason,
and that reason is to show this situation to the world."
I think that's sort of what I've learned
through my very long career
was that actually you can affect things on a very small level,
but you can affect things.
NARRATOR: For the first ladies,
changing the world is only one part of their legacy.
They're also changing the lives of a generation of young women,
following the trails they've blazed.
LOPEZ: A few women, in particular,
have just been absolutely incredible
and showing us fellow female scientists
how you can continue to break boundaries
and really be the first in these fields.
NARRATOR: Perhaps no one has inspired more interest in wildlife,
or inspired more women to study and protect wild animals,
than the so-called "Trimates,"
primatologists Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas,
and Jane Goodall.
Jane Goodall is a huge hero of mine.
Uh, of course, also someone with a very intimate relationship to Tanzania.
NARRATOR: In 1960, 26-year-old Jane Goodall arrived on the shores
of the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in western Tanzania
and began her groundbreaking life's work with chimpanzees.
Jane was not only one of the earliest female explorers
that National Geographic backed, but you think about her story.
She was this young woman in the UK
who just had a passion for animals,
takes herself to Africa,
goes into the field alone to work with chimpanzees.
NARRATOR: Today, in part because of Jane,
Laly Lichtenfeld also works in Tanzania
saving big cats.
LICHTENFELD: I remember reading in my tent in Kenya
as a young girl, her book, Reason for Hope
and, um, you know, just being really inspired by her work.
(animal call)
NARRATOR: Biruté Galdikas was just 25
when she arrived at a wildlife reserve
in Indonesian Borneo to seek out the elusive orangutans.
She also inspired Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
to achieve the elusive goal
of becoming the first wildlife veterinarian in Uganda.
KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: I met Dr. Biruté Galdikas.
I was also highly inspired by her.
Um, I remember some words she wrote in a book I bought from her,
"Follow your dreams and the rest will follow,"
and I always say that to other women as well.
NARRATOR: Dian Fossey's pioneering work
among Rwanda's mountain gorillas
motivated Marina Elliot to study ancient man.
ELLIOTT: Dian Fossey really kept me interested
in--in the sort of primate end of what it is
to be human and then our human origins.
One of the other explorers that inspired me, the Leakey's,
they've been working in Africa for so many years.
NARRATOR: Paleontologist Mary Leakey,
another first lady, started searching for evidence
of prehistoric man in Tanzania
in the 1930s with her husband, Louis Leakey.
One fortuitous day,
Mary ventured out with just their dogs
to their dig site at Olduvai Gorge.
She made one of the most important discoveries of our time,
as Louis Leakey recalls in this classic film.
LEAKEY: In 1959, 17th of July,
Mary went out alone,
and she spent the morning crawling up and down the cliffs
of FLK-1 to see whether there was any further clue to be got.
Round about 11:00 she was ready to pack up and come back.
She did one more crawl up the cliff
and she saw a small fragment
of first of all, what looked like a human skull.
She bent down and with her brush and brushed,
and as soon she brushed on the skree,
there were two human teeth.
NARRATOR: Mary Leakey had discovered
the one-and-three quarter-million-year-old Australopithecus.
LEAKEY: She abandoned everything,
rushed back and told me,
"I've got it! I've got it! I found the man."
NARRATOR: With that find, a woman anthropologist
recast the way we view the origins of man.
Those really strong,
really capable women who have--have led the way for the rest of us
have always been really inspirational.
NARRATOR: One more first lady who bravely took the plunge
because she believed it was possible to change the world
is affectionately known as "Her Deepness,"
Sylvia Earle.
When I began exploring the ocean as a young oceanographer,
it was considered really exceptional for a woman to be at sea.
When an opportunity came about in 1969,
inviting scientists to participate in an experiment
of living underwater at the same time that we're thinking about
putting astronauts up in the sky,
no one expected women to apply.
So, there's some of us
who applied and the head of the program, James Miller,
apparently said,
"Well half the fish are female
I guess we could put up with a few women."
And they couldn't stand the idea of men and women
living together underwater.
And they really said, "Hanky panky on the reef."
So, they had a women's team
and I was asked to be the leader of that team.
There were five of us.
We had not met each other before, but we quickly bonded.
MAN: Now, a team of divers will attempt to live for two weeks
as quiet residents on the sea floor.
Ironically, these Aquanauts are not men
with extraordinary physical endurance and stamina,
but five young and attractive women.
The world's first real-life mermaids.
Their leader is a renowned scientist, Dr. Sylvia Earle,
a marine botanist and an experienced diver.
We became... (sighs)
...we became the Aquabelles.
We were not called aquanauts as the men were called aquanauts.
We were called Aqua-naughties.
I can't--can't believe, where does this stuff come from?
We didn't care what they called us just so we got to go.
NARRATOR: Now, 50-years after Sylvia Earle's
watershed moment for women oceanographers,
no one is calling this all-female team,
led by two women scientists,
anything but heroes for the planet.
The Sea to Source Expedition
is taking on the problem of plastics in our waterways,
starting with the Ganges River,
one of the world's holiest rivers,
but sadly also one of the most polluted by plastics.
KOLDEWEY: So, I'm the expedition co-lead
for the Sea to Source Project.
And as part of that
I'm working with my co-lead Jenna Jambeck
to design the science to answer the questions
about how plastic is getting into
our major river systems around the world,
how it moves through those systems,
how it gets into the ocean,
what impact it's having, and how do we change that.
Heather and I working on this together as co-leads
made sense because of our backgrounds and our fields.
Very complimentary.
KOLDEWEY: Jenna and I both pulled together our teams
and we looked at them and they're all women.
They were the best of the best,
but they just happened to all be women.
JAMBECK: That's been a great way to really show
other women around the world that this can be done,
and so that's what I hope that this can be an example of.
We felt very strongly
that this really tough, ambitious, uh, crazily beautiful thing
that we call the Sea to Source Expedition
that was was an opportunity
to celebrate that anything's possible for women.
NARRATOR: Here are the stories
of the women who are changing the world,
fearlessly exploring uncharted territory
following in the footsteps of those who went before
and then stepping out into the unknown.
ELLIOTT: The descent is difficult and as I looked down and I thought,
"Oh you know... (chuckles)
I don't know if I'm-- if I can do this."
I didn't know any female scientists when I was growing up
and I was, frankly, a little bit intrigued
by the idea that somebody like me
could pursue a career in science.
I think passing the baton is--is incredibly important and exciting.
I feel, you know, that's probably the most important thing that I do.
NARRATOR: When it comes to passing the baton for women in anthropology,
Marina Elliot has taken it and run with it.
She is one of a team of six women anthropologists
to explore the fossil-rich Rising Star Cave in South Africa.
ELLIOTT: The first thing that came through my mind
when I went through the final slot into the actual final chamber
was Howard Carter's anecdote
about opening Tutankhamen's tomb.
"What do you see?"
And Carter says, "Things, wonderful things!"
And it was--it was that feeling.
God, this place is beautiful.
NARRATOR: They unearthed the bones of Homo Naledi
and changed our view of human evolution.
Homo Naledi is what we call an "early hominin."
So, a--a distant maybe, relative of humans,
a general relative or cousin of ours.
Homo Naledi existed in South Africa
somewhere around 350,000 to 250,000 years ago,
so that's actually reasonably recent for these kinds of fossils.
NARRATOR: Homo Naledi is more than two million years younger
than Mary Leakey's find.
Her Australopithecus was more like an ape.
Homo Naledi is closer to being human.
It's a really interesting and unusual fossil
because it's so young and it looks very, very different from us.
Especially in paleoanthropology to get so much material
the way we have with Homo Naledi is extremely rare.
Just ask the Leakeys.
-So yeah, it's amazing. -Whoo-hoo.
[both laughing]
NARRATOR: In Botswana's Okavango delta,
filmmakers Beverly and Dereck Joubert,
have been blazing a trail for a new generation of women in wildlife
since the 1980s.
I grew up in Southern Africa and, um, always had a passion
for animals, for wildlife.
NARRATOR: It was especially the animals of Botswana
who called to the Jouberts
in a time of tragic loss of wildlife.
JOUBERT: In a 50-year period we've lost between
75% and 95% of wildlife in Africa.
What I'm working on right now is the Big Cat Initiative.
We have about 120 projects in 27 countries.
The majority are Africa and each project is really
to see how we can stop the demise of the cats,
all cats from lions, leopards, and cheetah,
but also work very closely with the communities.
NARRATOR: Heading up one of the Big Cat Initiative projects
is Laly Lichtenfeld in Tanzania.
A lot of our work historically has focused on preventing conflict
between people and big cats.
Laly's phenomenal in what she's doing and she's been one of the grantees
because of her success on the ground with the Maasai.
The big question is understanding why is environmental protection
important to local or indigenous populations,
understanding it from their point of view, their dialogue,
and then helping them to develop the skills and the tools
to drive forward programming that makes sense to them.
NARRATOR: Working on the same team,
Laly and Beverly have been a boon to big cats.
Beverly Joubert has been a real inspiration to me
because, uh, as a conservationist,
it's just been very inspiring to see the images that she takes
and how powerful that is for conserving big cats.
(camera shutter clicks)
NARRATOR: One of Laly's most successful programs for protecting lions
is a partnership with local Maasai villagers
called "Living Walls."
LICHTENFELD: They're environmentally friendly, predator-proof corrals
that were co-designed with the Maasai people
and they've been tremendously impactful
in reducing conflict, keeping livestock safe,
and therefore reducing the need for people to go out
and kill lions.
And so we're seeing lion populations rebound.
Laly had really novel ideas that weren't necessarily popular, um,
in the larger conservation community,
and I've watched her fight, and prove herself,
and prove that her ideas are worthwhile and correct,
and get the recognition that she deserves.
LICHTENFELD: Today, we've planted a tree,
-we've protected livestock... -(goat bleating)
...and we've saved big cats.
It's a good day! (chuckles)
I've been really impressed
with the competence and the self-assurance
of the young women coming along today.
In the culture I grew up in women were supposed to... pfft... yes sir,
and we were to serve the men.
In fact, one expedition that I was allowed to go as long as I agreed
to cook the meals...
(chuckles) ...and wash the dishes.
(laughs) I was a scientist like my colleagues.
I think that's changed a lot. (chuckles)
People wouldn't even dare ask Katy Croff,
"Well, you can come, but you have to wash the dishes."
NARRATOR: Even in the 20-years since ocean explorer
Katy Croff Bell has been going to sea,
there's been a sea change for women in marine science.
So, my background is in deep sea exploration
and I've spent a lot of time on big ships
with big robots, exploring places that have never been seen before.
When I first started going to sea,
there maybe were a couple of women
on any given vessel that we were on.
Sometimes I was the only one.
NARRATOR: In Katy's two decades of working
with oceanographer extraordinaire,
Dr. Robert Ballard,
she set her sights on having more women leaders on board.
Now you're seeing much, much larger numbers, or percentages, I guess,
of female scientists of all levels from undergraduate up through PhD
and in leadership positions.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think of this woman next to you?
She's being nice to me.
She's letting me act like I have some degree of control,
but she's--she's the chief scientist.
There are a lot more women on the Nautilus
than any... any other ships that I know of, certainly.
I was just doing the watches and I have more women than men on watch.
Yes! (laughs)
NARRATOR: Growing up in Kenya,
it was a woman who inspired elephant expert Joyce Poole's
life's work when Joyce was just a girl.
When I was 11 years old,
I went to a lecture by Jane Goodall
at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi.
And after her fascinating talk,
I turned to my mother and said,
"That's what I'm going to be when I grow up."
I've studied elephants all my life, um... and--and, for me,
they're just extraordinary animals.
I can't imagine a world without elephants.
It's all right, it's all right.
It's OK, it's OK.
NARRATOR: Joyce Poole began learning the secrets
of their behavior from a woman
who's been studying elephants in Kenya
for almost half a century now,
Cynthia Moss.
POOLE: It's through Cynthia
that I came to love and study elephants.
NARRATOR: Using a photo album of the elephants,
Cynthia taught Joyce how to identify individuals.
POOLE: Now, look, here in this picture you would say
M57 is older than M22.
NARRATOR: Now, Joyce studies elephants
in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park.
Here, during the brutal 15-year civil war,
armed soldiers gunned down almost
every large animal in the park including 90% of the elephants.
The war ended in 1992 and populations are recovering,
but there's still much to be done.
POOLE: These Gorongosa elephants have been through terrible trauma.
The scars of that trauma have been handed down from,
you know, grandmother to daughter to--to granddaughter.
So I think we have a lot to learn
about the impact that that has, uh, on a population.
NARRATOR: To help these animals heal,
Joyce takes a cue from the elephant matriarchs.
She's now passing down her knowledge
to a younger woman scientist dedicated
to the Gorongosa elephants, Dominique Gonçalves.
The first time I met Dominique,
she said to me, "I want to study elephants."
And she is just such a force of nature.
-Um, she is a brilliant... -(speaks indistinctly)
...young scientist.
I mean, they could be the ones,
-they could be the ones. -(Dominique speaks indistinctly)
GONÇALVES: With Joyce Poole, she's so sweet, so lovely.
And we met. We clicked right away.
(chuckles)
NARRATOR: As Cynthia did years ago,
Joyce taught Dominique to spot the elephant's unique markings
so they could recognize and record each individual in the Park.
(speaking indistinctly)
But Dominique's true initiation came
when she was finally all alone with the elephants
in Gorongosa as she began her new job
as Manager of the Elephant Ecology Project in the park.
GONÇALVES: Normally, I would go with Joyce
and I wouldn't mind if the elephant charged
how many times because I am with Joyce.
NARRATOR: This day,
Dominique found herself face-to-face with her favorite male elephant,
named Aliosio, and four other bulls,
one of whom was in musth and agitating the others.
GONÇALVES: And, I remember Aliosio coming close.
Don't charge. Be nice.
That's a nice bull.
So, I was just trying not to breathe hard
and praying that he wouldn't hit the vehicle, charge,
otherwise we'll be dead.
But, Aliosio came so close and he leaned his head down.
I could see my face on his amber eyes.
That was a moment when I decided that I can do it. (chuckles)
That was a good moment for me.
One of the most important.
A quote that I have pinned to the top of my Twitter feed that really
inspires me and I hope it inspires others is from Tony Morrison
and she said so eloquently,
"If you have some power, then you have to empower somebody else."
Now it's my job to actually help others
and to make sure that everybody can
get these same opportunities.
Women, I think, are challenged every day
to be fully themselves,
and to, um, bring their gifts to the world.
My name is Lynn Johnson and I am a photographer,
and tell the stories of others.
I just actually returned from the field doing a story to answer the question,
are we visible yet?
I'm here to report that we are not.
What does it take to be visible as a woman?
We are still in many cultures, rendered invisible.
NARRATOR: How best to make women visible
and powerful is on the minds of many women
dedicated to changing the world,
like Dr. Gladys, as she's known in Uganda.
You need to really empower women for conservation to work.
We're trying very much to reduce the threats
to gorillas and other wildlife in their habitat
by generally improving community health and the quality of life.
NARRATOR: Dr. Gladys has not only succeeded in increasing the number
of mountain gorillas from critically endangered levels,
she's also empowered women to have fewer children
to improve human lives.
One of our programs is family planning.
This has really helped the women
because now they have more control over their bodies.
When we started out, women were having babies every year.
When we started the family planning, women found that they didn't
have to have a baby every year.
So that really liberated them.
If a woman can decide if and when to have a child,
she's going to be healthier
and her child's going to be healthier.
A woman and a man in their family
have the chance to lift their family out of poverty
because if the woman can work and contribute her income to the family,
it changes everything in the family dynamic
and it changes the community and ultimately,
it's good for everybody.
The women have a large influence on the family unit.
LICHTENFELD: Gladys is strong,
and I'm so impressed by her ability to communicate
her message and her dedication to it,
and it comes through in her words so strongly
how passionate she is about Uganda,
about conservation, and about the people.
NARRATOR: Just to the south, in Tanzania,
Laly Lichtenfeld also fights to help women roar.
LICHTENFELD: The communities that I work in are very male-dominated,
um... patriarchal societies.
Our Women's Beekeeping Initiative is a really exciting opportunity to help
elevate rural women's livelihoods while also protecting habitat.
NARRATOR: The program is a win-win for empowerment
and the environment.
LICHTENFELD: Wherever the ladies put their beehives in the wild bush,
the Tanzanian policy doesn't allow them to cut down the tree
or to cultivate in the vicinity.
And so they're still protecting the grasslands and the forests
for, uh, the communities and for the wildlife.
NARRATOR: In Mozambique,
in addition to her work with elephants,
Dominique Gonçalves is helping to heal the women
of Gorongosa National Park.
GONÇALVES: I am part of the next generation of women
that have to make sure
that this place survives.
NARRATOR: Twenty-seven-years after the brutal civil war devastated the people
and animals living in and around the park,
Gorongosa has become an international conservation model.
(speaking in native language)
NARRATOR: One reason for the comeback of elephants and other wildlife
is the empowerment and education of women and girls.
We have this after-school program called Girls Club,
which is really to keep girls at school.
And most important thing,
we bring them role models so they can see it is possible.
Now they say I want to be a scientist, I want to be a minister,
I want to be a ranger.
For the first time in the history of Gorongosa to have women rangers
and they become also role models in their communities.
It is important for conservation to empower women
because the women can then make choices,
better choices that's going to ensure that people
and also wildlife thrives.
-(speaking indistinctly) -NARRATOR: Half a world away,
in Silicon Valley, California,
girls get a shot of confidence in another field
where boys have typically been boss.
There is a value in female teachers
in subjects that are traditionally thought for boys,
physics, math, engineering courses.
There's a certain comfort and role modeling
in seeing or in being taught by somebody who you relate to.
If the girls are empowered,
you will have, I believe, a better world,
a better humanity.
My question is why...
In my 20-years, I've definitely seen a progress
and I've seen more girls taking more of the traditionally, uh, male subjects.
The girls are definitely thinking, "Yes we can."
NARRATOR: From education to elephant rescue,
the super-power of empowerment
is giving women the courage to believe in themselves.
VITALE: One of the areas I'm working a lot in is
the first indigenous owned and run elephant sanctuary in all of Africa.
It's called the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary.
And what also makes it so special is it's the first sanctuary,
certainly in East Africa, maybe in all of Africa,
that's hiring indigenous women to be the elephant keepers.
Now, Ami is a bundle of joy.
She's done very important work with endangered species, with rhinos,
and pandas, and elephants now.
VITALE: I was there recently,
and the Samburu from a village so far away,
probably walked 12 hours to get to the elephant sanctuary,
and I asked them what they were doing,
and they said, "Well, we heard these stories.
We heard stories that women, women,
were working with elephants and we had to see it
with our own eyes to believe it,
that this was actually true."
And then, you know, they--they witnessed it and they couldn't believe it,
and I think it's been this beautiful transformation
of how people are beginning to see one another.
You can't underestimate the power of being able to see yourself,
whoever you are.
You just want to see a reflection of yourself
doing what it is that you're dreaming to do.
What does an explorer look like?
What does somebody leading an expedition look like
and how does that change if you are a woman?
You have this image of being sort of a female version of Indiana Jones.
DE VOS: I think my dreams of becoming an explorer began when I was quite young.
I was probably about six years old.
My parents would bring back secondhand National Geographic Magazines,
and I would flip through those pages,
and I would see these people in incredible spaces.
And in my mind I was replacing all these faces with my own,
and I think those images were so powerful
in that sense of allowing me to dream in a space
that, you know, I didn't really have access to.
Asha de Vos is a one-woman force of nature
who, against all odds,
is realizing that she needs to be out there and be the voice
for change in Sri Lanka, and now the world.
I founded Sri Lanka's first marine conservation research
and education organization called Oceanswell.
And through Oceanswell we tried to address marine conservation problems.
We have two pilot projects at the moment.
So, one is the Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project,
which is what we're best known for.
It's a project that's been running for about a decade now.
We also just launched the Sri Lankan sperm whale project.
So that's exciting because we are looking at conservation
in a different way so we can then start to protect them
on the level that they need to be protected.
In addition to her amazing fieldwork that she's doing,
she's developing a curriculum
to assure that future generations of Sri Lanka
come to know the importance of the oceans, and the beautiful creatures
that she finds there.
NARRATOR: In Jakarta, Indonesia,
fellow marine scientist Intan Suci Nurhati
is also finding answers, and her voice, in the oceans.
I have this dream that I want to contribute
to the climate science community.
And physically I'm not cut for this, uh, I'm small.
If you think about working in the field with all this heavy equipment
and how could you do that?
But, I think the moral of the story
is that as long as you keep your eyes on the prize,
all these hurdles are just something that you have to deal with.
Wearing hijab, there is a question, how do you dive with this?
And I think when I'm not in the water,
um, people wouldn't think that I'm a diver.
NARRATOR: Intan proudly wears her hijab when she dives the reefs.
Her Instagram handle is the "coral oracle"
because she reads the planet's future in the coral's past.
So I'm a paleoclimate scientist by training.
What that means is I reconstruct past climate and ocean conditions
and I do that by unlocking information from corals.
I think what people probably are more familiar with
is the concept of tree rings,
that happens in the oceans with corals.
So once I drill the corals
from top to the bottom, you get a long history
of temperature and other important climate parameters.
NARRATOR: Whether drilling into the mysteries of climate change
or unlocking the secrets of our DNA,
women scientists are going where no man has gone before,
like professor Jennifer Doudna,
one of the pioneers of the gene editing technology,
"CRISPR."
DOUDNA: So CRISPR-cas genome editing means
a way of altering the DNA in cells
that enables scientists to change the genetics of life.
I think we're going to have
some very interesting opportunities over the next decade
to understand and cure genetic disease.
This is a powerful technology.
It is changing the world.
I think it's an incredible honor, for me, to be playing that role
of kind of ambassador for science.
NARRATOR: From the inner world of DNA to outer space,
women explorers are raising their voices to save the planet.
As a young girl, I was always fascinated
with science and space exploration.
I was participating in science fairs.
I loved to read.
Also, another hero of mine at the time was Sally Ride.
She was the first female US astronaut in space.
That really inspired me to also continue to pursue my path and career
in science, technology, and space exploration.
For the past four and a half years or so,
I was working with a team that was managing
the US segment of the International Space Station.
We're working to improve, uh, life on earth,
in particular certain areas such as the environment,
climate, education, inequality.
There's one particular quote that I love is,
"You can't be what you can't see."
When you see these incredible women that are taking these steps
to break boundaries for other women,
it's very important, especially for young girls
to be able to see, uh, these heroes.
I do a lot of presentations and so often some young person
will raise their hand, say, "Yeah, but can you really do this
and--and have a family?"
(speaking indistinctly)
My name is Annie Griffiths.
I'm a storyteller, a photographer, and a mom.
One of the best passports to women's lives for me
is when they realize I'm a mother.
Then I'm not so strange.
There's something they can grab onto and say,
OK, you know, we know each other.
NARRATOR: One of the first women photographers
for National Geographic Magazine,
Annie Griffiths, has worked in 150 countries.
She's not only broken new ground as a woman
in a field then dominated by men,
but also as a mom in a field where travel comes with the territory.
I made a commitment that I'd never leave the kids
for more than two weeks
until they were out of high school and I didn't.
NARRATOR: Heading out on assignment in Galilee, Israel in 1995,
Annie's children were two and five.
I didn't mention it to anyone at the office,
they weren't asking the guys about their daycare arrangements,
but I knew that I was paving the way for other photographers,
men and women, to do this.
And if I screwed up, that would be bad for everybody.
So after about five years
I started talking about it because I wanted to inspire
other people to do it.
This job can be really tough on families, but you can do it.
NARRATOR: Flash forward almost two decades,
and Sea to Source expedition co-leads,
Heather Koldewey and Jenna Jambeck,
have a new twist on balancing family and fieldwork.
KOLDEWEY: For Jenna and I,
we felt that it was an opportunity
to--to set things up in a different way.
A job share situation
where we start and finish the expedition together,
but in between we swap in and out.
And by sharing the job,
we can completely dedicate our time when we're here,
and then go back and--and see our family.
NARRATOR: But the mama of all field science moms
was the woman who so often blazed a new trail
through life in the wild.
In 1967,
when Jane Goodall had a son, nicknamed "Grub,"
Jane took a mothering cue from the primates she studied.
GOODALL: When Grub was a very tiny baby,
for me, it was very, very important
to establish a close mother-child relationship.
Not to leave him for long periods of time.
I wanted to imitate the chimp mothers to some extent.
They have endless patience.
Endless tolerance.
And they're very affectionate.
And so for the first one-and-a-half to two-years of Grub's life,
I modeled my behavior to some extent anyway, on a chimp mother.
NARRATOR: Jane inspired lion expert
Laly Lichtenfeld to raise her daughter, Kemah,
in the Tanzanian bush.
LICHTENFELD: She is a bush girl.
She's growing up 100% of her time out in the wilds of Tanzania.
We live on the edge of Tarangire National Park
and, uh, she is growing up
with an incredible appreciation for all things wild.
And she knows mama is the lion lady
and my husband loves leopards.
And so she says that she's going to protect cheetahs and then also rhinos.
She loves rhinos as well.
And has told me that she plans to bring the rhino back.
NARRATOR: In Uganda,
gorilla conservationist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
sees her sons blossom living in the natural world.
KALEMA-ZIKUSOKA: My eldest son noticed his first elephant
when he saw it in the wilderness.
Not from a storybook.
So they're definitely much more knowledgeable
about wildlife and animals than other children their age,
and they appreciate nature much more, which is also very nice.
(elephant trumpets)
NARRATOR: In the 1990s,
elephant expert Joyce Poole raised her little daughter
around her giant research subjects.
I first brought my daughter, Selengei,
to the elephant camp when she was four months old
and in the following year, she spent a lot of time
in the camp, you know, as a toddler
wandering around the camp with elephants all around.
There was one day where I took Selengei out
to introduce her to elephants.
And I had her at the window with me and the V-family came over
and began this extraordinary greeting ceremony
that I felt was directed to me.
NARRATOR: As Selengei grew up,
she was always surrounded by nature and wildlife,
especially elephants.
POOLE: Because of her love for animals
that she got through me and our life together,
Selengei just had the opportunity to go back to Kenya
and to work in a conservancy.
I'm very happy for her to be able to go back
and to participate in something
that--that means so--so much for her.
I'm Ella Al-Shamahi and I'm a paleoanthropologist.
NARRATOR: By day,
Ella excavates in some of the world's most dangerous places.
By night, she faces another kind of tough crowd as a stand-up comic.
AL-SHAMAHI: What I find hugely inspirational was, for me, yeah.
(speaking indistinctly)
Standup comedy and working in hostile and unstable places
are very much related. (chuckles)
Yeah. The truth is, you know,
I--I work in places which just destroy the soul sometimes.
You know, you see things you have to deal with things.
And I think, uh, for me,
I very, very quickly realized that actually standup comedy
is just brilliant because you can completely choose how to see the world.
As some of you probably know,
um, I'm English of Arab heritage.
I'm Yemen and Syrian to be exact.
I'm basically a one-woman axis of evil,
(crowd laughs)
...an axis of evil with the voice of Mary Poppins.
(crowd laughs)
AL-SHAMAHI: Standup comedy is my mental health fix. (chuckles)
NARRATOR: Large carnivore ecologist, Rae Wynn-Grant,
was inspired not by what she saw,
but by what she didn't see.
WYNN-GRANT: It may be cliché,
but while other kids were watching cartoons,
I wanted to watch nature shows,
and the nature shows I loved the most were the ones
with the host that you could see on camera,
and I just wanted to be that person.
So that has been my motivation.
The data we collect today is critical.
Especially as a black woman,
I saw a lot of these nature show hosts
going into places where there were lots of black people,
you know, especially places in Africa,
but they weren't showing up on camera,
especially with an expertise.
And I'm so thankful every single day that I ended up here
because I'm doing what I love.
NARRATOR: Inspiration comes in many forms for the women of impact.
When I wrote, The Long Road Home,
it was about a battle in 2004,
so there were not women involved in that.
But the men in that unit first said to me,
"If you think it's tough for us losing so many people,
you should talk to our spouses."
And it was, "Of course I should."
And I felt in so many ways
that I could be a bridge between those men in battle
and those women back home because I'd been there,
but I'm a mom, I'm a wife.
I've learned a lot from them.
I've learned a lot about--about how to make marriages work,
how to... how to maintain a relationship if you're away, demands.
Those are the kinds of lessons.
NARRATOR: For big cat conservationist and photographer
Beverly Joubert in Botswana,
inspiration came almost at the cost of her life
when a Cape buffalo attacked her and her husband Dereck
in March of 2017.
JOUBERT: It was at nighttime.
We had made this journey, um, thousands of times, you know,
from our tent to the main area
and on the way with our torches
a buffalo took both Dereck and I out.
NARRATOR: Multiple surgeries later,
Beverly was finally back at camp
and found herself inspired
by an unexpected sight.
JOUBERT: This one lioness, she was wounded by a buffalo.
Quite similar in fact, roughly the same time
that I was wounded by a buffalo,
and it dislocated her shoulder
and broke her sort of wrist, paw area.
And I think, you know, I sort of affiliate to her because of that.
And I think lionesses have an immense amount of courage.
I mean, this particular lioness has just gone beyond the boundary.
You don't expect an animal to survive.
When you think of it,
I needed seven surgeons and three months in ICU.
This lioness had to recover on the ground,
all on her own.
So very impressive.
(growling)
I hope I can inspire a whole generation of ocean heroes.
I mean, my dream, I always say,
is that everyone on the planet will talk about the oceans
at least once a day.
I hope that my identity and my face in this work
can inspire people like me,
or people from nontraditional backgrounds,
to see themselves in this work,
and to see themselves contributing ideas,
and being leaders in environmental protection.
And at the heart of it, that's my ultimate goal.
I wish I had some magic formula to tell people, especially women,
what they could do to achieve, but you got to want it more than fear it.
VITALE: My final message for others is not to sit this one out,
to engage, because every voice matters.
And the messenger matters just as much as the message itself.
I would love to mobilize all the young girls
who, like me, were basically,
the idea of exploration was not open to them.
And you just think how many of those girls
could be the person who cures, you know, I don't know,
breast cancer or who finds the microbe at the back of a cave
that can digest plastics and solve our plastic problem?
What happens if that girl was from Cameroon?
Or what happens if that girl was from Afghanistan?
This exploration, I think, belongs to all of us.
And, and it's not just that it belongs to all of us.
It's that we're not going to explore the planet properly
unless we have the whole planet represented in that exploration.
Captioned by Visual Data Media Services