A Deeper Connection - Mugdha Flores

May 12, 2023·26 min·1 clip

"I feel a deeper connection, not just with the underwater world, but also myself... if I could live underwater, I would."

Gail Straub opens the conversation by welcoming Mugda Flores to She Explores and setting the episode within the Women in Water series. Mugda introduces herself simply as a marine biologist turned science and policy communicator. She says she loves being outside, especially near water, and brings up her three dogs as part of that outdoor life. The conversation moves through her career path, which started with teaching, fieldwork, and figuring out how to share what she knew. Between her master's and bachelor's work, she spent time at a zoo as an educator, helping care for an aquarium with saltwater species from the estuary, including stingrays and other fish. She also taught elementary-age programs, and that is where she began to see education and outreach as a real path. That experience led her toward community outreach and conservation education, with marine conservation at the center. The conversation then turns to what brought her to the Pacific Northwest: she and her partner both moved there for jobs, and she now works for the state of Washington. Her job is communications work for a program focused on science and environmental monitoring, helping bring research to people across the state. She contrasts that with the discovery-based science she studied earlier, saying the current work is more about long-term monitoring, watching how the environment changes over time, and looking for pollutants. Freshwater monitoring and saltwater monitoring both sit inside that larger effort, and the range of projects is part of what keeps the work interesting. The episode keeps coming back to translation, or the way science becomes language for other people. Mugda's path runs from teaching and fieldwork to outreach, conservation education, and government communication, all while staying grounded in water and the outdoors.

As heard by us

A calm look at science, communication, and a life shaped by water.

Mugda Flores moves from marine biology into science and policy communication, and the episode stays with the way that shift shaped her work, her time in water, and her life outdoors.

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Why you'd press play

Hear how one marine biologist turned her curiosity into public-facing environmental work.

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