Homeward Bound

North meets South

Polar Bear, Bearded Seal, Gentoo and King Pinguins should never occur together(not now nor in the future)

(composition based upon pictures made in the Svalbard region and in Wildlife Sydney Zoo)

Homeward Bound cohort 4 (=HB4)

Recently, in July 2018, I have been chosen as one of the hundred participants in cohort 4 of the Homeward Bound initiative ( https://homewardboundprojects.com.au/). This is an Australian initiative for establishing a global network of a thousand women from the exact sciences. Selection was based on our potential for using scientific knowledge and methods to have an impact on decision-making in matters related to the state of the planet. We are looking forward to a challenging year, improving our skills with respect to personal visibility, strategic capabilities and communication. By empowering women with these leadership tools, Homeward Bound hopes to provide women who will bring about a change in global scientific policy. The initiative is also considered with climate change.

To participate in this program, I have raised money via a gofundme page and I got support from the Jan van der Hoevenstichting for Theoretical Biology (Leiden University) and from Biometris (Wageningen University).

Pushing Earth Overshoot Day to the end of December

Press release "How do we push Earth Overshoot Day to the end of December?"

On Saturday, March 30, 2024, a day will be organized in THUIS Wageningen (Stationsstraat 32) to ensure that Earth Overshoot Day is moved to later in the year. The event lasts from 10 a.m. to approximately half past four.

What is the Dutch Earth Overshoot Day?

Earth Overshoot Day is the day on which more products are consumed worldwide than the Earth can produce in one year. If every world citizen were to live like a Dutch person, it would fall on April 1, 2024 this year. That is much too early. Everything we consume after that date is intended for subsequent years. All that extra consumption comes at the expense of other people elsewhere in the world and at the expense of our children and grandchildren.

Our climate mayor Pauline Schakenbos thinks it is important to consider this. She welcomes this initiative and cordially invites everyone to come and think and act.

What are we going to do?

There will be a few talks on this Saturday, March 30, 2024, and organizer Lia Hemerik would like to collect with her colleagues and us, the Wageningen people, ideas for what we could do ourselves to achieve this 'overshoot day' later in the year. It obviously means that we have to use up our 'resources' less quickly, and that requires more conscious (and less) consumption, reuse, and other forms of food production that less deplete the natural resources of soil, water and raw materials in other countries.

To find out what you and we can do, four 20-minute talks have been planned, with plenty of time in between to talk about what you want and/or can do to put less burden on the earth, and also what you would advise others to do ( for example supermarkets, governments, your family, your employer). By exchanging ideas and tips, this day offers a lot of inspiration to contribute to postponing Earth Overshoot Day.

persbericht event Earth Overshoot Day

Ineke Jansonius, Wim Chardon, Lia Hemerik and Maja Stavleu

Nature guide course 2022-2023

In January 2022 during another Corona lockdown in the Netherlands I started the course with two other coordinators - namely Wim Chardon and Maja Stavleu. In this course we have five different blocks (1) Introduction, (2) Plants, (3) Animals, (4) Ecology and (5) Landscape. We started with 34 participants. This is a really enthousiastic group of people and during the first half year there was already a nice mindset in the full group. Some parts were rather challenging for the participants, but in general they just felt that they learned a lot. I am glad that we have such a skilled group of teachers that take turns in giving the evenings and excursions.

July-September 2021

Some time in July there was a call for getting the networking within Homeward Bound going. It was especially for the women in cohort 5 that we wanted this to be done. After a few of our Homeward Bound sisters tried to start this up, but had to quit because of lack of time Carly Quisenberry and I have send out a google form to the first four cohorts to ask whether someone wants to be a mentor and to the fifth cohort to ask whether they want to be matched as mentee with one or two mentors. The matching was completed half September. So we hope the networking is now taking place.

I also try to co-organize a climate course in my home environment (see the tab Nature Activities).

Snowy Sheathbill

My support group: from right to left Anna Vinkhuyzen, Frances Separovic, Melody Ding, Amanda Hensley, Patricia Menendez and Lia Hemerik

May - June 2020

Since half March we have been in lockdown in the Netherlands, and although I have met regularly with my support group of cohort 4 not a lot of action can take place. I have helped with reviewing the applications for cohort 6. Meanwhile the situation around cohort 5 is not clear. So for now, it seems that everything is "on hold".

Benelux meeting of Homeward Bound participants

On March 7, 2020 Andrea Mangel Raventos invited the Homeward Bound participants from Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands to a lunch at her home in Delft. We met up with 6 persons and had a great afternoon. We talked about the trip of HB4 to the Antarctic continent and how we experienced wildlife and the programme. Sigrid from HB5 was still looking forward to going on the trip. We also exchanged what our individual steps were for climate change and leadership. And then Corona hit: that made life slow down on the one hand and required more improvisation and fast learning on the other hand. Now some months into the lock-down I still see the need for better leadership: we need worldwide empathetic, courageous, inclusive and authentic leaders.

Stephanie, Cathy, Andrea, Laura, Sigrid, Lia

A Humpback Whale near Carlini Station

1-11 December 2019

One of the highlights of this trip I forgot to mention up to now. That certainly is the Symposium@Sea. All of the participants give a little presentation with one or two slides that may last 3 minutes. A lot of the women showed the struggle they had to go through to come to this point in their life’s career: many difficulties had been overcome on the road to success. This was really touching. During these later days around the Antarctic Peninsula we were still working on visibility and platforms. We walked or made a zodiac tour around Brown Base. We had a remembrance ceremony for Lily Mary Taylor who should have joined us, if she would have been still alive. We also visited two research stations – after we could not land at the American research station called Palmer station. We made it to Carlini Station (Argentinian) and the Great Wall Station (Chinese).

On the way back to the Beagle Channel and Ushuaia we would have been in a storm, but because the captain saw the forecast he tried to reach the land before the storm hit. We succeeded but on arrival we heard that a Chilean airplane was lost when crossing the Drake Passage during the storm (10 December).

23-30 November 2019

The Drake Passage was rather mild to us, but my cold was really bad. A part of our group started a Wildlife Survey and Caroly was managing it. For this we had a half hour daily to watch whatever species would show up. We had a program with a lot of different topics, among others humans on Antarctica, strategy map, how to inspire women, how to be successful as a team, crucial conversations. We also enjoyed our landings on islands or the continent of the Antarctic Peninsula: Yankee Harbour, Walker Bay, Cierva Cove, Cuverville Island, Port Lockroy, Jougla Point and Neko Harbour. In Walker Bay we saw the only two vascular plants that live in Antarctica, namely Antarctic hair grass (Deschampsia antarctica) and Antarctic pearlwort (Colobanthus quitensis).

Sunset in Gerlache Strait 28 November 2019

Lorraine explains LSI

Land programme: 19-22 November 2019

The days at Arakur were full of meetings. We first met with our faculty: Fern Wickson, Jen Martin, Fabian Dattner, Cassandra Brooks, Musimbi Kanyoro, Gabriela Szwarcberg, Kit Jackson, Ana Payo Payo, Julia May, Lorraine McCarthy, Sandra Radovini and Justine Shaw. During the dinner we got a nice introduction to Fabian’s dream and the programme. The first day we were dealing with risk management and setting up group rules collectively. We also made a start with selecting our values for self, others and work. This was part of the strategy mapping that we had to develop during the full trip. From Fabian we got insights on our 4mat, from Kit on the strategy map, from Julia on visibility, from Lorraine on our LSI1, and Gabriela was going through coaching strategies (individual and in a group). On the 22nd of November we embarked on the Hebridian Sky for our journey over the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula.

Ushuaia

I arrived at approximately 5 PM at the airport in Ushuaia (so my trip took approximately 24 hours from take-off at Schiphol). After having installed my luggage in my room I went walking to the centre of Ushuaia. That took approximately half an hour. I enjoyed walking along the coast line and had a nice meal at Tia Elvira. On the Saturday I made a boat trip along the Beagle Channel and on Sunday I walked the Sendero Costera in the national park Tierra de Fuego. The next day I went with one of the other HB4 participants (Justine Smith ) to the park and we walked the Lapataia part of the park. In the evening we met up with 8 others to have dinner. Today (19 November) we will all gather together in the Arakur resort.

The selfie of Wouter and Lia

Looking forward to the voyage.

During the last month I have been busy with my application for full professor. Although I got an interview they seem to search for somebody who flies in from Mathematics and then is willing to apply it. Although I am a mathematician and a biologist they saw me primarily as a biologist who is applying mathematics and statistics in all kind of fields in the life sciences.

The bottom line is that they did not select me for a public lecture. Thereafter, I had to set my mind back to my Homeward Bound obligations, and I had to prepare for the trip with the Symposium@Sea. Arranging all kind of stuff before departure left me with a checked-in luggage of 23.2 kg, and then I already decided not to take my yoga mat!

I have started my trip on 14 November 2019. When I arrived at Schiphol my friend Wouter Backx came to say me goodbye. I really liked that he was there, and while I was eating my dinner we had a nice talk. We just had said goodbye to each other, when he called my name and wanted to take a selfie with me before I went to the security check area.

Talk about Homeward Bound and gender diversity

On 25 September 2019 Andrea Mangel and I have been giving a talk in Impulse at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. We talked about the program and how we have applied for it. The audience consisted of a lot of women in academia, but as one listener noticed it would have been great if more men (than the two present) had heard our story. We really liked the positive feedback from our (almost all female) public.

On 7 October 2019 we went to the University of Amsterdam to give the same presentation in a shorter time-span. The public was composed of almost the same number of males as females, and I liked the way how the men were contributing to the discussion. One female responded that choices were also based on environment, because she lived in England and Finland where she saw women make different choices with respect to their carreer because of expensive/ cheap child care.

Inter-cohort meeting at Brussels

On the 22nd of September 2019 three people from HB4 (Andrea Mangel, Laura Garcia, and me) met up with Stephanie Langerock from cohort 3 and Sigrid Maebe from cohort 5 in Brussels. We discussed our experiences so far over an excellent brunch. After the meeting with the five of us I talked in detail with Stephanie about her experience at the Symposium at sea. Furthermore, I was curious to know about the homework, whether we should do all before departure to Ushuaia. Luckily, she said that most participants on her ship had done part of the homework, because all females are already having a demanding job.

On picture from left to right Stephanie, Andrea, Laura, Sigrid and me.

Meet new member of HB4

In June, Andrea Mangel mailed me. She is a newcomer to the program and stepped in at a rather late time. We met each other on Sunday June 16 in Leiden . Since then we have regular e-mail contact and we meet now once a month to discuss our progress in the program and to cooperate on some initiatives for making Homeward Bound known to a lot more people and for devising a program with little steps that can decrease an individual's carbon footprint, and might help to counteract environmental pollution and climate change.

Lia Hemerik (left) and Andrea Mangel (right) meeting in Leiden, The Netherlands (Molen de Valk in the background)

May 2019 Homeward Bound

I heard that this year fundraising was not successful for sponsoring 1 to 5 women that cannot afford the participation in Homeward Bound. Therefore, I asked whether it would be nice that all the appointed women in HB4 and all alumni together could make an effort to donate, for instance, 50 euro or more to make it possible that Homeward Bound can appoint one or two of these women. I have put a call for contributions on the Facebook groups, and I asked the administration of Homeward Bound to open an account available where we can contribute to funds for these women. Anyone that wants to donate the link is http://homewardboundprojects.com.au/donate/ .

March and April 2019

During these months we had to fill out how we saw ourselves. This was done by scoring for more than 200 words whether it applied to you always, never or sometimes. Because we also asked other people from the work floor to fill out the same we got an opinion on our behaviour of ourselves and of others. This can be quite surprising. After having taken the results in we could try with the help of our coach to improve the qualities that are best as leadership skills.

For our visibility training we got to practice storytellling for conveying our message to others.

January and February 2019

What we started out to do in December, we now have to practice. We first had to fill out a visibility audit. We also were allocated to a group with which we could get in closer contact. These groups are called triads but mine consisted of two participants in Germany, one in France and one in Ireland and me. Some of us had already experienced that to be visible can also hurt, because the message that one wants to convey is twisted by the reader or listener. That means that visibility and vulnerability go hand in hand. After having understood that one should be visible in an authentic, consistent and purposeful way, we had to apply it by rewriting our 100 words bio to improve our skills.

November and December 2018

It was only on the 16th of November that the press release about the first Dutch woman joining this worldwide initiative was published. In the program we started out with why women should be part of the decision-making process: more women leaders next to male leaders is good for everyone, because statistics say that women i) are generally more inclusive, ii) collaborate, iii) operate with a legacy mindset, and iv) are trusted with assets, money and people. The first part in our journey to become a leader is to become aware of how visible we are already and how to become more visible in a constructive way.

September and October 2018

I started working on my crowdfund campaign and I am really grateful for all the help that I got from my friends, son and his friends before I could launch this. The first few weeks that the campaign ran I was a bit afraid of how it would go. In the end of October I already had a few contributions on that site and I reached out to get a press release on my participation. That was not easily said and done.

August 2018

The home base of Homeward Bound has launched the selection of 95 participants for the 4th cohort of this program on the 15th of August (which happens to be my birthday). By that time I already had heard that I got some money of the stichting Prof. Dr. Jan van den Hoeven for theoretical biology (Leiden University) and that my department at Wageningen University would contribute too. My friends and family gave me a birthday gift that amounted to approximately 2000 euro. Thereafter, I seriously had to start a crowdfunding campaign. Wageningen University decided that I should do it on a personal title, although in my opinion it was inextricably linked with my job as associate professor there.

July 2018

On the second of July I opened my e-mail box and found a message of Homeward Bound in it. Because in May 2018 it had been the second time that I applied for a place in the program that wants to empower women to make them fit for female leadership, I expected a second rejection. I was really positively surprised when I saw that I was selected this time. Although my heart made a jump and I liked it, I was not ready to really believe it. With every time that I told someone about the program it got more real for me. From the Homeward Bound office we got a “Welcome pack”, in which they also advised us to set up a crowdfunding campaign to gather the money necessary for the participation in this ground-breaking program. During this month I also send out invitations to celebrate my 60th birthday, and I asked a contribution for my participation in Homeward Bound from my family, acquaintances and friends.

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