The Evidence Collective elects Dr. Raven Baxter as a member
Members of The Evidence Collective, a network of scientists, clinicians and communicators, elected Dr. Raven Baxter to the group on March 4, 2026.
STEMbassy goes live as a Sunday-night STEM talk show, with founder Raven Baxter as host
Started in February 2020 as a weekly livestream, STEMbassy brought scientists together to talk about science alongside politics, culture and social issues
Baxter laughs at the open of the first STEMbassy livestream on Feb. 23, 2020. Photo: STEMbassy video
Raven Baxter launched STEMbassy Live, a weekly STEM talk show she created and hosted, on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020. The first episode streamed live on YouTube through StreamYard, with three guests.
"This is our first shot at doing STEMbassy Live," Baxter told viewers at the open. "So if there's any hiccups, just, you know, laugh with us." She added, "We're scientists. We can figure it out."
Her aim, she said, was to show people in STEM as they are. "I'm really passionate about showing scientists, people in STEM in general, as their unapologetic selves," she said. She wanted to "make science, STEM as a whole, a more approachable subject."
Baxter welcomes viewers to the first episode of STEMbassy Live. Image: STEMbassy video
The show set science beside the news of the week. Its first hot topic was a Feb. 16 tweet by the biologist Richard Dawkins. He wrote that eugenics would work in practice while deploring it, and a backlash followed, as Indiana University's Science IU blog reported.
The panel also took on climate change and myths about the new coronavirus. That same day, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control issued a statement on a cluster of COVID-19 cases and deaths in northern Italy. By the next day, Italy had more than 200 confirmed cases, Voice of America reported.
Each episode mixed those hot topics with trivia for prizes, questions from the chat and guests' stories of their paths into STEM. The first guests were Amanda, a biology senior at Florida State University; Jai, a UX designer studying user interface engineering; and Shenell, a molecular biologist working in toxicology.
Baxter and the first night's guests during trivia. Image: STEMbassy video
The name is a play on "embassy." "The STEMbassy is a place where STEM ambassadors meet in conversations and get to know each other," Baxter said near the close. "A lot of people think science is just this very black and white, narrow thing, but we have people from all walks of life."
"People are passionate about social issues and people like to play games and make friends," she said. "That's what science is to me."
She invited viewers to "ask any questions that you have about science and be involved in the conversations that scientists have with each other." She closed with the schedule. "This is a show that is happening every Sunday."
STEMbassy's About page in June 2020 said Baxter founded it that year as "a science communication organization focused on cultivating science advocacy." It defined an embassy as a place to sustain "political, cultural and social relationships." The show, it said, discussed STEM "in the context of politics, culture, and social issues."
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The weekly show kept going online through the lockdown months, and its first season ran into July.
By the tenth episode, the first night's guests had become regular co-hosts. Wildlife ecologist Ariana Serretta had joined them. Guests that night included Shawn Hercules, a biology Ph.D. student at McMaster University in Canada who studies why breast cancer is more aggressive in Black women. Baxter said at least 200 people came through the chat.
"This is the place where STEM ambassadors meet, and I am the creator and founder of STEMbassy," she said as that episode opened.
The show returned as STEMbassy LIVE for a second season from October to November 2020. Guests included Stephanie Humphrey, Pariss Athena, Dr. Nehemiah Mabry and Hank Green, whose Nov. 22 episode is the most viewed on the show's channel. A third season ran from February to April 2021, with guests including Dope Labs, Jorvon Moss and Imogene Cancellare.
Press that year named Baxter as the founder. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln called her "the founder of STEMbassy, a science advocacy organization." Fortune, naming her to its 40 Under 40 in health, described a web series "featuring scientists of varying genders, races, and disciplines."
Baxter, a molecular biologist, was then in the doctoral program at the University at Buffalo, researching how hip-hop can communicate science. STEMbassy later became The Science Haven, now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
The first episode of STEMbassy Live is on the STEMbassy YouTube channel, with nine more from its first season.
