SCIEX asks scientists to mentor a girl named Grace, with Raven Baxter among its featured voices

On May 17, 2021, the scientific instrument maker SCIEX launched Extraordinary Grace, an online survey that asked scientists to mentor a virtual girl named Grace. Raven Baxter was one of 13 featured voices on the campaign's website.

The campaign opened with a short film on YouTube, "SCIEX Presents Extraordinary Grace." It included a clip from "Big Ole Geeks," Baxter's 2019 science hip-hop music video. Grace "represents the next generation of scientists, but also, the underrepresented," according to the campaign site. SCIEX described her as a young girl "who will someday win a Nobel Prize." Her call for mentorship asked, "Can I be a scientist, but can I still be me?"

A frame from Baxter's 2019 music video Big Ole Geeks, which appears in SCIEX's Extraordinary Grace launch film. Image: SCIEX video

The campaign arrived as new data showed slow change in who works in science. On April 1, 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that Black workers held 9 percent of STEM jobs, against 11 percent of all employed adults. That share had not changed since 2016. Hispanic workers held 8 percent, against 17 percent.

The survey placed each scientist in the role of Grace's mentor and asked about role models, bias and funding. One true-or-false item read, "Black scientists spend twice the amount of time grant-writing to achieve the same funding level as white PI's." PIs are principal investigators, the scientists who lead research grants.

"For the first time, science can create a picture that reflects its true self, where your voice can shape the future of science for generations to come," SCIEX wrote in the film's description.

The Featured Voices page invited visitors to "listen to scientific thought-leaders share their perspectives on who Grace is to them." Others on the page included rocket scientist Natalie Panek and Isabelle Kohler of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Baxter's profile described her as "creating science spaces that are inclusive, educational, and real." On June 1, SCIEX released "Extraordinary Grace: The STEM Community Reacts."

The mentor responses became a keynote. At the 2022 conference of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, a digital Grace built in MetaHuman delivered "The Change Hypothesis." Input from over 1,200 scientists shaped the script, according to Pebble Studios, the London studio that created the digital Grace. Grace's hypothesis reads "If STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) actively pursues diverse perspectives, extraordinary success will follow." The talk named three elements, mentorship as a catalyst for change, bias that needs a reaction, and a culture of opportunity.

SCIEX was founded in 1970 and introduced the first commercially successful triple quadrupole mass spectrometer in 1981, according to its history page. It celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020 and is part of Danaher.

Baxter, a molecular biologist known online as Raven the Science Maven, was then completing her doctorate at the University at Buffalo. Her research studied science communication through hip-hop.

The launch film is on SCIEX's YouTube channel, and the campaign remains online at extraordinarygrace.com.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kjRhYSDT8VA