Web of Species & Systems:The Starting Pt

I’m Dr. Sarah Karikó, PhD an arachnologist, artist, educator, and researcher exploring interconnectedness and developing ways to meet the complex, intertwined challenges and opportunities facing us today through research that takes inspiration from the natural world and embeds the creative arts.

I research spiders at Harvard and explore interconnectedness among species and systems as Research Director of Gossamer Labs. I have designed interactive learning experiences at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Juilliard School, The Biodiversity Institute, Grand Teton National Park and Harvard Museums of Science and Culture and completed negotiation training at Harvard Law School. Starting with my Fulbright, my research has taken me from Massachusetts to Madagascar. I believe the answers to the problems facing humankind may come from nature, and I want to share an approach to tap those solutions.

As an arachnologist, I spend time looking at webs. As an artist, I think about interconnectedness — the common threads that bind us. Although we are more technologically connected than ever before, we risk losing our connection with the living earth that sustains us.

We know that science and art correlate to help us solve problems and discover new phenomena. I have led other scientists, artists and students in learning experiences to examine our own interconnectedness by combining scientific inquiry with the inspiration that comes from creating beauty and have been awed by the transformative power of these experiences.  

I wish to expand this work, find new solutions to the problems facing humankind by equipping and supporting a cadre of global and emerging leaders to discover together and innovate new ways to lead and care from a fundamental understanding of the interconnectedness of the natural world and our future.

There is a fundamental lack of focus on our interdependence by leadership and this impacts every facet of our lives. I see this in the systems and structures and our current approaches to solving the complex intertwined challenges facing us all during this pandemic. I see this at in all sectors of society, including in many of our leaders as well as in the lack of attention paid to preparing leaders of the next generation.

There is a fundamental lack of science-based decision-making to help guide and shape policy. The decline in defunding of basic science and research has impacted our understanding and weakened our position to prevent, respond, and meet the challenges of today. 

Although we are connected in ways like never before, we risk losing our connection to the living earth. Invertebrates, the largest group of animals, comprising over 90% of animal biomass on our planet are in decline. They contribute in many ways: they pollinate our food. They decompose waste.What will we do if we lose them?  We have a lot of amazing teachers around us who have adapted to extreme conditions: Ice Ages, plagues, Spanish flu. Now is the time to turn to learn from them.

I will convene emerging and global leaders in the Teton Mountains to learn from the power of the natural world, weaving ways of knowing together through the intersection of nature, art, science and policy to create new solutions to challenges we face today.

The Tetons are within one of the world’s largest intact ecosystems and have inspired people for millennia, from Shoshone vision seekers to Baker and Shevardnadze who, moved by their surroundings, contributed to a peaceful resolution of the Cold War.

 These integrative immersive experiences, with art-based techniques, and engagement with field research are designed to spark imagination and develop new models for leading and caring for each other and our planet.

Guided by principles of open dialogue and deliberation centered on mutual education and the give and take between peoples’ ideas, convictions, and values, we will engage in collaborative uncovering of our interconnectedness and use this as a basis to catalyze public policy, community engagement and social action to meet the complex, intertwined challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. We are intentionally creating space for participants to define and shape the focal issues to be explored to meet the most pressing problems of these uncertain times.

This web reverberates to its farthest reaches even from the smallest of impacts. In an interconnected world this project will reverberate broadly through the web that connects us all.

Early on, I was studying spiders in Madagascar during a time of great political unrest. There, I found myself being driven through a tunnel of flames as forest fires around me raged. I can still conjure the smell of the flames that filled my lungs as I drove through.

While that fire has long gone out, it left in me a burning desire to study the interconnectedness of our world. How the destruction of rainforests could change a society.  And conversely, how the positive lessons from nature can help solve the problems we face today.  We are all part of the web and what we do to even seemingly distant parts of the web ripple out to impact us all.

Through studying spiders, I have developed a curiosity about our interconnectedness. To better understand how we are all part of a web and how what we do to seemingly distant parts of the web matters. I am concerned that many leaders do not focus on what connects us all. 

I study a spider in hot rocked canyons who inspires me. She looks for a nook in a rock to secure her silken eggsac then spins through-out the night under a blanket of glittering stars. She hauls from sun up to sun down carrying hundreds of objects--stones and logs and snail shells and cricket legs and corkscrew seeds and crumpled leaves and purple blossoms and much more to build a mound to protect her young. She seems to give her all to protect her offspring; I wonder, what we are doing for future generations?

Researching spiders and our interconnectedness—the often invisible connections between species and systems--drives me to find new ways to share what I am learning and help make

I bring many threads of experience together in service of better understanding the web that connects us.

As a scientist describing new species and exploring the structural origins of color, I’m intimately aware of the beauty and wonder of the Natural world at many scales as well as some of the threats facing biodiversity today.

I have devoted my professional work towards gaining detailed understanding of the world’s rich biodiversity Through this pursuit, I have experienced firsthand the role environmental degradation plays on both individual species and how human societies can be affected. The loss of species does not stop at the threatened species but can fundamentally shake the web that connects us all.

As an artist I bring my understanding of the role the arts can play in gathering people who don’t ordinarily come together, creating community and shared vision.

As an educator I know the importance of bringing many ways of knowing together and how learning can shape action. I have developed ways to engage learners with often feared and misunderstood animals in creative ways. .

Through this, I’m well positioned to bring my unique skillset to help better understanding our interdependence and bring people together to catalyze change.

As a female principal investigator leading teams in remote regions around the world, adversity comes in many forms and is often an integral part of my day. I have studied spiders in rainforests teeming with terrestrial leeches and defused a mutiny deep in the forest and nowadays I deal with forest fires that can rage all field season.

How I meet these challenges and generate solutions can be the difference between conducting my research or not.

I have often wished I had been better prepared. To that end, I’ve formalized my negotiation training  and created leadership training

where researchers can acquire and practice skills to help navigate challenges using my experiences as case studies. By sharing what I’ve learned in this way, researchers and outcomes can benefit.

Most importantly, I’m gaining a critical understanding that what binds us together matters and that we need to tend to these connections.  I’ve learned about the importance of clear, coordinated leadership.

Lessons about working in uncertain conditions where everyone on the team is essential to  mission, outcomes and survival.

I have learned about how to operate with restricted resources in highly changeable environments and developed skills to improvise and innovate.

While I could provide examples of my experiences running a remote bushcamp or leading expeditions through the rainforest, I will underscore a very different and more difficult leadership challenge: To develop a fundamental understanding of our interconnectedness and assist other leaders to unlock their creative capacities to see problems in new ways then lead as if our interdependence matters.

The approach I’ve developed is grounded in science and embeds the creative arts. I work to create space that can support the possibility for transformation-- where people can see new opportunities to put into action. This is super hard to do especially at the scale needed to make change.

Recently, due to the pandemic, I pivoted my Create. Reflect. Connect! curriculum bridging two universities (Harvard/Uwyo) inspired by one amazing spider. I created the space to support the transformation of others. I plucked the web. Surprisingly, it resulted in students asking me to extend my classes. Even now, I have a group who has asked to meet with me monthly to continue using these methods together.

When the students asked to extend the classes, this is when I realized that what I had created went beyond education into the realm of leadership.

Public donors, institutions, foundations, investors, as well as government agencies.