Mollie Martin ’25 is combining passions in wildlife education and public speaking as a barrier island naturalist on Seabrook Island in South Carolina, where she shares knowledge with younger generations.
She started her college career majoring in biology with an emphasis on wildlife, ecology and conservation. Initially interested in zoo and aquarium work, Mollie completed an internship at a zoo in Nebraska during her sophomore year. This position involved educational demonstrations to children and data collection for a conservation project focused on the endangered salt creek tiger beetle. While Mollie had a soft spot for zoo work, she realized that research was not something she wanted to pursue full-time.
Joining Berry’s forensics team, Mollie discovered a secondary interest in public speaking. She explored how she could combine it with her strong love for animals and conservation to educate the public in a way that is both informative and engaging.
Like many Berry students, Mollie held Lifeworks positions that helped solidify her career plans. She found that working as a peer educator at the Counseling Center served to be the most impactful, developing her public programming and public speaking skills.
“I was able to go out into a lot of facets of the Berry community, whether that was speaking to BCC classes, scholarship cohorts or doing table programs,” Mollie says. “I was always talking to people about things that I was passionate about, and getting to see active change on Berry’s campus was really cool.
“When I started doing more public speaking, I realized that it’s a huge part of science,” Mollie adds. “We can do all the research and all the life-changing discovery that we want, but unless we are able to communicate that in a way that is accessible to the public, the research doesn’t really matter because the people don’t know about it.”
While Mollie had experience in conservation from a previous internship as a coastal educator at the Baldhead Island Conservancy in North Carolina, her current position requires her to work primarily with school field trip groups. She leads educational programs, taking students of all ages into the marshes and forests to teach them hands-on discovery.
“This will be a different, large group of kids every day,” Mollie says. “I’m definitely the kind of person where I want something different every day. It keeps me on my toes and keeps me flexible.”
