Brooke Gardner recalls embarking on road trips, a favorite family activity, while growing up in Northern California. Her father, an oceanographer with the United States Geological Survey, would stop the car to point out rock strata and recite the scientific names of plants to his wife, a library and IT budget director at Stanford University, and their children. “Through both of them, I was exposed to higher education, academia . . . and that kind of scientific approach to the world,” says Gardner.
Gardner’s love of travel and interest in foreign relations first prompted her to enroll at Middlebury College in Vermont as a language major. However, she retained a fascination with science from her childhood. “I had to choose . . . my freshman year whether I wanted to continue to take intensive Italian or intensive organic chemistry, and I chose organic chemistry,” she recalls. From there, Gardner developed ...
