Utah tree scientist who inspired ‘Explorer Barbie’ brings National Geographic talk home

National Geographic at the Eccles Center at PCHS. Photo: TownLift // Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah — National geographic has a long history in Park City. They have submitted to, sponsored, and screened films in the Sundance Film Festival for almost as long as it’s been around. They’ve similarly partnered with the Park City Institute, also for about as long as they’ve been around.

The tradition continued on Sunday at the Park City High School Eccles Center for the Performing Arts with a talk about trees. Often, National Geographic Live presenters come through from different corners of the globe but this time, they stemmed (all pun intended) from right here in Northern Utah.

University of Utah professor Nalini Nadkarni is a National Geographic Explorer At Large, just like her husband, with the highest distinction within the organization. She pioneered canopy access techniques to study the plants, animals, and microbes that live in the treetops. She interweaves her research on rainforest canopies with innovative public engagement. A contributor to 150 scientific papers and books, she has cast new insights on the importance of canopy plants in ecosystem processes and the effects of human activities on forest diversity and function.

Her work is featured in academic journals and public media such as NPR, Science Friday, and RadioLab. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the AAAS Award for Public Engagement, the NationalScience Foundation Award for Public Service, The Wilson Award for the Advancement of Social Justice, and the Archie Carr Medal for Conservation.

She even has an ant species named after her.

The smash hit radio show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” has its roots in Utah as the first taping took place in Salt Lake City. Fast forward to their 1,000th show, and to highlight that fact, they had Nadkarni on to represent the region.

“Certain trees can live for more than 4,000 years, 4,000 years,” Nadkarni repeated to the audience. “Let’s think about that in terms of human generations. These trees were alive when your great, great, great, great plus 75 more great grandmothers were walking the earth.”

She stood at the podium on the stage and narrated her slideshow. 

“We think of trees trees almost as humans, and maybe that’s because we’re built like them. We have trunks, we have limbs, we have crowns, and when we get wounded, we get scars, just like they do.”

She showed images of a famous invention of hers called a Master Caster. Back in her hey-day, the technology to safely and efficiently climb up, or even begin the climb up the enormous trees she needed to be in, left a lot to be desired. As such, she attached a child’s slingshot to the handle, reel and line of a deep-sea fishing rod. When she stretched back the weighted metal piece, the size of a golf ball, and slingshot it as high up as possible around a substantial branch, it would launch the line it was tied to right up and over and down to her. Then the leader line was tied to the end of the rock climbing rope and voila, she could start her daily commute-climb to what was, for all intents and purposes, her office, treetop bound. 

“I’ve never been part of a family or a social group that treasures, cares about, or values professional sports. I really do not care or give a hoot about who wins the World Series, but a friend of mine told me, ‘Did you know that pro baseball players use bats made of wood?’ Wood. Wood comes from trees, so I learned that maple and ash and birch trees provide the majority of baseball bats for pro players, and so now I will gladly go to a baseball game because I have this connection to a thing that I didn’t value and something that I spent my life pursuing. Now I don’t have to buy season tickets to a baseball game, but I can appreciate baseball and I can have conversations with baseball fans because we share a point of intersection.”

Nadkarni’s approach to environmental education weaves together diverse perspectives and experiences. “For me, tapestry thinking involves how to weave my own ecological values of trees into the values of other people,” she says. This philosophy shaped her early public engagement efforts, particularly her mission to connect with young girls who lacked her childhood experiences. Looking to bridge this gap, she turned to an unexpected solution: Barbie dolls.

Decades ago, she approached Mattel with a prototype for a “tree top Barbie,” complete with a field guide for epiphytes and educational materials. When Mattel declined, saying they preferred to keep design in-house, Nadkarni and her students took matters into their own hands. They sourced second-hand dolls from consignment stores, enlisted volunteer seamstresses for climbing gear, and purchased miniature helmets from eBay, selling their creations at scientific conferences. What seemed like a small-scale project at the time would prove prescient.

In 2021, National Geographic partnered with Mattel to create explorer Barbie dolls, with Nadkarni serving as an advisor. “As a thank you, amazingly, Mattel made me a customized one-of-a-kind Nalini tree-going Barbie look-alike,” she says, noting the parallel to her effort 30 years prior.

Decades ago, unfortunately, she suffered a 50 foot free fall from a tree while working in Costa Rica where she and the research team were way off the grid to call for professional rescue and hours and hours from helicopters ability to finally extract her from the jungle. A catastrophic rope failure caused the drop which left her hospitalized with multiple broken bones and other major injuries from which she and others thought there would not be a recovery to her body, her mind, or her spirit.

Merely one year later she proved herself and everyone else wrong when, thanks to her medical community, her close family, friends and colleague support group, Nadkarni was back climbing trees, her childhood passion, for work and for play. 

Park City resident Donna Matturro McAleer, Executive Director of a statewide nonprofit whose mission involves reducing air pollution raised her hand during the Q and A which followed the presentation. She asked, “What’s your advice for the next generation of people who may be interested in following in your footsteps?” To which Nadkarni answered, “My advice would be to cultivate their own passions, whether it be trees or sharks or business or motherhood— just follow their dreams and that pursuit, in and of itself, will make the world a better place.”

In the Lobby of the Eccles Center, she sat at a table and a line of admirers quickly formed as people had further questions or simply comments about the woman, the presentation, and the trees. 

On the school day directly after this weekend Eccles Center showing, the student body of the adjacent Park City High School were invited to a free matinee highlighting the same educational, entertaining information. Nadkarni is currently on tour sharing this National Geographic presentation throughout the United States and Canada.