The Year the Herd Thinned

The first time I heard the phrase “hide in the herd,” it didn’t sound like business strategy. It sounded like a survival instinct—like the way starlings move as one black ribbon across a winter sky, each bird safer because no single body stands out.

I was sitting in the dim hush of our campus library, a half-drunk coffee cooling beside my laptop, reading an opinion essay by management scholar Carol Kulik about what happens when external pressure for diversity, equity, and inclusion fades. Her point lodged in my chest: when DEI becomes inconvenient, some organizations do just enough to blend in. When the spotlight shifts, only the ones that want to keep going.

I thought about my mother.

A Small Apartment, a Big Vocabulary

We immigrated when I was nine. Our first apartment smelled like detergent and cumin, the hallway always echoing with other people’s dinner. My mother worked evenings, learned English from the captions on TV, and practiced “professional words” the way other parents practice piano scales.

By the time I reached college, I had learned my own vocabulary: “belonging,” “merit,” “fit.” I also learned how slippery those words can be in STEM spaces—how a lab can feel like fluorescent light and silence, and how a meeting can turn your accent into a question mark.

So when Kulik wrote about companies dismantling gender-equality agendas—relabeling women-focused mentoring as “gender-neutral,” growing quieter about recruiting efforts—I didn’t read it as theory. I felt it as weather. The kind that changes what you wear, where you walk, how loudly you speak.

When the Signs Start Coming Down

The complication wasn’t one dramatic incident. It was erosion.

In my first research placement, I watched a postdoc—brilliant, soft-spoken, born outside the U.S.—stop volunteering ideas after her suggestions were repeatedly “discovered” later by someone else. In group projects, I noticed how quickly “teamwork” became code for whose voice was easiest to hear. And online, I saw organizations quietly scrub bold promises and replace them with safer, smaller language.

As I read Kulik’s argument that 2026 would reveal who truly “walks their talk,” I realized I was doing the same kind of sorting—trying to figure out which spaces would see me as an asset, and which would prefer me quiet enough to blend in.

Finding a Room That Holds More Than One Story

That’s when I found the STEM Equity Learning Community (Spring 2026) program. The page on PHENND wasn’t flashy, but it felt unusually direct—like a door left open on purpose. I read every line slowly, the way you read something when you’re afraid it will disappear if you scroll too fast.

I applied not because I wanted a résumé line, but because I wanted language that didn’t make me shrink. I wanted to learn how equity work can be rigorous—measurable, designed, evaluated—rather than treated as a personality trait or a political risk.

In the weeks after applying, I began doing something new in my lab: I started naming patterns out loud. Not accusing, not dramatizing—just documenting. “Let’s rotate who presents.” “Can we make the criteria transparent?” “I think we missed that suggestion earlier.” Small sentences, but they changed the air in the room. Like opening a window you didn’t realize was stuck.

What I’m Learning to Measure

Kulik’s essay helped me see that values show up in forecasts and budgets, not only mission statements. The PHENND opportunity helped me see that equity is not softness—it’s structure.

I’m learning to look for signals: Who gets mentored as a matter of design, not luck? Who is invited into the hard conversations? Whether flexibility exists only on paper or in practice. These aren’t abstract questions when you’re an immigrant student building a future in STEM. They are the difference between surviving and contributing.

Stepping Out of the Herd

I don’t think the resolution is a perfect workplace or a permanent feeling of belonging. I think it’s agency.

The conflict—watching DEI promises fade and wondering where I fit—hasn’t vanished. But it has clarified. If the herd thins, I want to be in the spaces that remain visible on purpose. The ones that don’t “hide,” because they never needed camouflage to begin with.

And when I write my own future—graduate school, research, industry—I want my story to do more than blend in. I want it to help build the kind of room where the next person doesn’t have to translate themselves just to be heard.

References / Source Links

• STEM Equity Learning Community Spring 2026 (Apply by Jan 30): https://phennd.org/update/stem-equity-learning-community-spring-2026-apply-by-jan-30/