Lisa Garcia

Lisa Garcia was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has many fond memories of exploring her grandparents’ land in Carnuel and Chilili and taking care of the animals on their ranch. Nature was her playground, and she developed a passion for the land, plants, and animals.

Fresh out of high school, Garcia didn’t know about the opportunities in science. She is a first-generation college student; her mom suggested business because she was in that industry. So, Garcia earned a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and pursued a career in marketing. She returned to UNM to pursue a second degree in biology because of her strong passion for nature. After watching Vice, a show about global catastrophes worldwide, she became interested in the effects of climate change.

Garcia was interested in paleoecology and extant plant interactions with water. She volunteered in Dr. FeGarcia Smith’s paleoecology lab at UNM to understand how organisms reacted to past climate change and to better predict how organisms may respond to future climate change. Garcia also completed a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) at UC Berkeley with Benjamin Blonder, where she developed an investigation on how different leaf venation systems reacted to herbivory and drought. She presented a poster about this investigation at the 2022 ESA conference in Montreal. Currently, Garcia is exploring areas to pursue in her graduate program.