There is a chance that, like me, you dreamed of becoming a scientist as a kid. Making groundbreaking discoveries, exploring the world, creating new knowledge: it sounded like the most wonderful career path I could think of. And although being a scientist is indeed quite wonderful, there is also a chance that as you progressed in your career you found that the reality of your childhood dreams is not quite what you expected. You probably didn’t make a Nobel-prize worthy discovery yet and maybe that professorship still looks quite far away. And — perhaps most surprisingly — you found out that academia is not necessarily the meritocracy it claims to be. Not so long ago, the ivory tower of academia was an impenetrable fortress inhabited by the old boys network and in some places, it still is. So perhaps it is no wonder that you haven't bagged that Nobel prize yet: there are outside forces you cannot control.

But: things are changing! Compared to 30 years ago, the diversity of the planetary science community has skyrocketed! To illustrate this I will show some preliminary results of our analysis into the participants of the Ada Lovelace workshop — a biannual workshop for geodynamical modellers — to demonstrate the evolving diversity of the geodynamics community specifically. For example, at the first Ada Lovelace workshop in 1987, 10.5% of the participants were women, but in 2022 that percentage had risen to 36.7%. This is a marked improvement, but at the same time still a long way off from an equal gender balance (not to mention gender diversity or indeed other minorities). To continue this upward trajectory, I will point out different initiatives to pursue both as an individual and as a community to make sure we continue to diversify our community and provide a welcoming space for everyone.

Together we can continue to dream of both a more just, equal, diverse, and inclusive environment and of those world-view-changing discoveries we are yet to make. Forget the sky - that’s not the limit! We planetary scientists go way beyond that! Don’t even shoot for the stars: shoot higher! Together, we can do it.

Iris van Zelst

After a BSc in Earth Sciences and an MSc in Geophysics from Utrecht University, Iris obtained her PhD from ETH Zürich in 2020 on her research on modelling tsunamigenic earthquakes on different time scales. She worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Leeds studying the thermal evolution of subduction zones and then moved to the German Aerospace Center in 2021 to pursue research into the geodynamics and seismology of Venus. She will continue this line of research as a Patience Cowie Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh starting in 2025.

Besides research, Iris is an avid advocate for diversity and inclusion in the planetary and geosciences and she is an outreach enthousiast. She hosts the YouTube series Science Sisters, where she interviews guests on their different career paths and any issues they have faced. She is also the owner and creative director of The Silly Scientist: a new startup company specialising in sciency games. As such, she is in the process of publishing her first game: QUARTETnary - the card game about the geological time scale, which was a big success on Kickstarter earlier this year.