For biologist Laura Boykin Okalebo, Occidental College was a life-changing experience, setting her on a career path that combines science and social justice. Her groundbreaking work in East Africa has empowered thousands of farmers to achieve sustainable livelihoods.
Cassava, a starchy, tuberous root, is a critical food source for more than 800 million people worldwide. Laura’s work leverages genomics and advanced computing to assist small-scale farmers in Eastern Africa—80% of whom are women—in managing whiteflies and viruses that decimate cassava crops. In partnership with East African scientists, Laura co-founded the Cassava Virus Action Project in 2017, introducing portable DNA sequencing tools to farmers and equipping local communities with the skills to prevent future outbreaks and food insecurity.
A Senior TED Fellow, Laura currently works as a senior scientific consultant at BioTeam. She received the Gifted Citizen Prize at the Ciudad de las Ideas Festival in 2017 and was one of Wired magazine’s “Wired25” innovators in 2019. Her work builds on more than 20 years of experience using science to empower communities, a mission shaped by her early experiences at Occidental, where she arrived with little more than a typewriter and a determination to succeed.
Growing up with her mother in Phoenix, AZ, Laura was recruited to Occidental as a basketball player. Once on campus, Laura discovered her aptitude for computers by chance. “I just needed a work-study job,” she explains. “So I wandered into the biology building near my dorm, and that’s where I started learning about computers, doing data analysis of chaparral species.”
Under the mentorship of former Professor of Biology Jon Keeley, Laura dove into computational biology. “The beauty of Oxy is that there aren't any graduate students. So the undergraduates get to do the research. I published my very first paper at Occidental,” she says.
The beauty of Oxy is that there aren't any graduate students. So the undergraduates get to do the research.
Those early experiences gave Laura the skills and confidence to envision a future in science, even though she never thought in her “wildest dreams” that something like that was possible for her, a young woman from a humble background. At the same time, Oxy’s liberal arts education broadened Laura’s worldview. She remembers taking a course on East African literature as part of her core requirements, which introduced her to inequities in other parts of the world.
“I think an interest around social justice always lived inside of me,” she says. “I just didn't know when my chance was going to be to use the skills that I was developing.”
Since then, Laura’s career has taken her across the country and the globe, from Los Alamos National Laboratory to New Zealand, Australia and eventually East Africa. Although unexpected, working in Africa turned out to be the perfect application for her skills and expertise.
“I was presenting some work on whitefly speciation at a conference, and my (soon-to-be) African colleagues came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Hey, you know what? We have this problem with whiteflies and plant viruses as well. Would you want to work with us?’” She immediately said yes.
Working with the Cassava Virus Action Project, Laura has focused on creating portable molecular labs to diagnose plant diseases directly in the field using handheld portable DNA sequencers in countries like Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, and Democratic Republic of Congo. This approach has revolutionized the way that local farmers such as Asha, a cassava grower in Tanzania, manage their crops.
“Asha had very little yield—maybe one ton per hectare,” Laura explains. “We tested her plants, figured out what strains of viruses she had, and recommended a virus-tolerant variety of cassava.” Nine months later, she yielded 40 tons per hectare. This transformation didn’t just feed Asha’s family, it uplifted her entire farming community of 3,000 people. When Laura returned to Tanzania, Asha was building a house for her family. “I thought, ‘This is it,’” she says, “‘This is what science should be.’”
Despite her successes, Laura has faced some resistance, particularly from traditional academic and funding systems. “Science is full of older white men,” she says. “Only 1% of the scientific literature comes from the African continent. And it’s not because there's not good work. It’s because the systems were designed to be racist.” Consequently, a big part of her mission is making science more diverse and inclusive.
The motivating factor for me has never been about publishing papers. It’s about filling the tables of farmers who need food and money to support their families.
Her decentralized approach to DNA sequencing, which empowers local scientists and farmers, has clashed with established models of international and agricultural aid. Despite the complex political atmosphere, Laura remains undeterred. “The motivating factor for me has never been about publishing papers,” she says. “It’s about filling the tables of farmers who need food and money to support their families.”
For Occidental students interested in combining science and social justice, Laura emphasizes the importance of staying true to one’s values. “Science is not without politics,” she says. “It has to include social justice, or we’re just going to remain the same.”
This summer, on her 50th birthday, Laura returned to Oxy for the first time since graduating, bringing her Ugandan husband and 8-year-old stepson. Walking across campus with her family, Laura reflected on her long journey that began at Occidental. “I don’t know how I got into Oxy,” she laughs. “But it changed my life.”
RELATED VIDEOS