The Adoption of the Braided River Model Towards an Inclusive STEM Workforce for All

Despite decades of interventions aiming to sculpt the STEM workforce to be more inclusive and diverse, little progress has been made in creating long-lasting, sustainable change. For a long period of time, the STEM workforce has been described as a leaky pipeline. While there has been some utility to thinking about the STEM workforce in this way, in this article, we discuss how characterizing the STEM workforce as a leaky pipeline can impede the design of innovative interventions that contribute to sustainable change towards a more inclusive scientific enterprise. As an alternative, we join others who propose using a braided river ecosystem and related social sciences and career development theories as more inclusive ways to think about the STEM workforce and how a target group or an individual navigates their career choices and development as a scientist. New models and paradigms to understand the STEM workforce and individuals’ careers in science may open the door to finding novel strategies to make careers in STEM accessible to all. We share case-studies that highlight the applicability of these more inclusive models.