Nalini Nadkarni may not be a familiar name to you, but she’s made such an impact in her ecology career, Mattel has created the “Treetop Barbie” after Nadkarni!
Journey to Barbie:
Complete with Nalini accessories, including a climbing rope, boots, notebook, binoculars, and a helmet, Nadkarni tells UT News, “It confirms to me that sometimes things you dream about do come true.”
While the headline is exciting, it wasn’t a glamourous journey to becoming a one-of a-kind Barbie doll. Nadkarni once made her own dolls with thrift store finds and handmade accessories. She would dress up Barbies she’d purchased from thrift stores and finished the look with eBay helmets. Additionally, tailors volunteered to put together the outfits. Her doll was not only a representation of herself, Nadkarni included a booklet on canopy plants to increase awareness of the science that she dedicates her life to. Dolls were then sold at Nalini Nadkarni’s cost.
National Public Radio reported in 2000 that the company had even asked her to stop producing them. Nadkarni fought back.
Last year, the National Geographic Society reached out to Nalini about a licensing agreement between Mattel and National Geographic to create a line of Barbie dolls. Nadkarni agreed and served on an advisory board which on the dolls to ensure realistic representation.
Who is Nalini Nadkarni:
“Nadkarni’s interest was first drawn to rain forest ecology due to the contradiction offered by its plant life. There was a great abundance and variety of plant life within the rain forest despite its nutrient poor soil, and her goal was to discover how the plant life was sustained. Her studies within the canopy revealed that the epiphytes, which are non-parasitic plants such as orchids and ferns that live on the branches and trunks of other plants, were trapping organic material beneath their root system. This organic material eventually formed a nutrient rich mat, and trees in the rain forest had developed aerial roots, stemming from their trunks and branches, in order to absorb these nutrients as well. The aerial roots growing into the mats aided the rain forest trees by providing the nourishment that they did not receive from the nutrient poor soil.
Nadkarni and her work in the Costa Rican rain forest were featured in the 1988 PBS series, The Second Voyage of the Mimi, starring a young Ben Affleck. She maintains an interest in public outreach, and her work was highlighted on the web page of the National Science Foundation. She is the author of Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees and has delivered TED Talks on Conserving the Canopy and Life Science in Prison. She also wrote some text (foreword and quotes) for a book for young explorers entitled, Kingfisher Voyages: Rain Forest, published in 2006. Her work has included developing moss growing techniques with prisoners, as well as bringing artists, like musician and biologist G. Duke Brady, into the forest canopy to write and perform.
An Emeritus Professor at The Evergreen State College, she currently is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Utah.” (1)
(1) https://faculty.utah.edu/u0759982-NALINI_M_NADKARNI/hm/index.hml
