Overcoming personal and professional discrimination, Rudean Leinaeng, a native of the Bronx, coming of age before the Civil Rights Era, was able to carve out and create a role as a scientist, mother, feminist, and activist. She was a professor of chemistry at Bronx Community College for over 30 years, helping students others thought were hopeless to achieve their goals of becoming doctors, nurses, and science researchers.
My Mom, The Scientist paints an intimate portrait of my mother Rudean Leinaeng—a Black woman coming of age in the 1940s and 1950s—who fell in love with chemistry and created her own route to a successful career, inspiring generations of STEM-minded students in the USA and Africa.
Despite facing obstacles thrown in her path, Rudean made space for herself and others in the white male-dominated world of science. She was an early recipient of NIH grants that created opportunities for community college students to do innovative research, increasing Black representation and involvement in science. She taught chemistry at Bronx Community College and later at a girls’ school in the newly independent nation of Tanzania. Her life becomes a portal into larger questions about access, community, and representation in STEM, transforming a singular narrative into a journey, recognizing the lives of families who do science in ways that are rarely acknowledged.
The Filmmakers
Thomas Allen Harris is a critically acclaimed, interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker and scholar whose work explores family, identity, and spirituality. He is also Co-Founder and Co-Director of Family Pictures Institute for Inclusive Storytelling, a nonprofit that uses participatory storytelling, artistic projects, and community engagements that activate the family archive to increase community well-being. Today, Harris is currently working on his upcoming documentary film, My Mom, The Scientist, and its national outreach campaign, Scientists in the Family, which explores hidden figures within STEM. A Professor-in-the-Practice at Yale University, he teaches non-fiction film theory and production classes based on his pioneering research methodologies.
Don Perry is an accomplished producer and writer, having written or co-written scripts for award-winning feature documentaries and short subjects, including the 2015 NAACP Image Award Winning Outstanding Documentary Film, Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People and the 3-part national PBS series Family Pictures USA.
Recognizing the power of “Story” in defining a community, Mr. Perry utilizes multimedia and social engagement tools to foster belonging, diversity and inclusiveness across genders, generations and cultures. Mr. Perry is CEO and a lead architect of the non-profit, Family Pictures Institute for Inclusive Storytelling Inc., which uses the family photo album as an instrument of communal co-creation to bring people together around shared values and experiences, transforming strangers into family.