Kali Holder

She/Her

I am queer and I am a zoological pathologist.//

I am a veterinary pathologist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. I help save species by providing diagnostics on animals both from our collection and from the wild, living and dead. Veterinary pathology includes biopsies, cytologies, and postmortem examinations, so I like to say I do pieces of live things and whole dead things, but no whole, live things.

I am an out queer woman and the Education and Outreach Coordinator for Pathology at the National Zoo, and I am a committed science communicator on STEM topics. In my spare time, I help organize and produce our local Nerd Nite, a STEAM-oriented adult edutainment live show with local nerds talking about their passions in front of an audience of possibly-intoxicated geeks.