Science, including ecology, has historically been dominated by white cisgender men, with people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ scholars traditionally marginalized and excluded. Yet, we know that diverse and equitable teams are more productive, creative, and more effective at solving problems – all much needed when tackling major conservation challenges. Our group is actively contributing to efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and reverse historic injustices in STEM through several lines of inquiry. We have shown that although >50% of ecology graduate students are women, women have been consistently underrepresented as plenary and keynote speakers at conferences for several decades. Furthermore, we find that faculty of color, women faculty and first generation faculty are playing a disproportionate role in advancing DEI at their institutions, further perpetuating the “minority tax”. These findings are published in BioScience and Nature Ecology and Evolution. Adopting an intersectional approach, we are currently working on a nation-wide survey to assess how sexual harassment is affecting graduate students in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.