Shirley Mahaley Malcom was born in 1946 in Birmingham, Alabama, which was a segregated city. She grew up in her grandmother’s house with her parents and sister and was surrounded by other family and a strong Black community. Malcom attended Hudson Elementary School until sixth grade when she started attending Lewis School where her mother taught. She talks about experiencing the Civil Rights movement, the importance of voting, and the bombing of different churches in her community, included Bethel Baptist Church in 1956. Malcom attended George Washington Carver High School and graduated in 1963 at the age of sixteen. She talks about her family, including her mother going back to school and her father being treated at the Black VA hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents expected her to go to college, and she selected the University of Washington. Malcom discusses the challenges she faced as a Black woman moving into a white community. She spent a lot of time studying in college and talks about the classes she took and switching her major to zoology. Encouraged by her advisor to attend graduate school, Malcom accepted an offer at the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned a master’s degree in 1968 and took a leave of absence from the PhD program to teach at Marymount High School.

After some traumatic events in her life, Malcom decided to go back to graduate school and accepted an offer at Pennsylvania State University. She discusses enrolling in the PhD program in ecology and meeting her husband in the registration line. After receiving her PhD, Malcom taught at the University of North Carolina Wilmington before moving to Washington, DC, with her husband. She started working at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where she has spent the rest of her career. She discusses her work at AAAS, including the “Double Bind” reports. Malcom briefly moved to the National Science Foundation for two-and-a-half years before returning to AAAS. She assisted with two major reports, “Equity and Excellence: Compatible Goals” and “Investing in Human Potential.” In 1993, Malcom joined the National Science Board (NSB). A year later, she joined Bill Clinton’s (1946-) Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Malcom discusses her service on PCAST and NSB, topics they considered, and interfacing with Congress and the White House. In particular, she testified in Congress about the Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI). She talks about the racial and ethnic compositions of PCAST, her interactions with other members of the committees, and the letter-type reports PCAST submitted to the President and why letters worked better than full-length reports. She details what it was like serving as a Black woman on these committees and her later work at AAAS, including working with STEMM Equity Achievement Change [SEA Change]. Malcom also mentions other diversity work, talking with George W. Bush (1946-) about improving education in schools, and interacting with Congress and PCAST as a part of AAAS.

This interview was conducted remotely via Zoom.