Meet the Funga Team: Lily Gannon

Get to know the Funga crew with this newest installment of our "Meet the Team" series. Come back monthly to meet more team members, hear about their journey to Funga, and understand their vital role in our community.

Lily exploring tree nooks at Yosemite National Park.

We’re big fans of the “Today I get to….” mentality. So, what do you get to do every day at Funga?

As the Nursery Research Coordinator, I get to dip my toes into a few different pools at Funga! A large part of my work is devoted to our nursery experiments, where I work alongside the Nursery Team to design and run trials that test our inoculants. This means being hands-on with thousands of seedlings, and venturing deep into the forest to gather soil samples. At the moment, we're in an exciting phase of expanding our experimental scope, and it has been extremely rewarding to blend curiosity and creativity into these new lines of investigation. Additionally, I also manage our soil archive, which includes preparing samples for sequencing, and archiving them into our growing library.

If you had to explain what Funga does to a third grader, what would you say?

I think we can frame Funga’s mission as a fairy tale of sorts. Let’s imagine the forests we work with as our Cinderellas—while they have not lost a beautiful glass slipper, they are missing something very dear to them: their friendly fungal communities. What we do here at Funga is try to help all of our forest Cinderellas find their fungal "glass slippers” once more. We search far and wide to find a fungal fit for each unique landscape, and work to reconnect forests with the microbial communities they’ve been missing. Restoring this lost alliance helps the trees to grow bigger and stronger, and as a result, store more carbon!

Lily and her dog Wilbur.

Tell us a little bit about your life. How did it lead you to Funga?

When I was young, my parents encouraged me to explore my passions, which for me meant finding the small, unseen beauty in nature. Early on, I knew that I wanted to pursue something related to the natural world, but I’ll admit, at the time, I thought it would be more so along the lines of saving the manatees.

My passion for plants and their connection to the soil really came to the forefront during my time at college in Florida. The intense vibrance of tropical plants was intoxicating, and on a deeper level, I realized that I loved learning about what led to this radiance. All the while, I was obsessed with fungi. They are some of the most complex, mysterious, and underrated organisms in the world, and I was eager to learn more about them. During school, that meant investigating questions like how warming temperatures may impact certain mycorrhizal communities, or how a common flower fertilizer would affect the oyster mushrooms I had growing in my dorm room. After graduating, some lingering questions left me diving into the specifics of plant growth at a local plant nursery in my hometown. From here, my blend of interests in plants, soil, and fungi, as well as a strong desire to work in a research environment, led me to Funga! I now have the opportunity to help restore the vital link between trees and their mycorrhizal partners, and contribute to efforts in nature-based climate solutions.

What is your favorite part of the job?

My favorite part of the job is working with the soil library. My grandmother was a librarian, and I like to think I am incorporating some of her book magic into my work now! This has been a part of my job where I get to use a lot of creativity to tackle issues like: How do I efficiently store thousands of samples? Or, how do I easily sort through our archive to find a specific sample from three years ago? I love a puzzle, so it has been a very enriching part of my job, and I am excited to continue to develop a system that will hopefully set our archive up for success as it continues to grow.

Lily’s first time seeing the Grand Canyon.

What is one workflow/productivity tool or trick that you can’t live without?

A practice that sets me up for a productive day is to have a nice long morning before work begins. I get to hang out with my cats, sit on the porch, drink some coffee, and read a book. I love the soft period of time between sleep and getting ready to operate, where my brain can ease into the start of a new day.

What trivia round would you know every answer to?

I think I would fare pretty well in some manatee trivia!

Can you share a favorite memory of/with the Funga team?

It was late one night last year after a long day of inoculation, and ice cream was on everybody’s minds. I remember the entire inoculation crew sitting around a large table in the lobby of our hotel, as a pint of ice cream was passed down the line. I believe it was Ian, Anthony, Ann Marie, and Joey that took on the task of eating a pint of vanilla that was frozen like a rock. Due to a lack of spoons, I got to happily sit and watch the ways that coffee stirrers can be utilized for things other than coffee stirring. I remember laughing, listening, and finding a true sense of ease around a group of people that, at one point, were strangers to me, and then somewhere down the line of life became coworkers, and friends.