TikTok Teacher

By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall

As a student at NC State, Alease Daniel ’18 developed a love for teaching while working as a teaching assistant in Introduction to Genetics. Today, she’s parlayed that affinity for helping people grasp difficult concepts into a very 21st century title — a TikTok creator who tackles questions surrounding fertility and reproductive health.

In less than a year, Daniel, who works as an embryologist at Atlantic Reproductive Medicine Specialists, has racked up more than 149,000 followers and millions of views on TikTok, the social media platform that features short-form videos. As @aleasetheembryologist, she has an upbeat, matter-of-fact style as she talks about why fertilizing eggs with sperm in a lab is so expensive or explaining the process of injecting sperm into an egg. “I find teaching so fun,” says Daniel. “I can’t wait for them to know this stuff.”

Daniel, 26, started working at the Raleigh clinic before graduating from NC State; her day-to-day work now includes embryo freezing and thawing as well as egg retrieval. While talking to patients over time, she realized that many have little understanding about what happens inside fertility clinics and reproductive health, in general.

Inspiring that next generation of embryologists is really cool.

She started posting educational content on Instagram in January 2021 and took her message to TikTok a couple of months later. Soon after, she went viral with a 36-second video about abnormal periods. She remembers feeling self-conscious as she read the tens of thousands of comments the next morning.

“I knew I knew what I was talking about, but on the Internet, you get a little worried,” says Daniel. She ultimately got validation from popular TikTok doctors, including Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an OB/GYN who shares women’s health information with her 2.6 million followers.

Daniel’s videos tackle a range of topics, so patients can ask informed questions as they go through the process. But one of her most common questions is about how she became an embryologist. “Inspiring that next generation of embryologists is really cool,” she says, “because I only see this field growing, and growing pretty quickly.”