Straughn was raised on a cattle and pig farm in Bee Branch, Arkansas,[2][3] and also grew watermelons.

There, she worked with a student team to write a successful proposal for research on NASA's microgravity KC-135 plane known as the "vomit comet" in 2001.

[8] Straughn is a member of the James Webb Space Telescope project science team at Goddard, where she started as a postdoc in 2008.

Straughn is known as a passionate science communicator and has spoken at schools, astronomy clubs, museums, and research societies locally in the DC area and nationwide.

She also interacts frequently with the media, having done numerous live television interviews, media features for NASA,[12] and has appeared on TEDx,[13] PBS NOVA,[14][15] National Geographic, DiscoveryGo,[16] Netflix,[17] History Channel, Science Channel and on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's "Hubble Gotcha" segment.