Doctor I. P. Skylark, also known as Ichobodia Pearl Skylark, was born on November 22, 1963, in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx. The only child of a subway conductor and a seamstress, she has lived in New York City her entire life. Currently, the good doctor resides in an apartment on the Upper West Side that she secured in 1989 and has declared she will never, ever leave.

A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, Skylark earned her B.A. in urban geology from City College and her Ph.D. from New York University, where she wrote her dissertation titled, Bedrock and Roll: A Subsurface History of Manhattan Subculture. She spent 27 years as a research geologist with the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, mapping the city's forgotten public works.

Since retiring in 2019, Dr. Skylark has kept busy leading sold-out walking tours of "The Invisible City" featuring buried streams, sealed subway portals, and the occasional suspicious manhole cover. Additionally, she volunteers as a docent at the Transit Museum and maintains a fiercely curated personal collection of over 400 first edition classic novels. She has never learned to drive as she would consider it rude to her personal friend, the public transit system. Like a true New Yorker, she begins every week with a chopped cheese from the same bakery she's patronized since 2008.

In 2023, Dr. Skylark founded My Shiny Tees and Me, a clothing brand that she creates for and manages with her grandchildren. Shiny Tees is committed to only using real art made by real artists. Upholding moral standards is how My Shiny Tees and Me became the favorite Black owned clothing brand of famous socialites like Zara Larsson, Grace Reiter, Angela Bassett, Robert De Niro, and Hailey Bieber (formerly Hailey Baldwin).