My grandmother used to make the best apple pie. When she died, all of the family members tried to replicate her famous dessert, lamenting that she never wrote down the recipe.
I am not sure how many years went by before I learned that, actually, there was no recipe. Every pie she made was pretty much prepared on the fly, with pinches, dashes, and handfuls of other ingredients — all without measure. I am often asked by young women in science for the recipe for success. My answer is that it’s different for everyone.
I certainly wasn’t the best student and still don’t ever consider myself to be the most knowledgeable person in any room of scientists. For professional and personal reasons, I love where I live and have never felt the need to relocate to advance my career. And while I don’t know the recipe for my success, I did inherit the ingredients for being a lifelong learner from my mom, and my dad was the hardest-working individual I have ever met.
I was raised to be outspoken and bold, and it served me well, for the most part. As I share my “life lessons” in the following stories, I am reminded that the definition of success is very personal. My dad eventually became the apple pie maker in the family. At times there was enough Crisco in the crust to choke a large horse; however, he kept at it, and I would say he was successful in the end, not because his apple pie was the best, but because he found great satisfaction in sharing all his attempts with others.
Never Be Financially Dependent on Anyone Except Yourself
As I was growing up, this was the advice my mother gave me over and over again. I think about women in the workforce, in general, but women in science in particular, and I can’t imagine ever being denied the opportunity as a woman to have a career.
My mom was a good student in high school and wanted to go to college, but any money her parents had for education was set aside for her brother. She was expected to be married and raise a family, and so she did. She and my father were married just out of high school, and four children came quickly, with no time to waste in between babies. My dad sometimes worked more than one job. We had a small house with one bathroom and not a lot of extras; there were no vacations, but there was an above-ground pool in the backyard and a neighborhood of kids to play with.
I think I was in fourth or fifth grade when my mom told my dad she wanted to go to college. He vehemently objected, noting her place was at home raising children. The argument lasted for hours, and we kids were sent to our rooms. My mom started talking about a divorce, and then my dad stormed out of the house and drove off. When he came back a few hours later, he arrived with a brand-new typewriter, and my mom enrolled in college the following semester.
I often think back to that day with its important lessons about conviction, standing up for yourself as a woman, not conforming to what other people want you to be, and equally important, that marriage is a give and take — and yes, there are arguments. Was my mom really going to divorce my dad? Maybe, but where would she go and how would she live?
Life lesson # 1: “Never be financially dependent on anyone except yourself.” Duly noted, Mom. Thanks for that. When my mother died, she left all of her retirement funds to her grandchildren — to be used only for college.
Plans Change
Needless to say, college was important to my mom. She and my dad had saved money for all four of us to go to local colleges, with each paying our share in student loans. Both of my brothers opted out of college for a trade school. Since I was the youngest, my dad informed me that their college money was now my college money and that there was enough so I could go away to college if I wanted to.
I was SOOOOOOO excited!! Out of state? Dorm rooms? A real campus? College cafeterias? I could not believe my fortune! So with that, I left Buffalo, New York, and went directly south to the next steel town, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the University of Pittsburgh. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
I was an OK student. In high school, I made the National Honor Society, but of course in college, the playing field was leveled. Organic chemistry made me rethink my chemical engineering major. Looking back at it now, I wasn’t sure what a chemical engineer really was. It just sounded really cool at the time. I switched my major to biology, made a lot of friends, probably partied a little too much, and was a little boy crazy in the beginning.
I maintained a better-than-B average. That was the deal my dad made with me. If my grades fell, he wouldn’t pay for my classes. There was that one class in my major that I had to take over when college got a little too fun; that will become important later in my story.
I graduated without much pomp or circumstance, but Mom was very proud to attend the cap and gown ceremony. I took a job at The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) as a research assistant to save up a little money before I went to law school. An island off the coast of Maine in the middle of Acadia National Park seemed like a nice place to hang out for a year or two.
Life lesson #2: Don’t plan your life too far in advance — plans change. I never went to law school. I ended up really enjoying the work I was doing in genetics and decided to go to graduate school for my PhD. In Maine, I fell in love with my work and with my husband. I have been deeply passionate about both for the last 30 years.
Oh, Baby! Women, Children, and Science
My husband Jon was “a local,” as they say in Maine, with lots of friends and family in the area; however, he was very supportive and knew my career would require a post-doctoral appointment or two somewhere other than Bar Harbor, Maine. We got married when I was in graduate school at the University of Maine; I defended my thesis when I was eight months pregnant.
My daughter Robin was three months old when we moved to Durham, North Carolina. My mother-in-law was not my biggest fan. Not only did I take her son away, but her only grandchild too! I remember those were pretty lean times financially, but then things got a little stressful. My daughter started having medical issues, not eating and not gaining weight as expected. Without a diagnosis, we were emotionally exhausted.
Truth be told, my post-doc was not what I was expecting. Broke, tired, worried, and homesick, without consulting my husband, I made the decision to move back to Bar Harbor, where I took a job as a scientific curator, reading papers and entering data. It wasn’t the most exciting position I had in my career, but I learned a lot about genetic engineering and areas outside of my thesis domain.
My daughter’s medical condition was still unresolved but stabilizing. There were many tests, poking, prodding, and I had to take lots of time off. And then I lost my childcare. With a fussy baby who wouldn’t eat and no immediate options for center-based childcare, I thought I would have to quit my job. I still remember my boss at the time looking very unimpressed with my difficulties, as if she’d heard this all before. She dismissed my resignation, didn’t even glance at it, and told me, “we would figure it out.”
I worked an alternative schedule until I found stable childcare and my daughter’s medical issues began to resolve. I learned it can be difficult to have a career in science and be a mom. Science is competitive. There is always pressure not to get scooped on the next publication and to stay on the cutting edge of research. There is never a “good time” to have children, as the saying goes. I knew many women who worried about how the news of their pregnancy would be received in the lab.
Life lesson #3: Surround yourself with people who will support not only your career, but your family decisions as well. I feel incredibly blessed to have had the support I needed that allowed me to remain in science. I pay this forward every chance I get.
I Never Made Playdough
I remember arranging playdates and feeling as though I wasn’t up to speed on the latest “mommy trends,” like making my own playdough. Apparently, that was the latest thing in my mom group, and my pitiful self was still bringing the store-bought containers (which smelled amazing, BTW). Clearly, I had some catching up to do! My husband, who knew me better than I knew myself, found it highly amusing when I broke out the cookware and food coloring. I don’t know what I made, but it was a sticky hot mess!
The truth is, I went a bit stir-crazy while on maternity leave, to the point of inviting religious and political activists into my home just for the adult company. I never enjoyed book clubs or the local “stitch and bitch” guild. I genuinely disliked chaperoning middle school dances, was never involved with the PTA, and most of all, I was tired of feeling guilty for having a demanding scientific career.
The fact of the matter was that I really liked my job and the intellectual challenges that came with it. My work was enjoyable to me, and I got a tremendous amount of satisfaction from doing it. But the truth is that all my guilt was entirely self-imposed. (OK, maybe some of it from my mother-in-law was real.) There will be moments and things you miss, but get over it. My daughter did her first backflip, and I wasn’t at the gymnastics practice. My son hit his first Little League home run while I was at a scientific conference. But there is plenty that I was there for, and between my husband and me (and my incredible mother-in-law), we made it all work.
Most importantly, I was a role model for my kids. My daughter Robin majored in math and is excelling in a male-dominated career as an actuary. My son Kyle always knew the value of a hard day’s work, leadership, and giving back to his community; he is currently the president of his college fraternity.
Life lesson # 4: Get over the guilt of being a mom with a career. Both of my kids grew up to be well-adjusted, sweet, successful, and caring adults. So, I never made their playdough. So what.
Don’t Be Afraid to Mix It Up
My work has always been an interesting blend of business and science, and I could never really choose between the two. I became pretty excited about the business of science, operational management, and, yes, even budgeting.
I was fortunate to have a financial analyst who showed me a thing or two about these topics. I think he found it amusing when I would plop myself in his office and tell him just how wrong he was about my budget allocations. He would grin broadly during these instances, but he was kind enough to take the time to educate me on the things I knew nothing about. And believe me, I didn’t know very much. With two kids, a demanding job, and the nearest university an hour and a half away, going back to business school was not an option, though I rolled it around in my head many times.
In 2011, I learned that The Jackson Laboratory was partnering with the University of Maine to bring an MBA program to the lab. They actually came down to the island and taught the classes in the evenings. I don’t think I was ever more engaged in learning than I was at this time. I was so into every class, mostly because of real-life applications to almost everything I was encountering at work. With an overwhelming sense of gratitude, I graduated with honors and went on to teach business classes as an adjunct faculty member.
I was also fortunate to have many mentors who were extremely supportive and even some who offered me suggestions I didn’t want to take. From one individual in particular, I definitely learned a lot about business, but most importantly, I learned about leadership. As the COO at the lab at the time, that individual continuously supported my career in both business and science.
So while I still wrote grants and focused my research in neurodegenerative diseases, I became the director of the genetically engineered mouse program, something JAX is fairly famous for. The program provided models of human disease to the scientific community, facilitating and accelerating research in remarkable fashion on a global scale.
The business grew rapidly year after year, moving from a financial loss to a successful and sustainable business model. It was this combination of business and scientific knowledge that contributed to my success throughout my career, and I am forever grateful for those who allowed me to participate in both.
Life lesson #5: Don’t be pigeon-holed by scientific tradition — there is a lot to explore!
Look Up, Look Around
I know it is cliché to say that you shouldn’t care what other people think. We may all say it, but few people really mean it. Of course, we all care to some extent, especially when it comes to our professional careers. As scientists, we all want to be successful. We want to make breakthrough discoveries, contribute to the betterment of human health, and generally satisfy the deep sense of curiosity that drove us to be scientists in the first place.
Success comes many times in traditional ways, with graduate school, post-doctoral training, a tenure track position, or even a career in industry, and once you are on that career track, whatever it may be, plowing the road ahead, you can find it difficult to look up and around.
As a neuroscientist and geneticist, I spent a lot of my time researching a devastating disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The majority of babies diagnosed with the genetic condition die before 15 months of age. There is a modifier gene that can predict a milder form of the disease, but even then, the children never walk, are wheelchair-bound, and end up with a severely shortened life, succumbing to respiratory disease.
I began working with a foundation determined to find a therapy; my research program had a major focus on this disease for over a decade. At one point, my lab published a milestone paper in a very prominent journal. If you work in academic science, you know that faculty positions and promotions are largely based on your publications; the day my paper was published, there was an outpouring of congratulatory emails and phone calls from colleagues.
I remember feeling really good about all the praise until I answered the phone. A woman on the other end introduced herself as the grandmother of a five-year-old old girl with SMA. She had lots of questions about the publication. Even though it was already late, we spoke for a solid hour. By the end of the call, I wasn’t feeling so great. Here I was, a scientist celebrating a paper while this woman’s grandchild was dying. It wasn’t as though I had never met families and patients with SMA before. It was fairly routine for me at this point, but somehow this was different; I really can’t put into words why.
She and I had many more phone calls during which I gave her updates on the science and clinical trials and she talked to me about her day-to-day life and her worries for her granddaughter and her son. We spoke about things other than SMA, like politics, religion, family traditions, and so on.; she was an amazingly insightful and lovely person. Sadly, her granddaughter died a few months before the FDA approved the first therapy for SMA.
Working in SMA was the highlight of my career for a multitude of reasons. I found myself immersed in collaboration with the most amazing group of scientists and clinicians across the globe. They were all so smart, selfless, and driven; it was wonderful to be a part of a collective mission so much greater than anyone’s individual research. That really struck a chord with me.
Interestingly, it was around this time that there were some departmental reorganizations at JAX, and I was invited to apply for a faculty position; however, this would mean giving up my business role. Instead, I went to my always-supportive COO and asked if I could start a new department. I wanted to conduct drug efficacy and pharmacology studies for rare diseases. Having learned so much from SMA research, I wanted to operationalize, as much as possible, the path for other families and patients with rare diseases. He agreed, and off I went.
Life lesson #6: Find a cause that isn’t just a job. Don’t get caught up in those career track “must do’s and don’ts.” You will be much happier when you stop checking boxes, stop looking to others for validation, and find your own drumbeat to march to.
In my case, I found myself less and less interested in the things that would advance my career: papers, grants, and faculty applications. My focus became helping people and families with rare diseases. So I found a way to leverage my career to do just that.
Now, I still write grants and papers, but I don’t do it for career advancement. I stopped congratulating myself on personal scientific successes a long time ago. It’s not about me; there is a collective and a much greater cause.
Be Transformative
I continue to work extensively with patient organizations, foundations, and families with rare diseases. I am often introduced when genome sequencing leads to a genetic diagnosis. It’s usually the case that not much is known about the disease, and preclinical models are really needed to understand the mechanism of disease, and, importantly, serve as patient avatars for therapeutic testing.
The tenacity and resilience of the families never cease to capture my attention and admiration. I am very grateful to be able to leverage the infrastructure at JAX, NIH, and anywhere else I can find it, to serve these patient communities.
However, the reality is that diagnostic identification of genetic mutations has outpaced the research and financial resources. The creativity behind the fundraising of these patient organizations, while inspiring, is also untenable. Our current drug development culture fails these patients. Biotech and biopharma are focused on disease populations in which there are enough patients to benefit financially from their investments and discoveries. A very wise individual recently reminded me of the saying, “If you don’t change the way you look at things, the things you look at will never change.”
Life lesson #7: Be transformative. There have been many instances in my career when I simply have not accepted the norm. I do believe that the convergence of key technologies, especially in genetic medicine, will change the current reality for many of these patients. As I make the turn to play the back nine of my career as the vice president of the Rare Disease Translational Center, this will be my focus.
Some Parting Thoughts
The further you go in science, the more you realize just how much you don’t know. We start off thinking we have all the answers but realize we have so much to learn! I think the easiest thing to do sometimes is to turn away from things you initially don’t do well or understand, or worse, to simply stick to what you do know.
It was a college professor who convinced me to apply for a job at JAX. I laughed, noting that the one class I had to retake as an undergraduate was. ... wait for it. ... .genetics! He smiled and noted that the best way to really learn something was to do it.
As I look back on my career to date, I was very fortunate to have been given multiple opportunities to succeed or fail. I did both, multiple times. Thankfully, there were more successes than failures, but I won’t lie: some failures were significant gut punches that rocked my confidence.
Excerpted from Lessons Learned: Stories from Women Leaders in STEM, edited by Deborah M. Shlian, MD, MBA.