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Hammers for Glass Ceilings
Practical Career Advice for Minority and Women Investigators
Hammers for Glass Ceilings
Practical Career Advice for Minority and Women Investigators
Speakers: Terry Carlton (Morris Consulting Group), Prem Das (Harvard Medical School), Flora Fang (Levin, Cohn, Ferres, Glovsky, and Popoe,P.C.), Jorge Funes (Pfizer,Inc.), Marcee Harris (Catalyst), Susan Morris (Morris Consulting Group), Iesha O'Deneal (New York Academy of Sciences), Tanya Odom (The Future Work Institute), Jeremy Paul (New York Academy of Sciences), Joanne Peters (Kelly Scientific Resources), Vicky Richon (Merck & Co., Inc.), and Jura Viesulas (The American Chemical Society) Presented by Network for Minority Investigators, the Women Investigators Network, and Pfizer, Inc. Reported by Alan Dove | Posted December 21, 2005 OverviewOn September 24, 2005, the New York Academy of Sciences' Network for Minority Investigators and Women Investigators Network, with generous support from Pfizer held a conference on career development. Some of the topics covered were the workplace of the future, the job-hunting process, the importance of networking, and resources new investigators can use to enter the pharmaceutical industry.
A panel answered audience questions about career transitions, especially those that occur after a scientist lands an industry job. Besides ethnic and gender diversity, the panelists displayed considerable occupational range, spanning several traditional and nontraditional career tracks. After lunch, the conference split into two well-attended breakout sessions. Like the morning discussions, the breakout sessions focused on concrete, no-nonsense strategies for female and minority scientists looking to get ahead.
Introduction
One hundred years ago, scientific careers barely existed for women and minorities. Public schools were segregated, the world's entire population of female principal investigators would not have filled a classroom, and the brilliant chemist George Washington Carver was a relatively new hire at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes.
Integration was excruciatingly slow, with setbacks often offsetting gains. By 1932, optimists could have pointed to Carver, a world-renowned inventor receiving six-figure job offers from white-dominated industries, as an example of minority success in science. But the same year, the U.S. Public Health Service funded the first grant for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. That appallingly racist project did not end until 1972.
Meanwhile, female researchers like Rosalind Franklin and Barbara McClintock made some of the century's greatest scientific discoveries, but their contributions were largely ignored for decades.
In 2005, such blatant forms of discrimination are finally gone, and women and minorities seeking scientific jobs now face much brighter prospects than their predecessors did. Indeed, most researchers now agree that racism and sexism are worse than illegal: they are bad science. Nonetheless, the playing field remains subtly tilted.
Many young scientists are turning to the private sector in their job searches.
These concerns come on top of the litany of worries that face any graduate student or postdoctoral fellow looking for a job. With new PhDs vastly outnumbering the available tenure-track positions, and basic research grants becoming ever harder to obtain, many young scientists are turning to the private sector in their job searches. Leaving the familiar academic environment for industry can be a frightening transition for anyone.
To address these issues, the New York Academy of Sciences' Network for Minority Investigators and Women Investigators Network, with generous support from Pfizer, sponsored a daylong conference on career development. The September 24, 2005, event drew an impressive crowd. Over 50 attendees arrived punctually at 8:00 on a Saturday morning, and dozens more joined the audience by the afternoon.
Tanya Odom of the Future Work Institute kicked off the day with a flashy presentation on the workplace of the year 2015. Andy Warhol once said that the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet. Odom's seminar underscored this point. While her company projects dramatic changes in the workplace over the next decade, some of the seeds for those changes are already easy to see.
In the corporate world, the rise of email, voice mail, and wireless technology, along with the pressures of globalization and outsourcing, will continue to drive companies toward more distributed work environments. According to Odom, telecommuting and freelancing will become commonplace in many industries, often with profound and unexpected effects on the balance of work and life.
Telecommuting and freelancing will become commonplace, with profound effects.
Demographic trends will also bring changes, some of them surprising. Odom's projections show that instead of ethnicity, many people are identifying themselves primarily by their religion, nationality, and age. In the future, workplace diversity may refocus around these characteristics rather than race or gender.
Scientists will already have a head start on some of the new workplace trends, especially the tendency of companies to organize employees into small, flexible groups rather than rigid, military-style hierarchies. The culture of research, with its ad hoc organizational chart, may soon be a standard approach to business.
After Odom's presentation, the conference shifted focus to the details of landing a private sector job. The first panel discussion provided three perspectives on managing the job search, with practical advice on a wide range of issues.
Jura Viesulas of the American Chemical Society presented a soup-to-nuts summary of the job-hunting process, from identifying potential employers to closing the deal in an interview. Her first piece of advice, especially for researchers inclined toward timidity, was to take charge of the job search.
Take charge of the job search.
More specifically, Viesulas advocated mapping out a specific strategy for identifying, applying for, and obtaining a desirable job, then following that plan. Viesulas then presented a series of slides detailing features of effective resumes, secrets to success in interviews, and tips for networking.
Joanne Peters, from Kelly Scientific Resources, reinforced the importance of networking while describing the services of three different types of employment recruiters.
Employment agencies mainly place temporary workers with companies that have found themselves shorthanded. Headhunters, on the other hand, place workers in permanent positions. Niche recruiters form the third category, generally focusing on filling executive-level positions in specific fields. Headhunters and agencies should not charge fees to the job-seeker. Instead, their income comes from the companies that hire them to find employees.
Jorge Funes, a senior scientist at Pfizer, described the path of his own career, then presented a set of resources new investigators can use to enter industry. According to Funes, there are abundant opportunities for minorities and women in private sector research, and Pfizer aggressively recruits these groups.
Minorities and women have abundant opportunities in private sector research.
Like many of the other conference speakers, Funes followed his advice with concrete action, inviting attendees to extend their personal networks by contacting him directly.
During lunch, a second panel took the stage, and the conference shifted to an interactive format. After brief introductions, this panel began answering audience questions about career transitions, especially those that occur after a scientist lands an industry job. Besides ethnic and gender diversity, the panelists displayed considerable occupational range, spanning several traditional and nontraditional career tracks.
Vicky Richon, who now works at Merck, simply followed an interesting project from her postdoctoral fellowship as it migrated into industry for clinical trials.
Prem Das's career began with multidisplinary research training in academia, followed by a transition to business development in small biotech, after which he has returned to academia to commericalize the fruits of academic research through technology transfer.
Flora Feng quit chemical engineering for law school, and now works in intellectual property law at a major firm.
Jeremy Paul, the panel's moderator, organizes conferences for the New York Academy of Sciences, having moved through a series of careers in private sector research and management.
Planning a career is better than entrusting it to luck.
Despite their divergent backgrounds, the panelists agreed on a number of key points: Networking is critical for success, planning a career is better than entrusting it to luck, and scientists should always remain flexible enough to adapt to new job opportunities in academic or industrial settings. Also, though some nontraditional careers do not require postdoctoral work, a postdoc is still a good idea for most scientists.
After lunch, the conference split into two well-attended breakout sessions. Like the morning discussions, the breakout sessions focused on concrete, no-nonsense strategies for female and minority scientists looking to get ahead.
Susan Morris and Terry Carlton of the Morris Consulting Group ran the skill-building session, a highly interactive workshop on interviewing and networking. If the scientists were skeptical of learning much from a pair of corporate consultants, that skepticism quickly fell by the wayside. Morris and Carlton frequently split the attendees into pairs and small groups to practice the skills they had just discussed.
No matter what you think about dress codes, wear a suit to the interview.
A random sampling of the practical advice shows that it ran the gamut of job-seekers' challenges: Take your resume to at least five colleagues for proofreading before sending it to employers. Practice interviewing as often as possible. Keep a journal of contacts, interviews, and communications with potential employers. Do your homework, studying a company's business strategy, financial status, and major competitors before interviewing. No matter what you think about dress codes, wear a suit to the interview, and no matter how comfortable you feel with email, send a handwritten "thank you" note to the interviewer afterward.
Marcee Harris of Catalyst led the other breakout session, on the criteria for identifying companies that recruit, retain, and advance women and minorities. Like the interviewing workshop, this session was interactive, splitting the audience into small groups to discuss issues, then bringing them back together to exchange ideas.
After highlighting the barriers that women and people of color face in the workplace, and in the science and engineering fields specifically, Harris focused her talk on what to look for in a potential employer and how to guide a career once employed. In addition to explaining how to evaluate potential employers, Harris also encouraged attendees to evaluate themselves: What values are important to you? How do you measure success? What do you expect from an employer?
Job-seekers should evaluate themselves as well as their target companies.
Those questions naturally revealed the need for a plan, and Harris advocated a three-step thought process for developing it: First, think about one of your core values. Second, determine what actions you can take to identify employers who will support that value. Third, decide what questions to ask a potential employer to gauge their understanding and emphasis of that value. Repeat the process for each core value.
At the end of the day, conference attendees seemed upbeat about their job prospects, an attitude rarely seen among modern graduate students and postdocs. Rather than dwelling on problems, the meeting focused on solutions. The playing field may not be completely level yet, but minorities and women who approach the game with a good plan will prevail.
Alan Dove earned his PhD in microbiology from Columbia University and is now a science writer and reporter for Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Journal of Cell Biology.
Diversity Primer: The Future Workforce and Economy
Speaker:
Tanya Odom, The FutureWork Institute, Inc.
Highlights
- Demographic and technological trends are changing the way people work.
- In the corporate world, small offices and e-commuting will become the norm.
- Many professions will become dominated by freelancers.
- Diversity in the workplace will be re-focused around religion, nationality, and age rather than race.
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades
The bad news is that in the future, hierarchies will break down, job security will vanish, and we will all be working around the clock and into old age. That's also the good news.
Providing an entertaining kickoff for the day's discussions, Tanya Odom of the FutureWork Institute presented her company's predictions of how the workplace will look in the year 2015. The Institute itself provides an instructive example; it is an affiliation of freelance employees working from home offices and remote sites, all connected by the latest wave of digital technology. While these futurists primarily do market research for corporate clients, many scientists who decide to move into the private sector may eventually find themselves in similar work environments.
"The pace at which things are changing is unbelievable ... We have to start asking ourselves, 'Are we ready?'" says Odom.
The modern workplace is still encumbered with some old baggage.
For women and minorities in technical fields, the playing field may finally be leveling, but Odom cautions against premature optimism. "There are definitely people who say race is not an issue," in the modern workplace, but "I'm sitting in a Fortune 50 company recently doing executive interviews and a woman sat there ... and told me how black people have no work ethic," she says. The workplace is charging into the future, but it is still encumbered with some very old baggage.
Net gains
Ten years ago, Google was not a verb, putting new batteries in your Palm meant holding them, and nobody shopped on the Internet. Saying that digital technology is transforming the world is stating the obvious. Predicting how it will change the workplace in the next decade, however, is more challenging.
According to Odom, one of the key features of the digital revolution in the workplace has been the "death of distance." No longer bound to a specific desk in an office, many people already do their jobs from laptop computers and cellular phones in remote locations. Working from home or from a more scenic locale may sound like a perfect arrangement, but splitting the workplace into dozens of remote sites has unintended consequences.
Splitting the workplace into dozens of sites has unintended consequences.
One problem is isolation. Sitting alone in a room, slaving over a keyboard late into the night, used to be the unique province of novelists and mail bombers. Now, nearly anyone can choose this work environment.
Besides the obvious psychiatric dangers of a world full of Internet hermits, there is a major management challenge. Future administrators will have to master subtle new skills, like email etiquette, managing people by remote control, and gauging the fatigue levels of workers they cannnot see.
"What's your cutoff time?" asked Odom, instantly stumping the audience of researchers. Answers ranged from "when the experiment is done," to "when I have to go home to bed." For those contemplating leaving laboratory research, quitting time may become even more nebulous. Among businesspeople who work from home or from the road, Odom says a common answer is that work stops "when I fall asleep at the keyboard."
On a more positive note, the digital revolution allows many people to shift from "living to work" to "working to live," spending more time doing the things they enjoy and less time focusing on their jobs. Working from home, for example, helps many parents spend more time with their children without suffering the financial and career penalties of leaving gaps in their resumes.
Competing in flatland
The death of distance will also continue to feed another recent trend: the leveling of the global playing field. While the concept is appealingly egalitarian, it could also be career-threatening for many people in the developed world. Any job that can be done from a brownstone in Brooklyn might be done just as well—and for less money—from an apartment in Bangalore.
Outsourcing cuts both ways, though, since workers without offices can switch employers much more easily. In the near future, people may feel a stronger loyalty to their profession than to their current company, and corporations that make unpopular decisions might find that their employees vanish overnight.
People may soon feel stronger loyalty to their professions than to their employers.
Besides frequent job changes, this new power dynamic between management and labor may manifest itself in the organizational chart. Instead of rigid job descriptions and chains of command, future companies may create flexible work groups for specific jobs, then disband them when their work is done. The workers could then be recycled into new positions on new projects, or they could be sent packing if their skills are no longer needed.
Surviving in such a work environment will take a combination of usefulness, adaptability, and persistence. In essence, workers in a flexible hierarchy are constantly reapplying for their jobs.
The new flexibility may also have hidden costs for companies and high-level management, as a series of short-term work groups may lack a sense of history. Odom forsees corporate historians becoming valuable employees, recording what works and what doesn't so that future work groups can learn from past experiences.
Black, white, brown, and shades of gray
Of course, not all historical habits are good. Modern female and minority researchers certainly will not have to face some of the more obnoxious biases that plagued the American workplace in the past, but as Odom's opening remarks indicated, racism and sexism are still difficult to eradicate.
Several trends are conspiring to make traditional discrimination harder, but at the same time new forms of bias are surfacing. According to Odom, the workplace of 2015 will still see people divided by race and gender, but also by religion, immigration status, and age.
Indeed, the graying of the workforce is one of the most significant economic trends, as the baby boom generation is poised to keep working well past traditional retirement age. In industries that enforce retirement, a different problem will arise, since the generation after the baby boom is smaller. The resulting "employment gap" in the U.S. may further feed the trend toward outsourcing jobs to nations with larger workforces.
While age discrimination becomes a larger issue, race discrimination may diminish, especially if developed nations like the U.S. continue to function as global melting pots. Discrimination simply becomes impractical as distinct races blur into a continuous spectrum.
However, religious conflict in the workplace may escalate. Islam is likely to become the second largest religion in the U.S., at the precise historical moment when the nation's obsession with radical Muslim terrorists is reaching its zenith. Particularly in infectious disease, nuclear physics, and other "sensitive" areas, this trend is already raising challenges for university and government laboratories.
Racial discrimination may decrease in the future, but religious conflict may increase.
While neither Odom nor anyone else has easy solutions for these problems, the polished presentation did give the audience some useful ideas. The ability to work in small groups, learn new skills quickly, and adapt to sudden changes will all be critical in the workplace of the future. In other words, it will be a lot like a laboratory.
Three Perspectives on Managing an Effective Job Search
Moderator:
Iesha O'Deneal, New York Academy of Sciences
Panelists:
Jura Viesulas, The American Chemical Society
Joanne Peters, Kelly Scientific Resources
Jorge Funes, Pfizer, Inc.
Highlights
- Scientists should take control of their job searches and raise their expectations.
- Private sector employers expect to see a brief resume, not a full-length CV, as part of an initial application.
- Networking is an ongoing job, and needs to be taken as seriously as any other aspect of the job search.
- With careful career management, opportunities abound for female and minority scientists in industry.
Will work for food for thought
After the morning's interesting speculation about the future of the job market, the conference switched to a fine-grained description of the present. Reassuringly, scientists with advanced degrees average about half the national unemployment rate, so those years spent in graduate school do pay a dividend. However, labor statistics only show that scientists are employable, not that they are finding the jobs they really want.
For women and minorities, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that many of the traditional forms of job discrimination have either been outlawed or simply rendered obsolete. As Harvard president Larry Summers can attest, overtly discriminatory positions are no longer welcome in academe.
The bad news is that more subtle prejudices persist. Shortly before the conference, that point was underscored by an analysis published in the August 19, 2005, issue of Science, in which prominent female researchers catalogued a litany of hidden barriers ranging from hostile work environments to unequal child care burdens and the unconscious biases of colleagues.
Rather than dwelling on these problems, though, the panelists took a pragmatic approach, providing detailed instructions on managing a job search and landing an ideal career. The advice ranged from an overview of the job-seeking process to specific strategies for approaching different categories of employers.
Down to brass tacks
In a frank, highly informative talk about the realities of the current job market, Jura Viesulas laid out a series of steps new researchers should follow. The first is to take control of the job search.
"If you are a passive person who's going to take what comes to you, you have absolutely no control [over] what's going to come to you. If you're going to be the active party deciding what you want, those are the conditions you state to yourself early in your career," said Viesulas. Telling yourself to take charge is not just about feeling good; in practical terms, interviewers will take confident applicants more seriously.
Be confident, and interviewers will take you seriously.
Next, researchers should get a realistic assessment of what they are worth in a given position. Professional societies like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Chemical Society (ACS) routinely publish current salaries for scientists, with the data broken down by specialty and location, and comparing industry versus academic positions. Using these data, anyone just finishing a PhD or postdoctoral position should have a clear starting salary in mind.
That number should stay in the job applicant's mind, and not come out through the mouth, according to Viesulas. If an interviewer asks what starting salary you expect, she advises, toss the question back and make the employer say what they are offering. Starting salaries for entry-level positions are usually fixed, but an applicant may be able to negotiate other parts of the compensation package, such as vacation or travel to meetings.
Besides a clear sense of direction and realistic expectations, a job seeker needs a good map—and not just metaphorically. Viesulas recommends mapping out a career on paper: what you want to do, who you want in your network, and what you need to do to get from where you are to where you want to be.
With detailed slides and clear instructions, Viesulas then explained how to navigate through the job search, starting with the distinction between a resume and a CV, and proceeding to a practical primer on interviewing and negotiating skills.
Feed your headhunter
The next panelist was from a company that pioneered modern employment for women, albeit in jobs that few emerging researchers would envy. In their distinctive green uniforms, the "girls" from Kelly Services were the temporary workers brought in by shorthanded companies during the economic boom that followed World War II.
Rather than seeking traditional "temps," though, Joanne Peters recruits a new generation of scientists for positions in research and technology companies. "We currently are employing nearly 7000 scientists around the world," said Peters, adding that Kelly Scientific's operations now span four continents.
Like other professional staffing agencies, Peters's company provides some basic benefits to its employees, and places them in temporary positions that may or may not become permanent jobs. Companies looking for temporary help pay a fee to the agency, but the service costs the employee nothing. "All recruiters are working for a company, they're not working for you," explains Peters, but she adds that "the more you make, the more the recruiter makes, so we are going to be on your side when it comes to the negotiations."
Recruiters are working for the company, not for you.
Headhunters are a second type of job recruiter. Like agencies, they earn their fees from the company rather than the employee, but instead of hiring the researcher out for temporary work, a headhunter actually finds her a permanent job. Most headhunters specialize in one type of head, so find one who is recruiting specifically for the types of positions you seek.
The final category of agent is the niche recruiter, usually a sub-specialty of headhunter looking for executive-level employees for a company. Some niche recruiters charge the job-seeker a fee, but many do not.
Besides picking the right type of recruiter for one's career goals, Peters advises new researchers to work hard on building their network, a skill she says is especially important for women. When networking, she says, it is crucial to be sincere and to focus on "the next step." Instead of asking a new contact for a job immediately, for example, ask for information about the person's company, and build a relationship over time.
Walking the walk
While building their networks to get through the door, women and minority researchers may be surprised to discover that many companies are eager to recruit them. Pfizer, for example, not only sponsored a day-long career conference for female and minority scientists, the company also sent one of its top researchers to speak.
Educated at the University of Buenos Aires and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jorge Funes eventually landed a job with Pfizer's Argentinian branch, later moving to the company's Connecticut research facility. He has moved steadily up in the Pfizer ranks, constantly learning new skills along the way.
One of his first learning experiences on entering industry was that "I didn't know as much as I thought," says Funes, adding that "even though I went to M.I.T. and got my PhD, for the first time I had to work with people with less academic education than me, and ... they knew more than me."
Working in industry also means thinking as a team player, which differs from the independence of an academic environment. Job-seekers should expect to encounter the collective decision-making process as early as the first or second interview, when they will usually meet several members of a research team for individual and group discussions. Afterwards, the team members will compare notes about the applicant, so be sure to give consistent answers in each interview.
Working in industry means thinking as a team player.
Like the other speakers, Funes stresses the importance of networking, but he adds that some companies, like Pfizer, are striving to accelerate that process for minorities and women. For example, Pfizer works with a network of universities nationwide, sponsoring workshops on job-finding skills for minority and female science undergraduates. Internships at the company provide another route of entry.
Scientists who are already completing graduate work or postdoctoral positions can instead approach a company's researchers directly, building relationships that can eventually lead to jobs. Indeed, Funes made the first step especially easy for conference attendees. "Feel free to contact me, feel free to send me a resume," he says, adding "I would be very happy to help you get a job, not only at Pfizer but at any other large company."
Scientists Share: Three Perspectives on Career Transitions
Moderator:
Jeremy Paul, New York Academy of Sciences
Panelists:
Vicky Richon, Merck & Co., Inc.
Prem Das, Harvard Medical School
Flora Feng, Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Highlights
- Researchers can follow a variety of paths into private sector work, and may even change careers several times.
- Planning a career is important, but so is flexibility as new opportunities arise.
- Regardless of one's career path, any PhD hoping to do research should plan to complete a postdoctoral fellowship.
Sandwiches and switchbacks
Contrasting with the first panel's structured series of talks, the lunchtime panel took a more free-form, interactive approach, without slide presentations. This was also in keeping with the panel's theme of career transitions, in which all of the panelists emphasized the importance of flexibility and adaptation.
Traditionally, scientists were taught to think of their careers as a single path of well-defined steps, from graduate school to a postdoctoral position to a lifelong basic research post in an academic or industrial laboratory. While none of the panelists followed such a pattern, all seem to have benefited from their scientific training.
Scientific training is useful, even in nontraditional career paths.
"Every single piece of the intellectual history that I've had, the training that I've had, has ultimately led to the next thing," says Jeremy Paul, the panel's moderator, who now organizes conferences for the Academy. Nonetheless, he added, "I think it's very difficult ... in the current environment to really look out a very, very long way. I think you have to ... always be prepared for the sorts of changes that present themselves."
Indeed, all of the panelists needed to adapt to changes in the job market and their own interests, often several times, and the group represented a broad spectrum of career options for scientists, ranging from patent law to corporate and nonprofit administration.
Going with the flow
The four panelists have crossed paths before, often repeatedly, during the course of mergers and acquisitions of various biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. While some, like patent attorney Flora Feng, followed a relatively well-trodden path into the corporate world, others simply migrated from academe into industry while following their interests.
During her postdoctoral work, for example, Vicky Richon found herself in a laboratory where "we were able to take the small molecule that we were working on on at the bench, and actually treat patients and start a clinical trial." The experience was transformative. "Nothing was as great to me as ... being there when that first patient was treated," says Richon, adding, "It's really then that I decided that ... what I wanted to do was drug discovery."
Rather than applying for jobs with different companies, Richon followed her project, first with the small biotechnology startup that formed to develop the compound, then with Merck, the pharmaceutical company that bought the startup a few years later. Most recently, Richon has moved into management, directing the cancer research program at Merck.
Feng's transition was somewhat different. Initially trained as a chemical engineer, she went to work in the oil industry, but quickly grew tired of the lab. "I just wasn't someone who liked to be in the lab. I don't have the patience for it ... but I did see a lot of technology that was sitting around and wasn't getting used properly," says Feng. Playing to her strengths, she headed for a career in intellectual property law.
Law school can be a very good deal for scientists.
For scientists, law school can be a very good deal, since demand for scientifically trained patent attorneys is extremely high. A firm will often pay for a researcher's legal education, in exchange for a commitment to work for that firm for a period of time. As legal careers go, patent law can also provide a relatively relaxed lifestyle. The emphasis is on "relatively." After saying that her firm allows her to work part-time, for example, Feng clarifies: "I work from nine to five, five days a week. That's part-time for an attorney."
The road less traveled
Panelist Prem Das also ended up in the world of patents, but by a much more circuitous route. Indeed, judged solely by the number and magnitude of his career transitions, he appears to be the panel's most expert member. Following training and research work on two continents, in both academic and industry environments, on topics ranging from plant biology to genomics, Das was in a bit of a fix.
"When you diversify to the extent that I did, it's ... hard to find an academic position, because ... academia is looking for experts in a particular field," says Das. Large pharmaceutical companies are similarly interested in specialists. Fortunately, he found a position with a startup company, and followed jobs through a series of corporate changes and acquisitions. Das later left industry for academia, but with a twist: rather than running a laboratory, he runs the Office of Technology and Licensing at Harvard, where he helps faculty members patent and commercialize their research.
Corporate culture is very different from academic culture.
Even with a diverse background, scientists entering industry should be prepared for some surprises. One of the biggest may be the fundamental cultural differences between the academic and business environments. As all of the panelists agree, corporate thinking is ultimately linked to the financial bottom line. In the private sector, even researchers must develop clear plans and timelines, and show measurable progress toward specific goals. Curiosity-driven digressions are not in the budget.
Postdoc, ergo proper doc
For traditional career tracks, the PhD is no longer considered enough—both academic and large industry research jobs virtually require applicants to have postdoctoral experience. "I think if you'd like to stay in science at all, I would highly encourage all of you to do a postdoctoral fellowship. We don't hire people that don't have a postdoc in the Merck research laboratories," says Richon.
Even investigators who ultimately want to enter management in the pharmaceutical industry would do well to pursue postdoctoral training, according to Richon. For a PhD, it is much easier to enter a company as a scientist, then move into management later, than to compete with business school graduates for entry-level management positions, she says.
However, less traditional career tracks may not require postdoctoral work. Citing a recent study, Das pointed out that half of science doctoral graduates from Harvard, considered by some to be the top graduate school in the nation, do not take postdoctoral fellowships.
Half of all Harvard PhDs do not pursue a postdoc.
"Where are they going? A lot of them are probably going for a second ... professional degree like an MBA ... or straight to law school," says Das. Some may also be taking research jobs at smaller startup companies, or pursuing other "alternative" careers. At least a few Ivy League PhD graduates have gone directly into fields like journalism and public policy with little or no additional training, but the wisdom of that career strategy is open to debate.
Flexibility is an important characteristic in the modern job market, especially in the corporate world, but too much flexibility might lead to a loss of focus. "Jeremy and I are in a sense poster children for what I would call an accidental career," says Das, adding that "it's actually harder to do it this way. It's easier if you plan ahead."
Web Sites
WHO | World report on violence and health
The World report on violence and health is the first comprehensive review of the problem of violence on a global scale.
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
Contains the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's report, Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States.
Adults & Children Together Against Violence
ACT—Adults and Children Together—Against Violence is a violence prevention project that focuses on adults who raise, care for, and teach children ages 0 to 8 years. It is designed to prevent violence by providing young children with positive role models and environments that teach nonviolent problem solving. The project includes a national media campaign and training for community professionals.
Books and Journal Articles
Theories of Violence
Burke, K. 1969. A Grammar of Motives. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Burke, K. 1969. A Rhetoric of Motives. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Burke, K. 1966. Language as Symbolic Action. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Krauss, H. H. 2005. Conceptualizing violence. In Violence in the Schools: Cross-national and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. F. Denmark, U. Gielen, H. H. Krauss, E. Midlarsky, & R. Wesner, Eds. Springer, New York.
Popper, K. 1972. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Cost of Violence
Campbell, R., T. Self, & C. E. Ahrens. 2004. The impact of rape on women's sexual health risk behaviors. Health Psychol. 23: 67-74.
Campbell, J. C. 2001. Abuse during pregnancy: a quintessential threat to maternal and child health. Can. Med. Assoc. J. 164: 1578-1579. Full Text
Chrisler, J. C. 2001. Gendered bodies and physical health. In Handbook of the Psychology of Women and Gender. R. K. Unger, Ed. Wiley, New York.
Hegarty, K., E. D. Hindmarsh & M. T. Gilles. 2000. Domestic violence in Australia: definition, prevalence and nature of presentation in clinical practice. MJA 173: 363-367. Full Text
McCloskey, K. & N. Grigsby. 2005. The ubiquitous clinical problem of adult intimate partner violence: the need for routine assessment. Prof. Psychol. 36: 264-275.
Wathen, C. N. & H. L. MacMillan. 2003. Interventions for violence against women. J. Amer. Med. Assoc. 289: 589-600.
West, C. M. 2002. Battered Black and Blue: Violence in the Lives of Black Women. Haworth Press, New York.
Prevention of Violence
Anderson, C. A., L. Berkowitz, E. Donnerstein, et al. 2003. The influence of media violence on youth. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 4: 81-110. (PDF, 302 KB) Full Text
Denham, S. A., K. Blair, M. Schmidt, et al. 2002. Compromised emotional competence: seeds of violence sown early? Am. J. Orthopsychiatry 72: 70-82.
Goodwin, T., K. Pacey, & M. Grace. 2003. Childreach: violence prevention in preschool settings. J. Child Adolesc. Psychiatr. Nurs. 16: 52-60.
Guttman, M. & B. A. Mowder. 2005. The ACT training program: the future of violence prevention aimed at young children and their caregivers. Journal of Early Childhood and Infant Psychology 1, 25-36.
Mowder, B.A. 2005. Parent development theory: understanding parents, parenting perceptions, and parenting behaviors. Journal of Early Childhood and Infant Psychology 1, 45-64.
Silva, J. & A. Randall. 2005. Giving psychology away: educating adults to ACT against early childhood violence. Journal of Early Childhood and Infant Psychology 1: 37-44.
Violence Against Girls and Female Adolescents
Bolyard, M., S. Friedman, C. Maslow, et al. 2005. A study of high-risk group sex events. Paper presented at AIDS Impact Conference, Capetown, South Africa.
Gerber, G. L. 1995. Gender stereotypes and the problem of marital violence. In Violence and the Prevention of Violence. L. L. Adler & F. L. Denmark, Eds. Praeger, Westport, CT.
Gerber, G. L., J. M. Cronin, & H. J. Steigman. 2004. Attributions of blame in sexual assault to perpetrators and victims of both sexes. J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 34: 2149-2165.
Gerber, G. L. 1991. Gender stereotypes and power: perceptions of the roles in violent marriages. Sex Roles 24: 439-458.
Knibb, K. & B. Krauss. 2004. Relationships and urban adolescent vernacular: who are you and what are you to me; implications for HIV risk reduction. Poster presented at the National Institute of Mental Health AIDS Research Training Meeting, Washington, DC.
Krauss, B., H. Krauss, J. O'Day, & K. Rente. 2005. Sexual violence in the schools. In Violence in the Schools: Cross-national and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. F. Denmark, U. Gielen, H. H. Krauss, E. Midlarsky, & R. Wesner, Eds. Springer, New York.
Krauss, B. J., J. O'Day, C. Godfrey, et al. 2003. Peer pressure is like the weather: people talk about peer pressure but rarely do they operationalize it. Poster session presented at the NIMH Conference on Role of Families in Preventing and Adapting to HIV/AIDS, Washington, DC.
Rapp-Paglicci, L. A., A. L. Roberts, & J. S. Wodarski, Eds. 2002. Handbook of Violence. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.
Cyberviolence
American Association of University Women. 2000. Tech savvy: educating girls in the new computer age. AAUW Educational Foundation Research, Washington, DC. Full Text
Berson, I., M. Berson, & J. Ferron. (in press). Emerging risks of violence in the digital age: lessons for educators from an online study of adolescent girls in the United States. Journal of School Violence. Full Text
Berson, I. & M. Berson. 2002. Evolving a Community Initiative to Protect Children in Cyberspace. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
Herring, S. 1994. Gender differences in computer-mediated communication: bringing familiar baggage to the new frontier. Presented at the American Library Association annual convention, Miami. Full Text
Violence Against Elderly Women
Nadien, M. 1990. Adult Years and Aging. Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, IA.
Nadien, M. 1996. Aging women: issues of mental health and maltreatment. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 789: 129-145.
F. L. Denmark & M. B. Nadien, Eds. 1998. Females and Autonomy: A Life-Span Perspective. Allyn & Bacon, Boston, MA.
Violence Against Females with Disabilities
Brady, S. M. 2001. Sterilization of girls and women with intellectual disabilities: past and present justification. Violence Against Wom. 7: 432-461.
Chang, J. C., S. L. Martin, K. E. Moracco, et al. 2003. Helping women with disabilities and domestic violence: strategies, limitations, and challenges of domestic violence programs and services. J. Womens Health 12: 699-708.
Corrigan, P., F. E. Markowitz, A. Watson, et al. 2003. An attribution model of public discrimination towards persons with mental illness. J. Health Soc. Behav. 44: 162-179.
El-Basse, N., L. Gilbert, E. Wu, et al. 2005. HIV and intimate partner violence among methadone-maintained women in New York City. 2005. Soc. Sci. Med. 61: 171-183.
Hendy, N. & G. Pascall. 1998. Independent living: gender, violence and the threat of violence. Disabil. Soc. 13: 415-427.
Kvam, M.H. 2004. Sexual abuse of deaf children. Child Abuse Negl. 28: 241-251.
Li, L., J. A. Ford, & D. Moore. 2000. An exploratory study of violence, substance abuse, disability and gender. Soc. Behav. Personal. 28: 61-71.
Millberger, S., N. Israel, B. LeRoy, et al. 2003. Violence against women with physical disabilities. Violence & Victims 18: 581-590.
Morington, M. 2001. Domestic violence—domestic terrorism. In Good Practice with Vulnerable Adults. J. Pritchard, Ed. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Ltd., Philadelphia, PA.
Morris, R. L. 2005. Abuse of women with disabilities. Dissertation Abstracts International 65: 3580-A.
Nosek, M. A., C. C. Foley, R. B. Hughes, et al. 2001. Vulnerabilities for abuse among women with disabilities. Sex. Disabil. 19: 177-189.
Saxton, M., M. A. Curry, L. E. Powers, et al. 2001. "Bring me my scooter so I can leave you": a study of disabled women handling abuse of personal care providers. Violence Against Wom. 7: 393-417.
Stiles, B .L., S. Halim, & H. Kaplan. 2003. Fear of crime among individuals with physical limitations. Crim. Justice Rev. 28: 232-253.
Stoddard, S., L. Jans, J. Ripple, et al. 1998. Chartbook on women and disability in the US: an info use report. U.S. Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Washington, DC.
Cultural Beliefs and Domestic Violence
Adames, S. B. & Campbell, R. 2005. Immigrant Latinas' conceptualizations of intimate partner violence. Violence Against Wom. 11: 1341-1364.
Browne, A. 1992. Violence against women: relevance for medical practitioners. J. Amer. Med. Assoc. 267: 3184-3189.
Caceres, C. F., B. V. Marin, & E. S. Hudes. 2000. Sexual coercion among youth and young adults in Lima, Peru. J. Adolescent Health 27: 361-367.
Counts, D. A., J. K. Brown, & J. C. Campbell, Eds. 1992. Sanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Crandall, M. K. Senturia, M. Sullivan, et al. 2005. "No way out": Russian-speaking women's experiences with domestic violence. J. Interpers. Violence 20: 941-958.
Ellsberg, M., T. Caldera, A. Herrera, et al. 1999. Domestic violence and emotional distress among Nicaraguan women: results form a population-based study. Am. Psychol. 54: 30-36.
Ellsberg M. C., R. Peña, A. Herrera, et al. 1999. Wife abuse among women of childbearing age in Nicaragua. Am. J. Public Health 89: 241-244.
Horne, S. 1999. Domestic violence in Russia. Am. Psychol. 54: 55-61.
Kasturirangan, A. & E. N. Williams. 2003. Counseling Latina battered women: a qualiative study of the Latina perspective. J. Multicult. Couns. D. 31: 162-178.
Kozu, J. 1999. Domestic violence in Japan. Am. Psychol. 54: 50-54.
Kulwicki, A. D. 2002. The practice of honor crimes: a glimpse of domestic violence in the Arab world. Issues Ment. Health Nurs. 23: 77-87.
Malley-Morrison, K., Ed. 2004. International Perspectives on Family Violence and Abuse. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
McWhirter, P. T. 1999. La violencia privada: domestic violence in Chile. Am. Psychol. 54: -40.
Moracco, K. E., A. Hilton, K. G. Hodges, et al. 2005. Knowledge and attitudes about intimate partner violence among immigrant Latinos in rural North Carolina. Violence Against Wom. 11: 337-352.
Rivers, M. J. 2005. Navajo women and abuse: the context for their troubled relationships. J. Fam. Violence 20: 83-89.
Sabogal, F. Marin & Otero-Sabolgal. 1987. Hispanics, familism, and acculuturation: what changes and what doesn't? Hispanic J. Behav. Sci. 9: 397-412.
Sagot, M. 2005. The critical path of women affected by family violence in Latin America. Violence Against Wom. 11: 1292-1318.
Sokoloff, N. J. & I. Dupont. 2005. Domestic violence at the intersections of race, class, and gender: challenges and contributions to understanding violence against marginalized women in diverse communities. Violence Against Wom. 11: 38-64.
Sullivan, M., R. Bhyan, K. Senturia, et al. 2005. Participatory action research in practice: a case study addressing domestic violence in nine cultural communities. J. Interpers. Violence 20: 977-995.
Walker, L. 1999. Psychology and domestic violence around the world. Am. Psychol. 54: 21-29.
World Health Organization. 2002. Sexual violence. From World Report on Violence and Health. (PDF, 247 KB) Full Text
Yoshihama, M. 2002. Breaking the web of abuse and silence: voices of battered women in Japan. Soc. Work 47: 389-400.
Yoshihama, M. 1999. Domestic violence: Japan's "hidden crime." Jpn. Quart. 46: 76-82.
Yoshihama, M. 1999. The immigrant women-in-context framework: Studies of domestic violence against women of Japanese descent in the U. S. and Japan. In The Proceedings from the International Research Network on Violence Against Women Fourth Annual Meeting. Center for Health and Gender Equality, Washington, DC.
Yoshihama, M. & J. Horrocks. 2002. Posttraumatic stress symptoms and victimization among Japanese American women. J. Consult. Clin. Psych. 70: 205-215.
Domestic Violence in South Asian Immigrants to the United States
Abraham, M. 2000. Isolation as a form of marital violence: the South Asian immigrant experience. J. Soc. Distress Homel. 9: 221-236.
Ayyub, R. 2000. Domestic violence in the South Asian Muslim immigrant population in the United States. J. Soc. Distress Homel. 9: 237-s248.
Bhandari-Preisser, A. 1999. Domestic violence in South Asian communities in America: advocacy and intervention. Violence Against Wom. 5: 684-699.
Bui, H. N. 2003. Help-seeking behavior among abused Vietnamese women: a case of Vietnamese American women. Violence Against Wom. 9: 207-239.
Clark, A. H. & D. W. Foy. 2000. Trauma exposure and alcohol use in battered women. Violence Against Wom. 6: 37-48.
Dasgupta, S. D. 2000. Charting the course: an overview of domestic violence in the South Asian community in the United States. J. Soc. Distress Homel. 9: 173- 185.
Ferraro, K. J. 2003. The words change, but the melody lingers: the persistence of the battered woman syndrome in criminal cases involving battered women. Violence Against Wom. 9: 110-129.
Kocot, T. & L. Goodman. 2003. The roles of coping and social support in battered women's mental health. Violence Against Wom. 9: 323-346.
Mehrotra, M. 1999. The social construction of wife abuse: Experiences of Asian Indian women in the United States. Violence Against Wom. 5: 619-640.
Merchant, M. 2000. A comparative study of agencies assisting domestic violence victims: does the South Asian community have special needs? J. Soc. Distress Homel. 9: 249- 259.
Raj, A. & J. Silverman. 2002. Violence against immigrant women: the roles of culture, context and legal immigrant status on intimate partner violence. Violence Against Wom. 367-398.
So-Kum Tang, C. 1997. Psychological impact of wife abuse: experiences of Chinese women and their children. J. Interpers. Violence 12: 466-478.
Sutherland, C. A., C. M. Sullivan, & D. I. Bybee. 2001. Effects of intimate partner violence versus poverty on women's health. Violence against Wom. 7: 1122-1143.
Swan, S. C. & D. L. Snow. 2003. Behavioral and psychological differences among abused women who use violence in intimate relationships. Violence Against Wom. 9: 75-109.
Yick, A. G. & P. Agbayami-Siewert. 1997. Perceptions of domestic violence in a Chinese American community. J. Interpers. Violence 12: 832-846.
Violence Against Muslim Women in America
Abraham, M. 2000. Isolation as a form of marital violence: the south Asian immigrant experience. J. Soc. Distress Homel. 9: 221-236.
Ayyub, R. 2000. Domestic violence in the south Asian Muslim immigrant population of the United States. J. Soc. Distress Homel. 9: 237-248.
Bonisteel, M. & L.Green. 2005. Implications of the shrinking space for feminist anti-violence advocacy. Paper presentation at the Canadian Social Welfare Policy Conference, Fredericton, Canada.
Eisentein, H. 2005. A dangerous liaison? Feminism and corporate globalization. Sci. Soc. 69: 487-518.
Hallak, M. & K. Quina. 2004. In the shadows of the twin towers: Muslim immigrant women's voices emerge. Sex Roles 51: 329-338.
Hallak, M., K. Quina, & C. Collyer. 2005. Preventing violence in schools: lessons from King and Gandhi. In Violence in Schools Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. F. Denmark, Ed. Springer, New York.
Hallak, M. 2004. Oppression: a way of life for Muslim women amongst us. Columbia University International Center for Cooperation & Conflict Resolution, New York.
Kool, R. & L. Goodman. 2003. The roles of coping and social support in battered women's mental health. Violence Against Wom. 9: 323-346.
International Sexual Harassment
Fitzgerald, L. F. 1993. Sexual harassment: violence against women in the workplace. Am. Psychol. 48: 1070-1076.
O'Donohue, W., Ed. 1997. Sexual Harassment: Theory, Research, and Treatment. Allyn & Bacon, Needham Heights, MA.
Sigal, J. 2004. Sexual harassment. In Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. C. Spielberger, Ed. Academic Press, San Diego, CA.
Sigal, J., M. S. Gibbs, C. Goodrich, et al. 2005. Cross-cultural reactions to sexual harassment: effects of individualist vs. collectivist culture and gender of participants. Sex Roles 52: 201-215.
Speakers
Terry Carlton
Morris Consulting Group
email | web site
Terry Carlton, an independent training consultant and executive coach since 1996, brings 25 years of Fortune 500 experience serving in global training director roles. Before starting her own company, she worked for a training consulting firm, where she designed and led customized programs for financial, medical devices and natural gas organizations. She has designed and led leadership workshops for Cancer Information Services, New York Association of Nurse Executives, the Deans and Directors of New York Nursing Schools, and the New Jersey Association of Nurse Executives. She has coached executives at the New York Hospital for Special Surgery and the Medical Education Group.
Terry holds a Bachelors degree from Hunter College and numerous certifications in leadership, management development, and coaching. She has consulted with Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, JPMorgan Chase, Unisys, Vanguard, and KPMG Peat Morgan.
O. Prem Das, PhD
Harvard Medical School
email | web site
O. Prem Das is the director of the Office of Technology Development at Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining HMS, Prem was associate director of the Office of Industrial Affairs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and briefly held a similar position at the Office of Industrial Liaison at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Before his nearly six years in academic technology transfer, Das worked for over six years in the biotechnology industry. He was director of business development for Cadus Pharmaceuticals of Tarrytown, NY from 1996 until 1999. Before Cadus, he cofounded Heartland BioTechnologies, a start-up biotechnology company, where he was initially the director of research and subsequently the president and acting CEO. He has also worked as a business development consultant in the biochip area. Das was involved for many years in academic research and has published broadly in chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, and genomics.
Das received an MSc in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and his PhD in biological chemistry in 1980 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Flora Feng, JD
Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
email | web site
Flora Feng is an associate with Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C. at the firm's New York office, practicing in the intellectual property section. Her practice focuses on all aspects of intellectual property, including advising clients on intellectual property issues, the licensing of patents, trademarks and copyrights, as well as corporate transactions involving intellectual property. She previously held the title of legal assistant for the General Counsel's Office of the Office of Procurement and Financial Assistance at the U.S. Department of Energy. Her responsibilities included researching the legislative history and interpretation of certain energy-related acts. Feng honed her technical knowledge while employed by Mobil Research & Development Corporation, where she was an engineer in the company's products research & technical service division. She also served as a research assistant to a professor of immunology while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the firm, Feng was an associate at a New York City intellectual property law firm, where she concentrated her practice on pharmaceutical patent litigation and advised on copyright and trademark registration and protection.
Feng is admitted to practice in New York and in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. She received her BS in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1990), and was awarded her JD from Georgetown University Law Center (1996), where she was an editor for the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Jorge Funes, PhD
Pfizer, Inc.
email
Jorge Funes, a senior principal scientist at Pfizer, Inc., was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds a PhD in chemistry (1978) from the School of Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and completed postdoc training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on protein-peroxidizing lipid interaction from a food chemistry perspective.
Funes returned to Buenos Aires in 1982 and joined a government academic research center to continue working on food chemistry investigations initiated in the United States. In 1986 he joined Pfizer's Argentina manufacturing plant. After five years with Pfizer Argentina, Jorge was transferred to Pfizer's Global R&D facility in Groton, CT. and launched his analytical chemistry career working on the development of new human pharmaceutical drugs. Since joining Pfizer, Funes has held many positions of increasing responsible and has completed a secondment at Pfizer's Global R&D facility in La Jolla, CA.
Marcee Harris
Catalyst
email | web site
Marcee Harris is a senior associate in Catalyst's advisory services department. She works with organizations to assess their current workplace environments and develop strategies to further workplace inclusion and implement effective, customized solutions. Harris is a member of Catalyst's work-life issue-specialty team, and specifically heads up the group's efforts to build internal expertise. Before joining Catalyst, she consulted with nonprofit and government agencies across the San Francisco Bay Area on a variety of issues facing women, including entrepreneurship, anti-poverty programs, and leadership development. She was also the director of the University of California, San Francisco Women's Health Resource Center where she planned educational programs aimed at increasing women's well-being throughout their lifespan.
Harris received her Master's in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Spanish and women's studies from Duke University.
Susan Morris
Morris Consulting Group
email | web site
Susan Morris, an instructional designer, facilitator, consultant, and executive coach, has more than 20 years of experience in partnering with individuals, functional groups, new and mature teams, and organizations in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Before starting her own company in 2002, Susan worked for a training and consulting firm targeting technology-based organizations. Today, Susan's client relationships focus solely on global pharmaceutical companies with an expertise in pharmaceutical sponsors and contract research organizations (CRO) partnerships. Much of her professional time is devoted to women scientists in R&D and their career challenges. Previous experience included line management responsibilities for the American Red Cross, Blood Services, HealthAmerica (an HMO), and the American Cancer Society.
Morris holds a Masters in Education from Temple University and a Bachelors degree from Douglass College. She is a Certified Comprehensive Coach. She has consulted to Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Astra-Zeneca, Apollon, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Gencell, Pharma-Research, PharmaNet, Invivodata, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Wyeth, Enzon, Pfizer, Sepracor, Aventis, Endo, Novartis, and Millennium pharmaceutical R&D, domestic and global product teams.
Iesha O'Deneal
New York Academy of Sciences
email | web site
At the time of this conference, Iesha O'Deneal was the manager of the Women Investigators' Network (WIN) and Network of Minority Investigators (NMI) at the New York Academy of Sciences. She is now manager of global diversity and inclusion at Pfizer, Inc. She has also served as lead for diversity at Pfizer's Global R&D Division, with responsiblity for managing various employee networking groups, and was directly responsible for the development, deployment, and implementation of PGRD's diversity strategy across the United States, Europe, and Japan.
O'Deneal is a sought-after speaker on diversity and affirmative action issues and has served as guest panelist and presenter at the 2005 Bennett College Chief Diversity Officers Forum, 2004 Cornell University MBA Conference, and Electronic Recruiting Exchange Conference.
O'Deneal received her BA in psychology from Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi and a Master's in human resources and industrial relations from the University of Minnesota.
Tanya Odom
The FutureWork Institute, Inc.
email | web site
Tanya Odom is a highly regarded consultant, facilitator, trainer, teacher and speaker. She has conducted hundreds of workshops for adults and youth around the United States and Europe in the following areas: diversity education, educational equity, girls' leadership development, youth engagement, parental-community involvement, human rights education, intercultural awareness, hate crime prevention, and conflict management.
Odom works as a senior consultant in the global diversity practice of The FutureWork Institute, a strategic alliance of Towers Perrin, which has been cited as one of the top 25 consulting firms in the nation. Odom works with corporations in the United States and Europe in their efforts to address diversity issues and create sustainable change in organizations. She has worked with such clients as JPMorgan Chase, the New York Stock Exchange, American Express, Capital One, Johnson & Johnson, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Random House Publishing, and UBS PaineWebber. Her areas of specialty include racism, gender communication, disabilities, recruitment and retention, work/life Balance, mentoring, cross-cultural interviewing, and global diversity.
In the educational arena, Odom has worked on issues of educational reform, standards and equity, bilingual education, and overall school and district improvement efforts. She has worked on creating curriculum and professional development for educators dealing with issues of tolerance, equity, and the creation of "caring and learning classrooms." She is skilled in many active, participative, and experiential learning methods.
Prior to beginning her consulting work, Tanya worked as the assistant to the director of children's services at Women in Need Inc. in New York City, where she worked with homeless women and children living in temporary housing facilities. She also served as the coordinator of a dropout prevention program on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Odom has a Masters degree in education from Harvard University. She received her BA in anthropology/sociology with a minor in women's studies from Vassar College.
Jeremy Paul, PhD
New York Academy of Sciences
email | web site
Jeremy Paul, director of the Frontiers of Science Program at the New York Academy of Sciences, obtained an AB in biology from the University of Chicago in 1981 and a PhD from the biology department at MIT in 1986. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Chicago from 1986 to 1990 in the laboratories of Donald F. Steiner and R. Michael Garavito. From 1990 to 2003, Paul worked in the biotechnology sector in the New York area at Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Cadus Pharmaceuticals (which he helped found in 1992), OSI Pharmaceuticals, and most recently Aton Pharmaceuticals.
Joanne Peters
Kelly Scientific Resources
email | web site
Joanne Peters is a recruiting branch manager with Kelly Scientific Resources, where she is responsible for partnering with organizations to identify best-in-class scientific talent. Peters services the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut areas and has considerable expertise in identifying and placing qualified science professionals. She has worked with pharma, biotech, and nonprofit organizations across the tri-state region. Peters is an SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) certified PHR (Professional in Human Resources) and holds a MS in toxicology.
Vicky Richon, PhD
Merck & Co., Inc.
email
Victoria Richon joined Merck Research Laboratories, Boston in 2004 as senior director of cancer biology and therapeutics following the acquisition of Aton Pharma, Inc. She was a cofounder and executive director of biology at Aton. She was a leading member of the scientific group that discovered Aton's histone deacetylase inhibitors while at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from 1989 until 2002. She did postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Paul Marks and Richard Rifkind at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from 1986 until 1989. Richon received her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Nebraska in 1986 and her BA in chemistry from the University of Vermont in 1981.
Jura N. Viesulas, PhD
American Chemical Society
email | web site
Jura Viesulas manages the American Chemical Society's Office of Employment Information. The office collects, analyzes, and disseminates information about employment issues, salaries, work trends, and demographics in the chemical sciences. Viesulas supervises career related publications, career workshops, and training of career consultants. She is on the board of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology.
Viesulas earned her doctorate in psychoeducational processes from Temple University and a Master's in biochemistry from Wayne State University. She taught chemistry on the university and community college levels and was director of student affairs at Temple University in Rome, Italy.
Alan Dove
Alan Dove earned his PhD in microbiology from Columbia University and is now a science writer and reporter for Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Journal of Cell Biology. He also teaches at the NYU School of Journalism.
Presented by Network for Minority Investigators, the Women Investigators Network, and Pfizer, Inc.
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