Advocating a Better Future for Postdocs
Blavatnik Regional Awards Finalist Nicole Lake, PhD, is now a strong advocate for postdoctoral researchers. She offers advice on how postdocs should advocate for one another.
Published September 17, 2024
By Nicole Lake, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Medical School
2024 Blavatnik Regional Awards Finalist in Life Sciences
As postdocs, we are not just passive participants in our journey. We are active shapers of our own experience. We must learn and apply a wide range of skills, from research and teaching to networking and time management.
Another crucial skill we need is self-advocacy – standing up for our needs. Whether negotiating for better resources, obtaining support to attend a conference, securing mentorship, or balancing work-life demands, self-advocacy is vital for our postdoctoral success and well-being. As we move through our postdoc, some of us will also find ourselves stepping into a new role: advocating for others. Whether it’s pushing for better representation, compensation, childcare support, or benefits, advocacy for postdocs by postdocs also plays a central role in shaping the postdoc experience.
During my postdoc, I navigated a journey that saw me grow from advocating for myself to advocating for my peers in the postdoc community. My experience taught me that advocacy goes beyond identifying needs; it also requires the confidence and understanding of how to ask for your needs to be met effectively. Whether advocating for yourself or pushing for change within a department or university, framing an ask around mutual benefits is often key. Before making a request, I consider the other person’s perspective: understanding their viewpoint, finding common ground, and showing how my request will benefit them can often lead to a solution.
Advocating for Fellow Postdocs
My role as a Yale Postdoctoral Association (YPA) Co-Chair had the most significant impact on my advocacy perspective as a postdoc. In this role, I was privileged to advocate for over 1,000 postdocs. The YPA has a proud history of advocating for positive change for the postdocs it serves, and one of the achievements I’m most proud of during my term was securing salary increases to reflect the value of postdocs and their living costs better. I took away two critical lessons from this experience:
- 1) the power of data-driven advocacy and
- 2) the importance that the allyship of faculty and staff plays in advocacy success.
In academia, we rely on data to support our hypotheses, and I’ve found this approach equally powerful for advocacy. To better understand, uncover, and address unmet needs in our community, we initiated a university-wide postdoc survey on topics including cost-of-living considerations, and available resources for postdocs, to obtain data, enable data-driven discussions with university leadership, and strengthen our case for change. This survey was a collaborative effort with the postdoctoral office, representing an example of allyship between postdocs and the university, working together to achieve a common goal: improving the postdoc experience.
It’s important to acknowledge that the success of our advocacy didn’t happen in isolation. Within the YPA it was built on the groundwork laid by previous leaders who, for example, established channels for regular dialogue with university leadership—these channels were critical for communicating our requests. Our time as a postdoc is limited, and we may not always see the outcomes of our efforts advocating for better representation, benefits, compensation, and beyond. However, it’s important to remember that our efforts are cumulative and often provide a foundation for future advocates to build upon, contributing to progress long after we’ve moved on.
A Skill Developed Over Time
Finally, I want to share that self-advocacy does not come naturally to me but rather is a skill I’ve had to develop over time. Advocating for others has always come more easily than advocating for myself. Like any other skill, self-advocacy is learned—it requires practice, patience, and persistence. However, it is a skill worth cultivating, given its impact on your career and well-being.
Overall, my journey has shown me the power of advocacy – not only for improving our circumstances but also for improving the experience of others. Whether you’re advocating for yourself or pushing for change to benefit others, advocacy has an essential place in the postdoctoral experience.
About the Author and the Award
Nicole Lake is a 2024 Blavatnik Regional Awards Finalist in Life Sciences.
You can learn more about her and the Blavatnik Awards at Blavatnikawards.org
This piece published on the National Postdoctoral Association member blog as part of 2024 National Postdoc Appreciation Week. Current Academy Members can receive a 20% discount on a National Postdoctoral Association postdoc individual membership by emailing customerservice@nyas.org and requesting the NPA membership discount code
