Kristin is Senior Scientist at the University Health Network and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. She also holds an Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Investigator Level II Award and is a Medicine by Design Investigator.
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking
Get the full blog post: https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/kristinhope
Kristin is Senior Scientist at the University Health Network and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. She also holds an Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Investigator Level II Award and is a Medicine by Design Investigator.
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking
Get the full blog post: https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/kristinhope
Warning- getting a perfect transcript is hard. This transcript may have mistakes. Be kind to us by accepting these potential errors. I hope that the transcript is helpful to some of you! Apologies in advances for any mistakes in the transcript.
Sandrine Soubes: Okay let's make a start.
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Sandrine: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, dear listeners. I've got the pleasure to have with me somebody who comes all the way from Canada. Today I have with me Kristin Hope. Hello, Kristin.
Kristin Hope: Hello. Nice to be here.
Sandrine: At the moment, you're working as a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center, and you are also an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Kristin, can you tell us a little bit about your career so far? Where did it all start for you, this scientific career?
Kristin: Sure. I started with an undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo here in Ontario, Canada, and that degree was really me taking a first attempt to decide between art and science as a career choice. In high school, I really loved fine arts, and that was actually one track I was seriously considering, but I also was fascinated by the natural world and science, and read deeply about black holes and all sorts of things. I decided that perhaps a more practical career choice was to head into the sciences, so I gave that a shot, and I absolutely loved biochemistry. That was a really great choice I think that I felt I'd made.
When I was doing my undergraduate degree, it was very focused on fundamental biochemistry, and it felt a little divorced from things where I could make a difference in the lives of people. I wanted to get a little bit more into work that might have a clinical angle to it, and that is where I decided in my PhD, to pursue work that would allow me to study human cells. At that point, I decided to go to the University of Toronto, and I studied with Dr. John Dick, looking at stem cells in particular in the blood system.
Dr. Dick is well known across the world now for his work on cancer stem cells, and in particular, in my PhD I was working on leukemia and studying the stem cells that drive and propagate leukemia. That was just an absolutely phenomenal experience. John was a wonderful mentor, but the level of science that we were doing and the questions we could ask, were really unlimited, so it was just a fantastic PhD experience. The other thing that John does and continues to do very well, is he brings people into his team that are just exceptional human beings.
I also had wonderful mentorship and fantastic peer support, and so the whole experience was just fantastic. I was, of course, also very fortunate to publish a couple of nice papers, which allowed me then to move into a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Guy Sauvageau at the University of Montreal. The work I decided to do in my postdoc was a little different than what I was doing with Dr. Dick. In my PhD, we were studying the behavior of human leukemia stem cells. When I went into the postdoc, I really wanted to dig into why stem cells behave the way they do.
The postdoc was really my chance to bring the questions that I felt were critical to me and to get that deeper understanding of the circuitry, the deep biology behind why stem cells behave the way they do. That was the goal of my postdoctoral work, and I also wanted that postdoctoral experience to seed the work that I would then go on to do as a PI, as an independent scientist. I wanted to make sure that I was really addressing those questions that drove me personally, and Dr. Sauvageau was, of course, very supportive of me doing that, which was fantastic.
I was also very privileged in that post-doctoral position to, again, be surrounded by fantastic colleagues and scientists and to benefit from Dr. Sauvageau's great mentorship. That was my trajectory, and then after that I decided to come back home to Ontario, where my family is, and start an independent position at McMaster University. I started a small group, and that group grew over time. In 2020, I was recruited to come to the University of Toronto. I moved my entire team and have had a really fantastic experience now here in Toronto, really embedded in a cancer center and at the heart really of stem cell science in Canada. That's the overview of my career trajectory so far.
Sandrine: That's really interesting. We'll go back about the expense of leading your group, but what I'm really interested in the experience that you had as a PhD student and post-doc in term of having the space to build your own ideas and having the scope of going beyond what your PhD supervisor was working on or your post-doc supervisor. Very often with a lot of postdocs, people start working on a project that belong to the principal investigator, and there is often sort of a tension in term of building your own space. From what you're saying, you already had a sense of what really mattered to you at the end of your PhD. How did you manage to get that?
Kristin: I think the work that I was doing in my PhD was really satisfying. I don't want to give the impression that I wasn't doing work that was close to my heart or that resonated with me. I think it was almost a natural progression of things for me, because towards the end of the PhD, as you start to answer questions, new questions just naturally arise. What is the next step? What is the next experiment that you would do if you had more time? I think even if I had stayed in and Dr. Dick's lab, I probably would've pursued those questions even with him. He was very supportive of all sorts of different types of science and certainly mechanistic science as well.
For me, it was the next question that logically came. Once we understand how the cells behave, we want to understand, what is the blueprint that governs that behavior? At least that's my take on things. I wanted to make sure that I could land in a postdoctoral lab that would allow me to pursue those questions. I was very honest with Dr. Sauvageau in telling him my interests and what I wanted to pursue.
I did interview with other scientists as well and behave similarly in those interviews. I came forward with my ideas and things that I was hoping to have the freedom to pursue while also, of course, pursuing work that was along the lines of the investigator's basic, fundamental research questions because I think it's really important that we realize that a postdoc is sort of a synergy. You're taking your own interests, but you're merging that with the interests of the lab in which you're embedded. It has to work. There has to be a collaborative agreement in place.
With Dr. Sauvageau, that was absolutely the case, and I certainly had a real sense from him that he shared my interests, but he was willing to give me freedom and independence to pursue specific elements of my interest. That was really, really important and a big part of why I decided to go to his lab for sure. Then even at the end of the postdoc, when it becomes, I would say, really critical, probably at the very beginning to work this out, but definitely by the end of the postdoc you need to have a clear decision from both parties on what work will be taken and what work will stay.
Definitely, we had those conversations all the way through, but for sure at the end and having letters of support that Dr. Sauvageau would write for me and laying out the separation and who was going to work on what, and that he supported me pursuing these questions independently. I think having early frank conversations is probably a really good thing, and digging deep and understanding what drives you really. That is something that I think you should be pursuing in a postdoc because that is the point at which you are preparing for your independent career if you decide to go on an academia.
You don't want to be thinking of those things in the last month of your postdoc. For me, those questions were things that I was asking myself very early on at the end of my PhD and certainly at the beginning of the postdoc.
Sandrine: What drives you, Kristin?
[laughter]
Kristin: I think this is a very interesting question because, for me, it has been different things at different times. Let me explain that a little bit. When I first started, let's say, in the PhD stage, for me, what drove me at that point was I love the deep puzzle that is biology. I have always found it fascinating just that life works and that we are here on this planet, and so I've always really found it fascinating to try to untangle even a small part of that puzzle. That has driven me really throughout my career.
What
Kristin: What started to layer on to that drive was the drive to build teams and to mentor people. This is something that started, I would say, in my postdoc when I was working with teams of people more closely and had more leadership positions. Certainly has continued on into my independent position where, for me, it has just been an absolute joy to work with young people and to mentor them and to have them mentor me and to see them build their career and to see them move on in science and achieve success on their terms.
That, for me, has been in recent years, a huge driver. For me, it gives me enormous satisfaction, I would say, even more so than getting a big paper, which is very satisfying. Watching young people do well and grow and learn and succeed and move on to great things, there's just nothing better than that from my perspective.
Sandrine: When you are a postdoc and even often in the first years as a research fellow, you do the experiment yourself and you are in the lab, but obviously, moving on to becoming a principal investigator and getting other people to do the experiment that you've designed or getting to do the work that you've return into grants. It's a very different experience. How did you find that period of the letting go in terms of having other people do the work for you?
Kristin: Oh, that's a great question. Thinking back, this was a moment where I had to really consciously think to myself, I have many years of experience. I could do this experiment in a couple of days, but I'm working with young people that have never touched these cells before. They have no innate sense yet of how they work. You really have to cultivate a real patience and an understanding that when you work with trainees and graduate students and someone new to the science you're doing, it is an investment.
Taking that time and building in the mentorship and the support and having that patience and helping them troubleshoot, that takes time. It is a huge bonus if you invest that time, because in turn, what you're going to see from these individuals is growth. They will develop. They will learn how to manipulate these cells, how to do these experiments. If you don't do that and then you're micromanaging and you're in there and you're still doing the work, you're not building a team of self-sufficient people that can actually grow and increase the productivity of your lab and ultimately complete these ambitious experiments that we all have in mind for our labs.
It is definitely something that's difficult to do because you are the expert when you start the lab, and handing over the reins to other people can take a lot of-- You have to be strong. I think it is a difficult transition, but once you realize that if you invest in people, the dividends are manifold. I think it becomes easy. For me now, I've done this enough times, and I haven't been at the bench for years now. I think it would actually be far worse if I went and touched a pipette at this at this point.
I think I've learned that actually one of the great strengths in the lab is other people and their talents and their abilities. If we nurture and support them, then again, we are greater than the sum of our parts in that situation. It takes some time to get there, but it is so worth it if you invest in people and take that time. It pays huge rewards.
Sandrine: I'm going to be pushing you a little bit because sometime we have really good intention in the way that we want to support others and part of the values that we have, maybe one where we want to be very supportive. Sometime we work with others who are maybe not as motivated as we are to do that sort of experiment or who are interested in other things. As a new investigator where you're under a lot of pressure in term of delivering the research for the funder writing papers. There is all this pressure.
Sometime the pressures could get the better of us in term of us being able to live through the values that we have of how we could be really great supervisor managers and so on. What did you have to do in a way of taking control of maybe, I don't know, some of the frustration maybe that you were experiencing? What was your approach of dealing with it?
Kristin: I think the thing to realize is when you first start a lab, you are the architect of what the lab will become. As much as we want to support and give freedom, ultimately, especially at the early point, your vision of what needs to get done and how a grant should be written and the experiments that will be done to address the goals of that grant, they need to be strongly held, and you need to communicate them very effectively to your team.
When I say flexibility and independence, there are bounds that is within, and we need to make sure that we communicate clearly to the team what the goals are and that there is a framework for freedom within that. When goals aren't being met, we make sure that there's nothing else going on that we need to talk to people about, other underlying issues that may be challenging them that we need to dig into. I think that's one really important point, is clear communication and understanding of the research questions that stand at that time, and where is the freedom within those boundaries, those research questions?
For me now, I think things have evolved a little bit because we have a larger lab. There's a bit more flexibility in terms of funding, and so there's a bit more room for people to come to me with questions that they think are intriguing that maybe were not ones that I had in my mind at any time, but sure enough, we take some time and effort and start pursuing. In the early stages when you're just starting your lab, you really have to honor your own vision, I think, here, and make sure that that stands and everyone's following that trajectory and that vision.
You have to be really strong and confident in your vision in order to be able to make that very clear to your team and to stand by the vision, because with science, we get questioned and judged on every decision we make on every grant we write, on every paper we write. Being strong in your vision and in your commitment to that vision, I think, is really critical. It can be difficult, and you can get your confidence shaken.
Ultimately I think we have to realize there's a reason we've gotten these roles, and we have the ability to do this work. Just coming back to the fact that we've trained for years to achieve these positions in these roles, and so our ideas do matter, and they are meaningful, and they are important and to really recognize that.
Sandrine: Is there something that you did, I don't know, as part of your professional development when you were a PhD student or postdoc that really put you in a good position for this transition? I used to work as a, what's in the UK is called researcher development manager, which means that basically developing all the activities for PhD student and postdocs. Often, I will see different type of researchers, those who engage really broadly in their professional development and others who may just stay in the lab, do nothing else and have blinkers.
I don't think there is a best way to do it. What were maybe opportunities that you took or ways of working that you had that you felt really shape your ability to transition fairly quickly to an independent position?
Kristin: I didn't take any training for management or leadership. Nothing formal like that. What I did have, of course, is very strong leaders that I looked to in my own labs where I was training, and they were really just fantastic in that regard. These were very strong leaders, but they were leaders of just exceptional teams of people. They had instilled in their labs this really critical culture of teamwork and of the value of the team. That really was such a strong environment for me to train in to really value what we can do together as scientists.
That was really something that I wanted to have in my own lab, was this deep valuing of teamwork in our ability to do things together as a group. Also, it's just so much more fun. I think that's the other thing to point out. It's a way more enjoyable way to work in science. These days, it's becoming a necessary way to work. To do these experiments now that are increasingly complex and multidisciplinary and very expensive, we have to do these things together as a team.
For me, working in these teams molded my ability to function in the team and to lead elements of that team at various points. I guess it was a bit of learning on the job, learning from the mentors that I had and learning from the team itself and from the culture of those labs. I do think, that said, that there's a lot of real importance for formal training and opportunities for people to get those lessons or learn those things because not everyone has the luck of landing in a lab like I did twice. I think there's huge value to some of those opportunities as well.
Sandrine: Do you want to share with us maybe some of the practices that you have in your lab in term of the way that you interact or things that you do that you think really contribute to a positive research culture?
Kristin: Yes. Some of these things will be fairly standard. I think we have a regular lab meeting where everyone attends, and we hear someone present their work. These are meant to be, in my lab anyway, very informal and very discussion-based. We don't want these to be very polished presentations where someone talks for an hour and a half, and then we have a question. These are meant to be very much back and forth discussions, sharing actual data and having real give and take in that conversation with the whole team.
Then the other thing, of course, is I do meet regularly with everybody in the lab. I do this little differently for each person. I have some people that really prefer a standing meeting. They love to prepare and have slides ready for me. We have that in the calendar every month. Then I have other people who are a little bit more independent, and I like to give those people space, because that was me. I remembered appreciating the space and yet the open door when I had great data, and I could just walk in and, "Yay, look at this great data. Let's sit down and talk about it."
I guess I tailor my approach a little bit to each person. Now that's not to say that I don't meet with someone for three months. I have a little bit of a running list. If I haven't talked to someone for a little while, I will send them an email, and we'll have a check-in meeting. I do really think it's important to think about each person as a unique individual. I do try to tailor a little bit, for each person, how I interact with them and how I motivate them and how I support them, because the very junior students might need a little bit more of my time. I try to understand each person's unique needs, and when I can, I try to give them what I can to address those needs.
Sandrine: I was discussing earlier with an academic about equity in mentoring. It was basically sharing that it's easier to give time to people in the lab who are a little bit more like you, people maybe who have, I don't know, the same vibe or the same way of thinking or who are from the same cultural background. There are people that we connect with more easily than others.
We were having a conversation about the challenge of having equity in term of the amount of time that you give to different people so that everybody can feel supported. Because you may have a very weak student who takes a lot of your time, and it may be very frustrated for another student who is doing really well and would quite like to have a bit more of your time, but you may feel that you don't need to spend so much time with them. How do you think that you yourself try to be equitable in supporting people in different ways, so that their needs are met at an individual level, so that everybody has a sense of, "Okay, I am supported in the way that much is what I need."?
Kristin: I don't think anyone can be perfect with this, but I think one really important thing is to pay attention. I think this is a very busy job that we do. There's a lot of things that take our time and energy, but ultimately, the people in our labs are our responsibility, and we owe them the service of mentoring and supporting them. We have to pay attention and keep our eyes open, because oftentimes when we think someone doesn't need our help or support because they're not sending us an email, it's easy to say, "Oh, well I haven't heard from so and so. They must be fine. I'll just keep working on this grant." In fact, perhaps that person is really struggling and is too afraid to approach you or embarrassed. Who knows? He's not come to you for any number of reasons.
I do try to check in with people regularly. How are you doing? When I'm around before COVID, I would go into the lab and the do a little check-in with people. Now, I'm sending emails, "How's it going this week? Let's check in by Zoom." I really have to take the blinders off and really listen to this person and make sure as much as I can, as best I can, that there's nothing else hidden going on that we need to address.
There's no fail safe. It's not necessarily possible to capture every underlying issue that someone's going through, but if your attention is elsewhere and you're not thinking about these individuals and what they might be going through, and the fact that it takes a lot of, sometimes, bravery to come to the PI with problems and concerns. I also try to constantly reiterate to everyone that I am here to support them and that my door is open, and my job is to make things better for them. How can I do that? How can I help you?
I try as much as I can to communicate that message. I do it all the time, [chuckles] and it never stops because you can't just say this once when someone starts in the lab. It needs to be a message that they always hear. They need to always feel that support and realize that you are an advocate for them and not a judge and not a jury, but a mentor and an advocate.
Sandrine: One of the important dimension as well, when you're building your lab and initially you may have just a couple of PhD student, when you start to have a technician, a postdoc, the team can grow fairly quickly and to a significant size. When the size of a group increase, the complexity increase. What do you think that you've done well in term of building the relationship across team members?
Kristin: This is also a really challenging thing to get right because each person is their own world. When we try to bring a brand new individual into an already established dynamic where friendships are already in place and someone is trying to integrate, this is a difficult time. Even with someone who's very gregarious and friendly, it can be a challenge. You do have to think very carefully about how that person will fit. I do try, in multiple interviews and discussions with new people, get a read for their personality, the types of people in the lab that might be friends and mentors to this individual.
We actually set up these partnerships or small teams when someone starts based on those initial judgement and how we think this person might best fit. Sometimes we move people around a little bit, and sometimes my initial thoughts don't exactly gel or work perfectly. It can take a little bit of an organic process to find where that person fits, but I do think it's important to try to take some thinking in advance of how best to help that person integrate, and don't just expect to throw them in the lab and that they will find their way. Some people might, but that's not always the case.
I also have conversations with the lab before someone starts, and we talk about these things. They've all met this person too. That's the other thing. We always make sure that the person coming in has spoken, not just to me several times, but to the team. Before we hire, we have discussions about, is this someone we want in our group? Is this a good fit? Even before that person walks to the door on the first day, there's a lot of discussion that's gone on with everyone involved. Not to say that that solves every problem, but it certainly helps, I think, to smooth the transition for that person coming in.
Sandrine: The notion of fitting in is a really important one when you are considering increasing diversity in science, ethnic diversity, gender diversity and all that. What do you think has been the most challenging in your own recruitment practices to expand the diversity of the people that you are recruiting in?
Kristin: I have many years now behind me running a lab and I have just had some phenomenal trainees and students and staff and a very diverse group of people. For me, I see that we all bring something fantastic to the table when we come and we want to do science. Regardless of where we're from, regardless of our training, if you come and you're excited about science and you want to work on the questions that we're working on and you think stem cells are great, I will give you a spot, because I've seen the value that that mindset can bring to what we're doing.
I think sometimes others in the lab may think that the people we need to hire have years and years of experience in order for us to bring them in and for them to be of value. It's been important for me to communicate to people that, if that's the way we thought about science, we would never have hired this person who's so fantastic, or this person who's so fantastic. You need to broaden your thinking about the types of individuals that we're going to take on. Everybody brings strengths in a different area, and that richness of those different strengths together, the synergies, are huge.
I think my job is to educate, I guess, people that don't necessarily have those years and years of experience to have seen this. I definitely try to communicate that message as much as I can as well. These are things that are difficult to communicate, and so you have to, again, make a very conscious effort to say these sorts of things and to repeat these messages because it is-- Especially now in today's landscape, something that we need to be very conscious about and communicating that to the team as well as living it and putting it in action when you make those hiring decisions.
Sandrine: I think that the thing that you said about communicating within the team about your intention in term of the recruit and the reason why you are recruiting this person. Because the team may have different opinions, but in a way, you are the one making the final decision and the team understanding why this person was recruited versus another one is important.
Kristin: Yes, exactly.
Sandrine: As a woman in science, you have to have had a lot of resilience. What do you think has really built your resilience and your desire to carry on even though it may be hard?
Kristin: This is a great question, and it's not an easy one to answer. I will tell you that I'm also a mother, so I have two little girls, and I've always wanted to have a family. Way back I knew my PhD years that I was really wanting to have a family. I did not have at that time a lot of women to look up to, at least that I was aware of, that had a family. I had a lot of male mentors that had families, of course, but I did not have women that I could look at and see as moms.
For me, it was really important going into the interview for my independent position, for me to know how supportive my leadership would be about the idea that I wanted to have a family. I'm not advocating this necessarily for individuals interviewing, but I was very upfront about this in the interview process because I wanted to know that wherever I would land, I would have that support, and I certainly did at McMaster. I really, really did, and that was hugely important in me having resilience and being able to have a family and realizing that I could do that, of course, and have a lab, and that yes, this is a challenging career, but it's absolutely possible to be a mother, to have a lab.
The institutional support has to be there, and it was for me, and so that was fantastic. Also my peers and my colleagues were very supportive and would ask me about my family. It was never something that I also felt that I had to hide. That was wonderful because I've definitely talked to other mothers in science who have felt over their time, that they've had to downplay it or keep it off to the side because they don't maybe want to be perceived as not looking serious about their career or not being focused enough on the science. I think that's a shame, and I think that we need to fix this.
One thing that I have started to try and do to help the young women coming up behind me, is to talk a lot more openly about being a mom and about the fact that at five o'clock, I have to leave to pick up my kids. When we normalize this, it makes everything better, and not just for moms, for people that have all sorts of challenges outside in their personal lives.
One thing that I think has helped my resilience, is the support of people in leadership positions above me, of the fact that I am a mom, of me actually sharing my experiences of being a mother with my staff, with my lab, with my colleagues, and allowing that to be just part of who I am. I think that that actually gives me strength to be able to share that side of myself and to say, "We're still doing great science, and I'm still a mom." That's actually really helped me, is being open and honest about it as opposed to hiding it away.
Sandrine: In the UK, we've had lots of conversation and reports about challenging the research culture, and often people feel, "Well, I don't really want to carry on in science because it's an all-hours culture. It's like people tell me that you need to work nonstop at weekends and so on. That's not the way that I want to live my life." Actually having role model, or whether it's men and women who say, "Okay, five o'clock, I leave the office, I leave the lab because I need to go and collect my kids from school, from nursery or wherever," it's actually really important, and this idea of not hiding.
It's interesting because in this woman development program Daring to Dare, that I run, it is letting women accept that the integration of the personal and the professional, we can't dissociate it. It's there, and pretending otherwise, it makes no sense. What do you think you would want to see change in the research environment? What are the conversation and the practices that need to change?
Kristin: I think that in this career, we are judged and compared, I would say, more so than in any other sector. It is that fundamental fact that I think guides how people approach their career. If our diversity, and if the fact that we're moms and parents is valued instead of seen as something that has to be overcome or we have to work through, I think that changes the game. As a mother, I will tell you that I have developed some impressive skill sets, so problem-solving, time management, conflict management certainly. These are things that are actually advantages that I have in my bag of tools that I bring to being a scientist. I think that those sorts of conversations need to be had a lot more.
I think the other thing we need to remember is at the tenure and promotion point. When we're evaluating scientists for promotion, for moving up, we need to be considerate of the fact that when we have a child and we take time off to be home with our little ones, this is, again, not something where we look at the person as, "Oh, they're just getting through this. They'll be productive when they're done."
This is something that should be built in to the conversation and understood and acknowledged and encouraged because I think the thing is that as scientists career is long, and every single individual that I know, parent or otherwise has had ups and downs in their lives that have affected their productivity at any one time or another. If we expect perfection from people, this is a really great recipe to lose exceptional scientists from your institution.
If you want to build a strong team of individuals that value your institution and the goals that you're pursuing together and want to add value to that organization, you want to invest in people for the long haul. The best way to do that is to understand that people have those peaks and valleys in their career, and to support them through that, not to punish them and not to make them feel like they have to take a parental leave and then get right back to the bench or right back to grant writing.
Because when we support the whole person for the whole career, I think we build these incredibly strong diverse teams that add just so much value beyond these treadmill-like environments where it's sink or swim and people don't want to work together because it's super competitive. That, for me, is not a place I would want to work. I would want to work in a place that supports me as an individual over the course of my career.
Sandrine: At the level of seniority that you have now, do you have opportunities to contribute to policy development to change some of these practices? Because I'm thinking, so in the UK there is a something that now they call the narrative CV, where instead of just your box standard academic CV, now it's a narrative, and with this idea of embedding the real element of what's been going on in that person. That's when you're evaluating as a promotion panel or whatever for grant, that you have more of a sense of really who is this person instead of just having a list of publication and leadership role Is it something that exists in Canada or not?
Kristin: I think it's probably very institution-dependent. I can say that I think that those sorts of initiatives are actually starting to gain traction here, and those sorts of things are starting to happen. We are starting to look at people as individuals that are bringing more than just lists of papers that they produce every year, but we are also looking at people's teaching experience, their mentorship, and we're valuing those things more so than we, I think, have in the past.
Ultimately, if you're an exceptional mentor of a team of scientists, that is a huge key performance indicator, I guess, is one term that we use. You're creating young individuals that are going to go out into the world and themselves, do fantastic science and enriching environment that we're in, and contribute to jobs and all of those things. That is really valuable. Just as valuable as producing scientific papers, I would argue.
I think that these things are taking hold, and for my part, I'm on the gender equity committee at my institution, which is really something that I sought out because I wanted to be able to give voice to some of these ideas at a higher level that might be taken into account by leadership and have real changes made as a result. I think it's really encouraging to see that these things are starting to be talked about, these metrics are starting to be thought about in evaluating people's CVs and promotion packages. It is happening. Changes are coming. I'm really encouraged to see that.
Yes, the narrative CV is a really interesting idea and I think really important way of maybe getting at some of these really other important things we need to consider about individuals when we are evaluating them.
Sandrine: You've just given an example of a committee that you are involved in when you are-- Early career academics, loads and loads of opportunities are presented to you. Sometimes things are just dump on your desk for you to do, but how have you negotiated this balance of taking opportunities that will build your career, do great stuff, and at the same time, being asked to do roles, administrative roles that are not necessarily what you want, but is necessary for the department? One of the great challenge for many early career academics is saying no to stuff.
Kristin: Well, I'm terrible at saying no, so I'm not sure if I'm going to give the best answer here.
[laughter]
Kristin: I will tell you that definitely I think that at this point in my career, I look at myself as a mother again, and this is something that is really important to me. I feel that I've had young individuals in my office, men and women, asking about, "Can I have a family and do this job?" When I hear these questions, I think I have a responsibility as someone that has a family and a lab, I have a responsibility to help support these young individuals that want to do what I'm doing because it is very possible. I'm just delighted that I'm able to do both.
I have this privileged position, and so it is my responsibility. I owe it to those young people to be a voice for them and to advocate for them as much as it takes time away from my own specific interests. That is larger, and I think, really far more important responsibility for me now at this point in my lab. After I've established my group, we've established a great scientific program. I have a solid position. I have this freedom now, and I owe it to these young individuals to speak for them and to support them.
Those sorts of initiatives that come up that I'm offered, committee positions that get to those sorts of issues that would allow me to use my voice for those people, I think, are really important to say yes to. I definitely put a lot of weight towards those sorts of things at this moment. When I first started, I think it was harder to make those calls because there was so much more immediate stuff that needed my specific attention.
I wouldn't necessarily say or advise young people to say no to those, but I might do a little bit more careful thought about what saying yes to something like that would mean in terms of trade-offs for things that you need to really establish your lab and reach a point of stability, because in the beginning stages there's some really critical things that you need to do to reach a stable point. I think that those are really critical to prioritize. You don't want to not write a grant to support your staff that you absolutely need in order to sit on a national committee.
I think at the beginning there was a little bit more survival-related questions, survival of your lab, that need to trump some of these other still very important things. As you find that the stability increases and these opportunities make themselves available to you, you may want to start saying yes more to those things as compared to what you've done in the past. That's what I've tried to do, and that's what I continue to try to do, but it is a difficult balance for sure.
Sandrine: If you were going to share words of wisdom from your expense of having been a PI for a number of years, what will you say to a postdoc who is thinking about, "Should I go and get my own funding?" Or, "I don't really know whether I'm made out of the stuff that it takes." Or a new PI say, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to manage all this PhD student?"
Kristin: I will tell you that my husband, again, as I've mentioned, is not in science. It's been really interesting to learn from him in a way because he is in an area where people jump around. They do different jobs, and they build experience in those jobs, and they move to a different one, and they almost don't give it a second thought. For me, as someone that trains for years and years for these positions we hold on high as the position that we must get or life is over, I think it's really been educational.
It's possible to have a job, enjoy that job, but move on to something else. Because you've built the experience in doing that job, you can absolutely move into a different area and take advantage of the skills you've learned in the new job, in a new field even. I think what we do as scientists is we imagine that we're so highly trained and we can't possibly do anything else, but in fact, we can, and our skill sets are actually really quite general in deep problem-solving and team management organizational skills. We have incredible skills in the academic sphere and highly translatable to other career spaces.
Why am I saying this? I'm saying this because, for me, thinking that way gives me enormous comfort in that, if for some reason, the lab one day was not able to secure funding, I would find another job. There's a lot of opportunity out there. I think I would find something that I would find very fulfilling. As much as I adore my lab, and this job, and this career, I absolutely have other opportunities available to me out in the world. For some reason, for me, that gives me a lot of comfort.
When I was approaching these questions as a young person, "Can I do this? Oh gosh, can I start a lab?" Thinking about that and approaching the decision knowing that I had options and freedom, it actually made me very bold in saying, "You know what? I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to give it my best shot and see how this goes, and if it doesn't work out despite my best efforts, that's okay." That's my advice. Take the leap. Take the leap.
Sandrine: In a way, what you're describing is having a sense of freedom that whatever comes, comes. You always have choices when you are educated at this level.
Kristin: Exactly.
Sandrine: I think it's really important message because so many people feel stuck and end up staying in postdoc after postdoc and not necessarily been very fulfilled because they feel that they don't belong anywhere. It's actually quite rare to hear very established PIs talk in this way. Funnily enough, in the last months, I've come across two academics who had their own lab for many years and for whatever reason got fed up with their organization and they decided to leave science, leave their lab. Another sense, well, I'm fine with it.
Again, it's not something that we are used to within an academic setup. It's very unusual, but I think that thinking about it as a way of feeling a bit freer of, "I'm doing this right now, is working now, but what comes next, who knows?" I think is a really positive way of framing the next step in some ways.
Kristin: I've met these young people, and they're incredibly talented, brilliant people who would absolutely be hired on a second in any number of other sectors. This is also our job, is to let people know that academia is not the only road. It is my road. It's the road I took, but there are lots of other opportunities out there. Encouraging our trainees, should they show interest in those areas, is also part of my job. and my responsibility. When we write this narrative that it's all academia and the only job that's worth doing, as the academic PI leader of a lab position, I think we do a real disservice to these young people.
Sandrine: To finish off on the high in some ways, what gives you joy in research? What gives you joy in your professional life?
Kristin: Oh, gosh. I think I'll tell you about a recent moment that encapsulates a few of those things. I was meeting with a couple of students the other day to talk about some new results and the results were exciting and surprising, and they were excited to share those results with me. I was excited because this was new biology we were uncovering, they were uncovering. For me, it was those twin things, again, of the discovery happening in front of me. What a privilege it is to see this? The other thing was the joy on the faces of the students and the fact that I was sharing this with them.
Just that whole experience I live for these moments. It is just an absolute privilege to have a moment like that, and I get to do that. I get to come in to work and have these moments quite often actually, and it is so sustaining. There are really hard parts about this job, no doubt, but those moments they make it all worthwhile. They really do. As long as I continue to have those moments, I will be happy to put up with some of the challenges and work through those challenges inherent in this position.
Sandrine: That's brilliant. Thank you, Kristin. It was really a pleasure talking to you. Really, really appreciate all the way from Canada.
Kristin: Oh, it was my pleasure as well. Thank you so much.
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