Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Interview Series
We are excited to present this interview series to celebrate women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The main idea of this interview series is to inspire the current and next generations of women and girls who are interested in science. For this series, we gathered speakers with diverse backgrounds and experience from different regions, all of them doing amazing jobs and leading their fields. We hope their inspiring stories of inclusion and impact will encourage everyone, men and women, to go further in pursuing their careers in STEM and not settle for less.
In this post, we present excerpts and highlights from interviews with each of our outstanding panelists, including:
– Elena Rosca, Senior Lecturer at Ashesi University in Ghana (YouTube)(Bilibili)
– Catalina Lopez Correa, Executive Director of the Canadian COVID Genomics Network (CanCOGen), Co-Founder & Co-Leader Vancouver Node at Immigrant and International Women in Science (IWS) (YouTube)(Bilibili)
– Heather Beem, CEO & Founder at Practical Education Network, Engineering Faculty at Ashesi University in Ghana (YouTube)(Bilibili)
– Aravinth Panch, Co-Founder & Director of Innovation at DreamSpace Academy (YouTube)(Bilibili)
– Jingjing Wang, Senior Product Manager & Strategic Marketing at MGI Tech Co., Ltd. (YouTube)(Bilibili)
– Nadine Bongaerts (YouTube)(Bilibili), Senior Scientist Molecular Biology at GOURMEY, Board member at Hello Tomorrow, Co-Founder at Science Matters
How can we have more women involved in science and have them as role models?
Elena Rosca – Role models are all the people around you. Kamala Harris, for example, in her acceptance speech was so amazingly inspiring, not just to women and girls but to all the people. Your mother, your friend, your colleague … it’s more of a network, not just one role model to support you.
Catalina Lopez Correa – Role models are a key part, not only of our development, but in helping us understand and unleash our own power. I think there are all kinds of role models. For example, Michelle Obama. I’ve never met her but I’ve read her book and found it so inspiring. I learned so much from the way she’s doing things and the way she approached her life. Also, my colleagues have been my mentors. In all of my jobs, I am upfront and ask people if they can be my mentor, and 80% of the time it has worked. I’ve asked both men and women, and have learned a lot from both. Men will have a different perspective of the role women have in science. It’s important to also have mentors that are men who understand our challenges and open paths for us.
Mentors and role models are not just people that are older than you or that have more experience than you. Of course, those are the most natural mentors because they already have a path and you can see where you can get following their example. But all of us, even if we are younger or think we don’t know that much, we all have experienced moments of discrimination, or challenges as a woman, or barriers as a woman, and we have faced those. So just by talking about those barriers and challenges we can mentor each other. Try to have some mentors who are older and more experienced, but also have mentors that are at your same level of job and experience, and also younger men and women.
Heather Beem – There are a lot of narratives ingrained in society about what women are supposed to do, what roles they're supposed to play. I think that shifting those narratives is going to be a major part of enabling women. There are some amazing groups here (in Ghana) that are celebrating African women scientists and engineers, and I think that's a great way to start to shift those narratives.
Aravinth Panch – Rather than being in a hierarchy where “I’m your mentor and you’re my mentee”, just try to be a good friend and talk about many things very deeply. A role model is someone who is empowered and is empowering another girl or woman. We need to have those role models who are very close and who can mentor them and help them.
Jingjing Wang – I always observe my female friends, and overall if I’m comparing the women in China to women in the States, I feel that those who are more confident and outgoing, who are willing to express themselves, can actually get good support from their surroundings. It’s all about your perspective or your mind.
Nadine Bongaerts – Sometimes I'm asked to give a presentation or to be a panelist, and they specifically mention that they want a woman for that specific engagement. I have a bit of mixed feeling because I want to be invited because of my expertise and not necessarily because of my gender. I'm not always sure how to interpret that because, on the other hand, I also think that it's good to have more women more visible so that we can be role models for other women or young girls, so that they see that we are a diverse group.
As educators, what can we do and how can we inspire the next generation of women in science?
Elena Rosca – We need to create a network that supports women and girls to be more involved in the STEM space. For me as an educator it is important to be available and to be one of those supports, to have my door open all the time and to talk about, not just being a woman in an engineering field, but anything else they might want to talk about. Having a door open and, more than just giving advice, being able to listen to their struggles and then maybe point them into some of these connecting pieces of the big network.
Heather Beem – There are some systemic things that we can seek to influence. For a lot of students as they go through school, it is possible that the only picture of a scientist they have seen is a white male in a lab coat. There are things we can do such as changing imagery in textbooks, creating more materials that create a more realistic image of what people look like out there in the world. As educators, it’s also helpful to check our unconscious biases, such as an unconscious bias to engage male students more than female students.
Aravinth Panch – When we are empowering young girls, the first step we do is to empower their parents. It doesn't work the other way around for us, so we go to the parent and we let them know their daughter is very intelligent and that she's doing great things, and that they should not pamper their daughter too much, give her freedom and trust her, and don’t worry about failure. We empower girls and women in our society by empowering the parents. I don't know if this would be the same situation in other parts of the world, but this works very well for us.
Nadine Bongaerts – I think we can encourage each other a lot more. Something I’ve noticed is that my male friends talk a lot more about work and their careers … ‘I know someone who can help you, I know how to do this let me send you an email’… it's more normal to talk about these things and it can be super beneficial. I think women can do that a little bit more. It should be also appreciated that work is maybe part of your life and it doesn't have to be super separated. You do work because you like something, and you're ambitious. Work is such a big part of your life. If we can stimulate each other more, and not see each other necessarily as competition, but empower each other, I think we can help each other to get those leadership positions. Apart from that, in many cultures around the world there is still a sort of a natural role division where women, when they have kids, tend to step down from their career, and it's assumed that the man will work more and that his career is the most important. It's important that there are structures in society that can help with child care so that women with ambitions also have the right conditions to pursue those leadership roles. Most of the time you have to work full-time; it's not something you can do two days a week.
What are some of the shortcomings in how STEM is being taught and how can we improve?
Catalina Lopez Correa – In my department, there are 60% women, but the director is a man, the president is a man, the board of directors are mostly men – so it is the men who are making all the decisions. There are also very cultural, unconscious bias, the glass ceiling, the imposter syndrome – those are real. Read a little bit about those and understand where we are coming from. We need to support each other – sometimes we are harder as a woman with other women than we are with men. I think it is important to support each other and that’s why we have created this Immigrant and International Women in Science (IWS) network to support each other and help open doors between us. Actually, men have been doing that for ages. They support each other, they give help to getting opportunities.
Elena Rosca – There’s more of a cultural discouragement in Africa, rather than discrimination. Girls are still expected to stay home and have kids and take care of the family. And if you end up going to school, unfortunately you're going to have to do both, so you're going to have a lot on your plate. Supporting girls and explaining to them how important education is for them, and supporting them through their journey, has been something that has inspired me and I try to do as much as I can through my daily interactions with students.
In the African context, there has to be a bit of cultural re-education. Just because you have a girl, that doesn't mean that she has to go fetch water in the morning and cook all the time in the kitchen for the entire family. The boys can come and do the chores as well. If everyone pitches in, then the girls will not be so exhausted and will be able to spend time and energy to fix the computer, or read a book or an article. A lot is rooted in culture, and it's fairly difficult to get around this because it can be viewed as being disrespectful. I’m looking forward to continue working with my students to help me understand how could we introduce these changes without being disrespectful to the culture and traditions that have existed for hundreds of years.
Aravinth Panch – In Sri Lanka we have had 30 years of war and genocide that has influenced a lot of things in our society. The Tamil Sri Lankan society has a very matriarchal system that has also influenced this. According to the latest numbers, women are (well represented) in post graduate education – 60% in science, 52% in medicine, 66% in dental science, 67% in computer science. In the total faculty 45% male and 55% female. Even though we have a matriarchal society, we still have the cultural barrier (that says) girls have to get married at a certain age, and they see this as a deadline – we have to do it faster and we have to do it better. They enter this family life and they have their family, but after 40 years old there is a strong comeback happening, maybe this is an advantage of having a matriarchal society. Unlike neighboring countries where women when they marry go to the boy’s house, in our society the boys come to the girl’s house. And maybe because of that the family is able to take care of the kids and support them, and when women are 40 years old they are able to back and push it further. And this is one of the reasons we are a little bit different. I also proudly say that Sri Lanka has the first female president in the world.
Heather Beem – Here in Ghana there is a phrase “Chew and pour, pass and forget.” Students feel like they're chewing information; they're just memorizing things and then pouring it out on the exams. There's this ingrained feeling that as you go through school, it's not relevant or meaningful. Practical Education Network is seeking to change that status quo, to enable schools in every corner of the country to have very practical hands-on activities going on regularly. We do this by leveraging low-cost, locally available resources, and then we help teachers practice how they can use those things in their teaching. We’ve seen that this disproportionately affects females in a positive way – their interest goes up even more than their male counterparts. Making the students’ experience real and meaningful for them plays a major role in getting females to pursue STEM in the long term.
Nadine Bongaerts – I really believe that diversity is key because STEM is obviously the solution for all sorts of challenges. It's proven it's scientifically that mixed teams of both men and women perform the best, so I think it just makes a lot of sense that we team up and have both men and women in leadership positions. We have different leadership styles, both have pros and cons, and I think we can learn a ton from each other. We just need to have an open conversation about it. There are definitely differences, but as long as we are open to learning from each other, I think it's a win-win situation.
What motivated you to go into the hard sciences or engineering as a career?
Elena Rosca – I did not start out wanting to go into engineering. Actually, I wanted to go into medical school and things just didn't work out. I was kind of puzzled about what to do, but what motivated me at that point to make the switch to bioengineering was the fact that I’ve always loved math. My grandfather was a math professor so I grew up solving math and tutoring students for math. I absolutely love math and so I wanted an application where mathematics was front and center. I didn't like pure math where it became theoretical discussions; I really like the applied part of math. I wanted to somehow bring together mathematics and biology or medicine, and that's how I ended up in the bioengineering field. I was disappointed, obviously, at the time when my journey towards medical school had to take a take a turn because of the situations I found myself in at the moment. But now in retrospect, I think this was the best suited for me, so I don't have any regrets. Bioengineering is something I really enjoy, and I know now that I would have enjoyed it even if I had thought about it at the time. Due to the circumstances, the decision was logically made, but not intentionally made.
Catalina Lopez Correa – I first started with medical school because I wanted to study medicine and learn about the body, but I quickly realized that the clinic was not really my passion. I was more interested in the lab and in questions about the body than in just the clinical aspects of medicine. Also, I had a dream. I think for everybody it starts with a dream. My dream was to go to France. At the time, thinking of going to France was like thinking of going to the moon – it was a big deal, it was not so easy, it was expensive. But when I finished medical school I managed to go to France and follow my dream. I had the opportunity there to get a Master’s in genomics and genetics, and from there moved to Belgium to get a PhD. In telling the story of my career, it sounds so easy. But for every step there were so many challenges. And for me it was difficult as an immigrant woman – trying to learn the language, learning about the cultures, coming from a different background.
Jingjing Wang – After high school, I entered the university in China for biomedical engineering undergraduate. I graduated in the top ten and so had a few options – to continue with a postgraduate program, or to go abroad for further studies, or to find a job. Back in that time I was very confused. I didn't know where I was going, so I had a very good meeting with the president of my department and we discussed future plans. He encouraged me to study abroad. He told me it is better to have a broadened field where you can interact and communicate with all people from all different backgrounds. As compared to China where, in his eyes, everyone grew up under a similar society and cultural environment. Especially in that stage, I didn't know where I wanted to go, and so it should always be the right choice to continue study. It was already December that year, and most schools had already finished the first round of selection. I was very lucky to get into Brown University in the United States, where I did a PhD study in biomedical engineering. After I finished school, my first job was being an application scientist in a company in the biomedical field. I did a lot of application experiments and I also had a lot of opportunity to interact with the R&D team as well as with potential customers. Two years later, I went back to China with some personal issues and right now I’m still with this company as the product manager. I followed up with that path, becoming a more independent person who can take good control of the product from the starting of the concept of the new ideas to finally getting into the market.
Nadine Bongaerts – I am an ex-iGEMer from 2010 where I joined the TU Delft team, and for me that's really also why my interest in synthetic biology began. Ever since that (experience) I decided to move into the field and to study it as much as I could. I developed this fascination for how we can use biology as a technology, with the belief that it can help us to solve many challenges that we are facing today and tomorrow. I think it's a very exciting field because it's highly interdisciplinary and that's actually something I really like – just how do you bring all the pieces of the puzzle together to make something work? I just graduated last year, I did a PhD at the Center for Research Interdisciplinarity, where I worked on methods to accelerate the development of new antibiotics for tuberculosis. After finishing, I got in touch with a startup who just entered our research building and were working on how to make foie gras based on stem cells. We need to find new ways to produce our meats, especially with climate change ahead of us. You can feel the climate is changing, and with it comes all sorts of new diseases as well that we need to tackle. Meat is a very key topic to tackle, and to make the production more sustainable is what I will work on in the coming years.
For females who are now starting their careers in STEM, what skills should they have to help them on their journey?
Elena Rosca – Generally speaking, no matter what field you're in, you have to have persistence. You have to not let the environment or the situations or the circumstances you find yourself in put you down. If you're going to be in a hardcore engineering field, or in any science field, or even in any business field, you are going to find yourself in a situation where people are going to put you down. It's the sad truth. I don't know exactly what the root for that is, but you're going to find yourself in those situations. Having a little bit of a hard skin, having a bit of perseverance, and reminding yourself why are you interested in this field will help you. I think we all have to have an intentional trajectory where we want to help other women, but that should not be our sole mission because you can fairly easily get disappointed when you don't see it happen.
You have to have very good presentation and communication skills, guarded by this backbone of being very strong and not letting things put you down very easily. You have to have confidence, and that confidence doesn't come unless you have good presentation skills. You also need to have analytical skills because you will be questioned, and you’ll need very solid foundations and analytical skills to be able to defend your positions. And be a bit bold. I think you have to have a little bit of boldness. If you're coming in a bit timid, it's not going to get you where you want to be. Discrimination can be difficult, and (some people) really thrive on intimidating the people around them. It's going to be very important for you to have confidence and to ‘stamp out’ the timidity. And don’t give up. Perseverance is the most important because doors will close in front of you, and so you just have to keep going.
Did you feel at any time that as a woman you needed to prove yourself again and again? And if yes, how did you overcome that?
Catalina Lopez Correa – I have worked in 10 different cities, 7 different countries. Normally you start a new job from zero – the people don’t know you; you don’t know the people. I feel that my white male colleagues start from zero, but I start from minus 20 or minus 30 because I feel that I have to prove myself – oh she’s Latino, oh she has an accent, oh she’s gay, oh she’s all these minority things. I have to work harder, put in more hours, show I’m intelligent, show that I have the qualification, show that I am able to do the job. It’s sad to say, but the answer for me is yes, I often feel I have to start from minus 20 to prove to others that I can do the job. But I have been able to do it and I think you can do it too.
Elena Rosca – I think we all agree that we are inevitably going to encounter challenges, but can we find the silver lining? In proving yourself over and over and over, you become very persistent and very good at doing that, and very efficient at doing that. If we look at trying to turn some of these challenges and find a silver lining in them, they can help us grow and we can use them to help others grow and become better.
Jingjing Wang – For myself, I feel like all the way along – from being an undergraduate in China, to a graduate in the United States, as well as my first job in the States, and then my second job in China – the whole environment, either my study environment or the working environment, actually has been very friendly and encouraging. I didn't feel anything different or identified myself as a woman in those kinds of environments.
Nadine Bongaerts – I also had that sort of inner push to prove myself, but I'm not always sure if it's maybe that I want to prove myself to myself or to others. On a positive side, I think if you are very ambitious and you want to push yourself, it can help you to do things that you may not expect that you can actually do, things that maybe you thought weren't possible. If people underestimate you in the beginning but you prove them wrong, it can also be very satisfying. If you work hard and you know what you can do, then if people underestimate you in the beginning it's not necessarily bad because you have a great opportunity to show them what you're really capable of.
If you were to summarize your message for girls and women in STEM, what would that message be?
Elena Rosca – Seek out good mentors, be a role model and pay it forward.
Catalina Lopez Correa – Dream big. Take a risk. Believe in yourself. It’s important to allow yourself to dream. Don’t be shy about your dreams. Get on the educational path that will help you follow that dream. Get a mentor and models – many – in every step of your life. Don’t give up. Persevere and don’t give up. Believe in yourself: Yes I can! We all face difficulties. Nobody has a path that is already made for them. We all face challenges and barriers. But if we don’t start by dreaming, if we don’t take those risks and persevere and work hard, and if we don’t believe in ourselves it’s more difficult to achieve those goals.
Heather Beem – Don’t let labels or stereotypes hold you back. If there is something that's a passion of yours or an interest of yours, pursue it, and do not let other people dictate what you are or are not supposedly capable of. Nothing can stop you if you're interested. Keep letting that drive you.
Aravinth Panch – Don't be scared of failures, just go on. Don't think the society is going to accept failures of boys but not the girls. Just do it, and don't worry about it. The future is female, but the future is now.
Jingjing Wang – Be more confident in yourself and brave the bright future. Women are getting much stronger and more independent. You actually have way more power than you think, and so I want to encourage everyone to be more confident and believe in yourself. You are meant to have a great future ahead of you.
Nadine Bongaerts – All women should follow their dreams and not be limited by the fact that they are women. The key thing is to look for an environment where you can be valued for who you are and where people want you to grow. It is very useful early in your career, whether it's an internship or a PhD or a job, if people accept you for who you are, and see your potential, then they can help you to feel confident and maybe feel less need to prove yourself over and over again. When you are surrounded by people who see what you're capable of, that can create more inner peace and help you to learn as much as you can and grow in your career.
For more information about the Women in STEM Interview Series, please visit 2020.igem.org/Teams/Ambassadors/Women_In_STEM
This blog post was updated on February 10, 2021.
