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By Shreya Chandrasekar

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to interview Monica Vajani, a seasoned healthcare professional who currently works with CVS Health. Vajani spent her childhood on the East Coast, attended Washington University in St. Louis for her undergraduate, and ultimately put down roots in the Midwest when she started her career in the medical device industry. Multiple factors prompted her decision to pursue a career in healthcare, including a strong interest in science and math, a desire to help vulnerable populations, and the fact that many members of her extended family were healthcare professionals.  

During her time at Washington University, Vajani started to get a better understanding of her specific interests within biomedical engineering. While combining medical sciences and engineering was relatively new at the time, it seemed like the perfect blend of Vajani’s skills and interests. At an informational session by St. Jude Medical, a company that manufactures pacemakers, defibrillators, and a myriad of other heart-related medical devices, Vajani learned about their college hire program. Subsequently, she took all the required classes and underwent a rigorous interview process to land a coveted job with this company. The job offered her the perfect opportunity to combine her interpersonal skills and scientific knowledge gleaned from working with clinicians to implant these devices. It started Vajani on her career path for the next decade where she served as a vital link between patients, clinicians, and manufacturers. This pivotal role helped her develop key skills that would enable her to later play larger roles in marketing and product development.

After working in sales and marketing at St. Jude Medical for over 7 years, Vajani attended the prestigious Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago in order develop a deeper understanding of the business world. As a part time student, she was able to apply key classroom learnings to her role as a clinical specialist at Medtronic. Upon graduating, she spent the next leg of her career working at MATTER, helping start-ups and corporate healthcare organizations develop commercialization and innovation strategies, respectively. Her experience at MATTER prepared her well for her current role with CVS Health, where she is part of a transformation team that is tasked with building new products and services that will drive better patient experiences and outcomes. Especially in the context of the current pandemic, she has sought to turn a generally slow-responding corporate environment into one that reacts faster and more effectively. Vajani believes that the current uncertainty and malleability surrounding the healthcare environment has pushed her to take the reins and continue driving change. While speaking with her, it was obvious that she has been able to make her impact by staying abreast of the most recent advancements and emergent trends across the healthcare ecosystem – including new healthcare technology start-ups as well as mergers and acquisitions between dominant players in health insurance, pharma, and medtech.

While Vajani’s career has been diverse, the continuous drive to help people has been critical to her success. This was a value that her mother instilled in her early in her childhood. Vajani says that her mother was very supportive of her dreams and encouraged her to challenge herself across all aspects of life. In addition to her mother, Vajani’s mentors throughout her career inspired confidence in her that pushed her to reach her professional ambitions. In just over a decade, Vajani has achieved many career goals, and she is just getting warmed up. In the future, Vajani hopes to start her own business and create a formal system that allows her to mentor and invest in small businesses.

Navigating her career in science as a woman hasn’t always been easy, but the difficult experiences have helped Vajani develop skills to overcome challenges and fostered in her a greater appreciation for people who nurture a welcoming and productive working environment. In her free time, Vajani spends time pursuing passions, such as wheelthrown pottery. When asked what advice she would give to a woman early in her career, Vajani emphasized the importance of goal setting early on both personally and professionally, while remaining open to new, seemingly uncomfortable experiences, as these are opportunities for growth.

By Phalguni Shah

“Happiness is more than waking up and smiling every day. I really think it is finding a deep meaning in what you are doing, [even though] it might not always be the most fun thing. For me, success is not being bored and keeping myself intellectually stimulated.”

On Earth Day 2020, I had the opportunity to interview Jennifer Bogs, the Environmental Manager at Great Lakes Coca-Cola Bottling. Bogs develops environmental policies and communicates compliance best practices for the company. With a background in the environmental sciences, business, as well as law, she has carved out a unique career at the crossroads of STEM and law.

“I feel like I’ve always worked,” Jennifer says, laughing. She recalls starting a job just one day after graduating college. Before going to business school, she worked in consulting and thoroughly enjoyed communicating with and learning from professionals from different fields such as science, engineering, and business. Bogs went into law school with an unusual intent of not working at a law firm upon graduation. Her aim was to work at the intersection of business and public interest, which led her on her fascinating career path. 

As an environmental manager, Bogs spends her time on a wide variety of tasks such as designing policies and guidelines, conducting trainings, and communicating with environmental regulators.  The best part of her job, according to Bogs, is that she can take actions to prevent environmental damage before it has happened. When asked about the most frustrating part, she expresses disappointment about “green-washing” in corporate culture, where many companies only consider sustainability as a marketing tool. This is why she enjoys seeing her deep passion for impactful sustainability spread to others. “It makes me very happy when I’ve taught someone how to fish, and they fish for themselves,” Bogs says.

STEM and law are both fields known to not have a lot of women, Jennifer admits.  Though she recalls unfortunate gender bias during her student life, reminding herself of the bigger picture helped her stay focused on her goals. Bogs is grateful to have had great mentors who inspired her, and she stresses the importance of having had a network of like-minded peers she could rely on for support.

Jennifer enjoys spending her free time with her two kids. She also loves staying active and surrounded by nature. Going for a run or hiking in a forest preserve is her go-to way to unwind from a busy week. She recalls receiving the best piece of advice from her business school professor: “You only get one reputation in life.” According to Bogs, it is especially relevant for a career in environmental law. When asked what advice she would give her early-career self, she remarks, “Don’t discount the time that you have for yourself.” She adds that investing in a hobby or having a personal side project can help you persevere through the challenging phases of your career.

By: Vera Kaelin

“[The secret to success is] to have a strong sense of self, to know who you are and to know why you do what you do”. 

Dr. Sylvia Perry is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and an assistant professor by courtesy in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at the Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. She directs the Social Cognition & Intergroup Processes (SCIP) Laboratory, composed of four graduate students, a lab manager, 17 undergraduate students and a dog as their lab mascot. When talking to Dr. Perry, it became evident that she pursues her career in an uncompromising manner and with strong passion. Her innovative research focuses on understanding people’s racial bias awareness and their existing biases towards different racial minorities, people of different weight, or sexual orientation. With clear intention, she provides mentored research opportunities in her lab to first generation college students and students of color. 

Dr. Perry, herself a first-generation college student and underrepresented minority faculty member, provides access to opportunities that she did not have, but wished for, as an undergraduate student. When I asked her how she became so successful, she laughed and said, “I am stubborn.” Indeed, Dr. Perry seems persistent and proactive. Fascinated by her own and other’s experiences with racial biases and bias awareness, Dr. Perry proactively sought to connect with scholars with similar interest. Some of these people became her future mentors, who believed in and nurtured her and her ideas.  One year before completing her PhD, she secured a prestigious NIH R01 supplement to fund her postdoctoral position with Dr. John Dovidio, a well-known researcher in her field. 

Dr. Perry not only knows about biases towards underrepresented minorities through her research but also from her own experiences. “I experienced both subtle and blatant forms of racial and gender bias, and […] I received signals and feedback that my work was not as valuable.” She recalled dealing with this negative feedback to be exhausting, and intrinsic motivation was required to continue. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Dr. Perry asks her students, “What is it that you are passionate about? What will keep you going even if others don’t believe in your work?” Mentoring students is one of the aspects Dr. Perry likes most about her job. She in particular likes when she can see “a spark in [my] mentees’ eyes when they find something interesting.” 

At Northwestern University, Dr. Perry works on a number of research projects, mentors graduate and undergraduate students, and teaches undergraduate and graduate classes. She also parents her 2.5-year-old son. How does she manage all of this? It must be her strong sense of self. She knows who she is and why she does what she does, even when others might not believe that it is all possible. 

By: Shreya Chandrasekar

Dr. Sangeetha Madhavan was always fascinated by the human body, thus prompting her clinical training as a physical therapist. Subsequently, her decision to pursue training as a research scientist in rehabilitation science arose from the numerous questions she had as a clinician. Dr. Madhavan currently works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and is also the Director of the Brain Plasticity Laboratory at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Her lab is primarily focused on developing individualized therapeutic approaches that use technologies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to advance existing neurorehabilitation practices. With support from NIH, AHA, NIDRR and others, Dr. Madhavan is currently investigating the effects of cortical priming on walking outcomes in stroke survivors. Her passion for her work is evident in the way she talks about her quest for understanding how the brain learns and recovers. According to Dr. Madhavan, the most exciting part of her work is designing research experiments that get her closer to answers of questions that will ultimately contribute to the advancement of science and thus help her target patient population. She believes that designing robust research experiments is the foundation on which successful data acquisition rests. In addition to her work in the lab, she also loves teaching and disseminating what she learns in the lab to students who are training to be future clinicians.

For Dr. Madhavan, the most gratifying part of her job is hearing from a student that he/she was inspired to pursue a particular topic of research because of her lecture. She is motivated by the possibility of playing a small but significant role in her mentee’s professional development and personal success. I believe that Dr. Madhavan’s desire and passion towards mentor-ship stems from the acknowledgement of the pivotal role that her own teachers and mentors have played in her career. However, there are also parts of the job that Dr. Madhavan finds frustrating. According to her, one such frustrating aspect of her job is the constant endeavor to procure funding.

While she does not recollect any major incidents that occurred to her because she was a woman in science, she says that gender plays a role in her professional life in many different ways. She finds that networking opportunities are harder to come by for women and that female scientists have to work twice as hard to build their network in a male dominated profession.

No two days in Dr. Madhavan’s life are similar. Being a mother of two kids who are 10 and 5, a teacher and the head of a research lab means that Dr. Madhavan has to always prioritize her tasks based on what needs her most urgent attention. She is an early riser and uses her time in the mornings for some uninterrupted work, so that she can spend the rest of her day in meetings, teaching or analyzing data. Outside of work, Dr. Madhavan loves spending time with her kids. Apart from reading historical fiction, she also loves to spend her time cooking, gardening and travelling. With so many diverse interests and professional goals, Dr. Madhavan believes that it is paramount to maintain a sense of balance within the chaos. While perfectly prioritizing tasks and getting them done can be a struggle on most days, she focuses on achieving a sense of balance in the long run.

By: Kendra J. Royston

“I am up at 6:15 because of my daughter. The first thing I did this morning was speak to a senior researcher that I’ve been working with for many years. Then I started working on a poster that I am presenting next week. I am on an award committee for our national foundation for research, so I had to prepare for a phone call with the chair of the committee. I often have to run the TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) experiment which we use for evaluation of changes in cortical excitabity of our  research participants at three time points during the study .. I treat inpatients six hours a week.”

The quote above is just another day in the life of actress, parent, occupational therapist, and movement scientist Dr. Mary Ellen Stoykov. You read that correctly, Dr. Stoykov is not only a woman of science, but a thespian and connoisseur of the arts.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Mary Ellen Stoykov last month, and I must say she is an incredible woman with a unique pathway into STEM.

Mary Ellen has a passion for the fine arts, as evidenced by her undergraduate degree in theater. When asked what prompted her shift in careers, she shared that her contact with a disabled student piqued her interest in drama therapy. She decided to enroll back in school to pursue a career in occupational or physical therapy, but quickly realized that she had a passion for clinical research. Because of this passion, she’d be required to embark on her PhD journey.

Never one to shy away from difficult tasks, Dr. Stoykov found her passion in solving complex problems that affected her patients. She gains fulfillment from her efforts in unraveling the answers to rehabilitating arms affected by paralysis as a result of stroke. She is fascinated by bimanual conflict, a syndrome that causes one hand to interfere with the other, preventing an individual from performing tasks with two hands. Thus far, she has successfully aided in the rehabilitation of patients.

Dr. Stoykov approaches research questions differently than some of her colleagues. Her practical experience gives her an edge when it comes to demonstrating positive results in patient recovery. She enjoys also collaborating with other researchers and learning from them.

Ever the renaissance woman, Mary Ellen has tackled the challenge of being a mother in STEM. Raising her daughter and being present for the important milestones is important to her. She’s expressed that remaining competitive in her career while being a full time mom was difficult at times but she embraced the challenge gracefully.

As many women in a variety of careers, both inside and outside of STEM, Dr. Stoykov shared with me that she and other female colleagues feel they have to be 3 times better than the average male researcher in the same field in order to garner funding and publish manuscripts, but in the words of Mary Ellen herself, “Persistence is a good quality to have.”

Outside of the lab and clinic Stoykov has an active spiritual life and still surrounds herself with the talented men and women of the arts in Chicago.

For more on Mary Ellen, have a listen to our candid conversation with her this past quarter.

By: Shreya Chandrasekar

Serendipity is a term that is often used to describe a happy accident. But Horace Walpole, who coined the term in 1754, used the word to refer to a very specific kind of “happy accident”: the kind that can be only exploited by a sagacious person. After having met and interacted with Dr. Toni Pak, professor and chair of the Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology at Loyola University Chicago (Health Sciences Division), I am convinced that she is exactly the kind of person Walpole was referring to!

Growing up in Colorado with a single parent, college was not an idea that was on Dr. Pak’s radar. While she recognized her love for the sciences very early on, she didn’t know that there was much she could do with a degree in biology other than working as a healthcare professional. Nonetheless, Dr. Pak enrolled herself at the University of Colorado as a pre-med and was the first from her family to attend college. Dr. Pak graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Population and Organismic Biology, while simultaneously caring and providing for her three young children as a single parent. During her time as a graduate student pursuing a Master’s degree in Secondary Science Education and working on education reform in secondary schools, she continued to take graduate courses in biology and explore circadian biology in the lab. It didn’t take her long to realize that being in the lab was what she enjoyed the most and felt passionate about. Her PI recognized this passion and suggested that she explore a career as a scientist. Overwhelmed and unsure about fully committing to a career as a scientist, Dr. Pak decided to get a second Masters degree in biology so that she could teach at community colleges.

However, serendipitously, the lab that she applied to wasn’t accepting any masters students; the PI of the lab offered to accept her as a PhD student instead. As a PhD student in Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Dr. Pak had “500 hamsters to take care of” and absolute free reigns to come up with a project that fascinated her. During her time as a PhD student, Dr. Pak remained resilient, positive and productive. With the guidance of her mentors, Dr. Pak published 5 first author papers as a PhD student, which she believes was key in helping her secure a good post-doc and ultimately, a job in the field.

Her meticulousness, resilience and ability to find and seek advice from good mentors during her graduate school journey, helped her accomplish all of this while simultaneously striking a work-life balance and fulfilling her responsibilities as a mother. However, when I asked her about how she so amazingly struck the work-life balance throughout her career, she laughed and said, “I don’t think I am a good example”. She strongly believes that a good work-life balance in a job like hers that requires intense drive and inherent curiosity, cannot be achieved by “leaving work, forgetting about it and going home”. Instead, she believes that one must plan their day meticulously in order to be fully immersed in and focused on the task at hand.

While her career has scaled great heights and Dr. Pak has successfully stepped up and taken on several leadership roles in her field, her love for science and teaching remains unchanged. According to Dr. Pak, the best part of her job is still nurturing the enthusiasm and curiosity of her graduate students. She is proud of the fact that some of her best work has stemmed from the ideas of her graduate students and she advices all young scientists to fearlessly pursue their passions, and not be afraid to pitch their ideas and projects to their PIs. She believes that although things have improved for young female scientists, with search committees now actively seeking to recruit female faculty members, there is still bias in the way women in science are viewed. Scientists like Dr. Toni Pak are pushing barriers for women in science by not only generating scientific knowledge that speaks volumes but also fearlessly taking on leadership roles and earning their seats at the table in a traditionally male dominated field.