By Kristen Kalmann, featuring Katryn Allen, Amanda Hays, Susmita Jasti, Emily Smith, Rebecca Wates, Rachel Williams, and Jing Yu
Meet the Team
Meet the powerhouse team that is driving the large molecule method development at PRA Heath Sciences Bioanalytical Laboratory in the greater Kansas City area. In the past year, this team has developed thirty-two assays using ligand binding assays (LBAs), flow cytometry, and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) techniques, submitted four poster abstracts to scientific meetings, published one scientific article (with two additional pending), attended four scientific meetings, mentored numerous analysts, implemented several process efficiency projects, launched a new bioanalytical service, and secured seven-figure investments.
Now, when you imagine such a team, were you picturing… all women?
Comprised of six outstanding women scientists: Katryn Allen, Susmita Jasti, Emily Smith, Rebecca Wates, Rachel Williams, and Jing Yu, and led by another woman, Amanda Hays, this team is responsible for the development and technical oversight of flow cytometry and LBAs.
Each woman has had a distinctive upbringing, education, and experience in the workforce, shaped by intellectual and personal challenges, adversity, and accomplishments. In turn, the mental psyche and career trajectory of each individual team member was formed.
Within this group, five ethnic minority groups are represented: Arabic, Black American, Chinese, Hispanic, and Indian. Some of the women grew up in the Kansas City area, the Midwestern and Western United States, and others internationally. Education experiences vary from international undergraduate, large U.S.-based state schools, and small private colleges including Dillard University, a Historically Black College or University. They have three master’s and five doctorates between them. Three of the women received their graduate degrees locally in Kansas City, three from institutions in the U.S., and one internationally. Some just began working in industry immediately, while others have just recently made the transition from academia to industry. What an outstanding group.
The collective backgrounds and rich experiences of learning and working all around the world combine to produce success—this is obvious. This article explores what drives each woman and the challenge of defining success for oneself over societal expectations. The world around us is expanding at a painfully slow rate to support women in the workplace, but these women are pushing forward, true to themselves and ever-present for each other as one powerful team.
Encouraging the Whole Self
The benefits and importance of maintaining a peer group can be seen within this diverse group of women. Peer groups can impact career trajectory by providing direct and indirect career and personal support, learning opportunities, and can also help dispel biases and misconceptions about working with a group of women.
Being an all-female group offers career and personal growth benefits that may be unique to the gender exclusivity of the team. Additionally, they had open conversations about how being on the team changed or made them realize the external and internalized biases they may have or how they experienced bias and/or discrimination personally. They further delved into how the meshing of the group’s personalities and diverse backgrounds have led to their success.
Team members recounted experiences with wonderful and supportive male and female colleagues, mentors, and supervisors academia and industry. Others had negative experiences with colleagues, mentors, or supervisors regardless of gender, or only had male or only had female mentors and supervisors. These experiences shape how an individual viewed the workplace, their worth, and lead to preconceived notions of how others will interact with them, sometimes even creating unconscious/conscience biases towards specific genders.
Amanda was hired by PRA in 2017 to be the associate director of the Large Molecule Method Development group. Having a female leader was a change for the team and there was interest in how the dynamic of the group would change.
Some of the women in the group worried having a woman as a supervisor due to past negative experiences with female supervisors who were inflexible or more demanding of female subordinates than males. Others were concerned that the dynamic of the team would change in a negative way. Others were excited because they had never had a female manager and looked at the hiring as an immediately positive change.
While a person can never be defined only based on their gender, perceptions based on gender by others often are what makes it more difficult for anyone taking on a new position. Amanda has excelled in her role and the group proudly holds a reputation as a go-to for advice and quality insight. Her leadership and support has allowed the individuals within her group to take more control over their day-to-day activities as well as overall career growth.
Who Defines Your Success?
One of the team members discovered that she was projecting stereotypes upon herself. She feared that if she did not break the glass ceiling and become an executive, then she would not be successful. Specifically, her fear was that anything less would be viewed as a disappointment and waste of talent, not just by the individual, but by those who supported her.
This is a sentiment that is echoed in many publications about women in the workplace. As we look forward to a workplace that is more diverse and representative of the population, we tend to alienate women who do not want to be at the very top of their industry. In this team member’s case, she decided that the role of management did not fit with the type of job she enjoyed: hands-on research and mentoring. She did not want to be in a management position and instead wanted to be an active participant in the lab, working directly with analysts and helping them polish their scientific skills. This teammate is always willing to give her time, encouragement, and feedback when she embarks on a new training module. She strengthens the team through her work, but also through her honesty and insight regarding career progression. She is strengthened by the team through their support of her decision that management is not her career goal and their gratitude for her willingness to train and mentor.
The women in the group have also found support from one another during times of transition, such as making a pivot in one’s career. One of the women hoped for a tenured position in academia but made the difficult decision to leave. She was in a long-term postdoctoral position but was not receiving the support she needed to move to a faculty position. In recounting her experience, she notes that the change was difficult, but she leaned on the support, encouragement, and experiences of her colleagues to make the transition a bit easier and more enjoyable. In doing so, she has been able to ask questions without hesitation and her teammates have been willing to freely share their knowledge.
Accidental Mentorship
There is an idea that we learn from one another’s tacit knowledge not just directly, but passively. The group termed this “accidental mentorship.” One example of accidental mentorship revolves around effective communication styles and their implementation. The group discussed the role of respect in Asian cultures, and how this is reflected in their communications such as email. When reviewing emails, one team member noticed the less direct phrasing that her colleagues would use, and the great concern they had about offending others. In this realization, she changed how she wrote emails.
Some of the benefits from the team are more obvious. One of the newer team members has been able to jump start an entirely new avenue of analysis within in the lab, specifically qPCR. While others on the team had used qPCR approaches during their academic careers, no one else had done so in a regulated setting. As soon as there was discussion of moving this project forward, this team member jumped on the opportunity to help and grow the business. Her positivity, expertise, and willingness to help propelled the project forward.
When the idea that the group was “different” or “unique” because they were all women was introduced, the team quickly retorted that there was no difference being on a team of just women versus a team including men or comprised of mostly men. A firm assertion that “we are not different” was echoed by the members of the team. Women are expected to fit in, to “be one of the guys.” Therefore, acknowledging the fact that they are an all-women team was one thing, happenstance, but outright saying that working with women was different than working with men would label them as “feminists.” The group had to acknowledge something that, up to this point, everyone had all been trained to ignore: the self-identified gender of ourselves and our colleagues.
In this all-women team, communication was easier in that it occurred more freely and fairly. Each team member acknowledged a time when she had been spoken over or marginalized by a male colleague in a meeting. Such interactions impacted how they spoke when men were around or not, “When you are being spoken over or dismissed in a conversation you feel like everything you say has to be on-point so you’re not going to just share ideas freely.” Another stated, “Oh, I would have never phrased it that way if you were a man. I would have been too scared of what you would think of me.”
This means that when discussing scientific issues amongst themselves, they do not feel the need to use highly technical language and instead use a much more fluid and common vernacular. These simple, generally unnoticed changes are not needed within the group because they are not as worried about being viewed as ill-informed or uneducated, as in other described scenarios. Speaking about personal issues, or small details from home lives, is also much easier because they do not judge such topics with an assumption of weakness. There is no need to assert presence, or intelligence, or hide personal lives. During conversations with each other, they can be open and be their “whole self” (a concept which Sheryl Sandberg details in Lean In). This has led to more productive, open conversations allowing for ideas to flow more freely, which in turn leads to a greater level of cooperation.
Having It All: Personal Growth and Group Success
This group thrives as a team because they agree on one common goal: to provide the best possible assays for their clients and the best scientific direction for their company. While the group shares this team goal, each team member has individual career goals and aspirations. Team goals are developed on an annual basis with individuals building their goals around the team. “We know one another’s strengths and can see how common goals align us and can be achieved.”
For example, it has been a long term goal of the group to become more integrated with the operations team (the group that performs the validation and bioanalysis in the lab), thus increasing the scientific oversight of a project from beginning to end, providing better training on an assay to assay basis, and allowing for more technical training. Within the group, some prefer to mentor or teach, others prefer to optimize communications or processes. The women set individual goals to achieve the common goal that were suited to their strengths and based on their career aspirations. In the end, processes were developed which allowed for better communication; training was implemented on-the-bench to increase technical proficiencies, and off-the-bench to increase technical knowledge within the operations team. With managerial support, the new system has been implemented and has improved not only the group, but the company as a whole.
However, women working with women does not inherently mean they will be successful. The personalities and experience of the individuals are what make a great team. But when individuals are able to speak openly, feel supported, and share not only their work experiences, but connect based on their personal experiences, success is much more achievable. This unique group of women lift each other, teach each other, and laugh with each other so that they can achieve with each other. The women all agreed that they are all service minded. They actively help others succeed without compromising their own ability to be successful. Sheryl Sandberg wrote in Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead that women often take on a caring role, even to their detriment because they tend to think in terms of the group and not of themselves. Yes, if you are in a group where you are the only one, or one of few, thinking of the group before yourself, you are likely to get left behind. But if you are fortunate enough to find a group that thinks of the group, a group that is service oriented, then all will grow as individuals.