Insights from a Ph.D. Who Is a Foundation Program Officer (Opinion)

credit: SBBowl

"No one who knew me when I was younger would have guessed that this would be something I enjoy, much less make time for."

That's how University of Chicago PhD student Jessica Biesiek describes her career path, which has taken her from scientist to program officer at a private foundation.

"I was not a people person, especially in the sense that I do not always pick up well on others' emotions," she writes at the New York Times.

"By the time I went off to college, I had settled on being a scientist who works on infectious diseases, which was probably a great relief to my parents, who knew from personal experience what careers in the newspaper business looked like."

She decided she wanted to do that in academe, but after a postdoc in which her work didn't have much impact on her career, she realized she would have to complete a second postdoc to generate new work that would make her competitive in the job market.

"I nearly ran out of fingers," she writes.

"One to get a grant funded, three to be productive at the lab bench and get a bunch of papers out, a year on the job market, then five or six years to make my mark as early faculty and then I would get promoted

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