Following your instincts
Dr Curtis Asante
When he started his career with a PhD in neuropharmacology, Curtis may not have predicted that he would live such a diverse professional life.
As a black scientist, Curtis has become involved in work to foster diversity in organisations. The impact of doing Equality and Diversity work has reshaped his professional identity as a change maker. His leadership has been built in part through taking the opportunity of becoming the co-chair of the Race Equality and Equity network at Cancer Research UK.
About Curtis
Dr Curtis Asante is Associate Director of Members' Programmes at the Microbiology Society. He spent some time in the US as a Postdoc, before embarking in his post-research journey; this has taking him from working as an editor in a prestigious scientific journal to being a project manager for a research network (UKRMP), a research funder (Research Cancer UK) and a learned society (Microbiology Society).
Get in touch with Curtis, here.
This will get you thinking about:
· What is the one action you can take yourself to contribute for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the research environment?
· Can you learn to let go of guilt when making career decisions and transitions?
· What are your instincts telling you about what you really want in your professional life?
Access full transcript here
Some reflections and questions to ponder inspired from my discussion with Curtis
Moving from discussions to actions in diversity work
When Curtis joined as co-chair, the Race Equality and Equity network at Cancer Research UK, he probably did not realise how much it would change his professional identity. He was looking for a new professional activity to develop himself. He was probably at the time, just frustrated of seeing some of his peers progress at more senior levels, whilst he was still navigating his transition post-research into various others roles.
Comparing our professional journey to that of others is mostly unhelpful, when we are stuck in judgement mode. In his exploration of his own professional path, he had experienced the challenge of rebuilding the confidence in his professional competencies.
A critical decision he made was to start contributing to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) work in his organisation. From a side activity that was not part of his main role, the EDI work became a core part of his professional identity. It was a conduit for Curtis to interact with very senior members of his organisation and many stakeholders, building his understanding of how to engage others to create change at an organisational level.
He admits that for many working in EDI, there can be a tiredness of seeing many discussions take place leading to limited actions that really change practices.
Holding ourselves and our institutions accountable to change practices when it comes to diversity is what can create real shifts.
In the UK, most higher education institutions will be involved in EDI work through the Athena Swan charter. Your department will have an EDI committee and an action plan to change practices.
My question to you…
what is your own action plan when it comes to EDI work for your own research group?
Practice change at the macro-level takes place when many of us start to change our ways of acting at the micro-level.
Curtis challenges us to be bold in our own actions and not to wait until others have put in place changes. Can we be the first to change practices that will impact diversity in the research environment? Curtis tells us that we do not need to wait to see what others are doing. We just need to simply think about diversity and take some actions.
Curtis asks us to consider how we may construct our own way of defining “excellence” when we are recruiting. What does good look like when we are recruiting a PhD or Postdoc for our teams? How do we judge others who have had less privilege than we have had, or who have had less than straightforward paths? If we want to recruit in the world of research, talented minds who think in unusual ways, can we be daring enough to bet on those who do not have the straight A* paths?
Challenging our recruitment practices for the research environment has the potential to significantly reshape how innovative research groups can become.
o How daring are you in rethinking how you are recruiting team members?
o What would be the wackiest approach you would be prepared to take to challenge yourself in recruiting differently to increase diversity in your team members?
o Can you take one action from today, where you are consciously doing something that will support researchers from a diverse background?
Some examples:
o Who did you invite for your seminar series?
o When you can’t give a talk yourself, can you suggest EDI alternatives (researchers from diverse minorities, gender, race etc)?
o Can you give one of your tutees from a minority group, an opportunity to experience a summer research project so they can experience for themselves the world of research?
o When you are assessing an application/ a paper/ a talk/ an interview from someone from a minority, ask yourself- if this person was white/ man/ middle-class, would I assess them in the same way?
o When others are part of assessments, hold them accountable as well. Ge them to pause in their assessment/ judgment and ask the same question- if this person was white/ man/ middle-class, would you assess them in the same way?
We all have to work hard at mitigating our biases. The change will come from each of us. One action at a time. One reflection at a time.
Letting go of the guilt in transition post- Postdoc
Curtis, like so many of the people I have interviewed over the years, talks about the guilt of letting go of the idea of a research career being the path for him.
After a PhD and Postdoc in prestigious institutions, Curtis made the decision like many of us to move on to other roles.
Why is it that we continue to experience this transition as a painful, wrenching process?
What strikes me is the guilt experience by many at the juncture of deciding to let go of a researcher professional life to move on to other roles.
There are no such things as alternative careers.
There are just various professional experiences and possibilities.
Many Postdocs that I have coached during these periods of transition express the relief they experience, once the decision is made and when they are able to move on to non-research careers.
As researchers, we do not shade our identities as critical thinkers and explorers of ideas. We carry our ways of beings as skilled professionals in any new ventures we move towards.
Could we find a way for researchers to redefine their professional identities without experiencing the pain and guilt of transition?
Narratives shape our ways of experiencing the world. The narrative about the life of research trained professionals continues to need a hard shake. Research trained professionals do not need to experience feelings of guilt when they decide to leave their Postdocs to take up new roles. What a waste of energy to experience such negative feelings.
Could we reshape the narrative of Postdoc life, so that researchers can feel excited about their next professional roles post-Postdoc instead of feeling pain, guilt and worries?
PhD supervisors and research group leaders have an important role to play in the dynamics created in their teams, so that the world outside of research can feel as exciting and rewarding as any research roles. As a research team leader, you may not feel that it is your responsibility to sort out the lives of your team members. Well of course, it is not, but your behaviour and approach to supporting your researchers will be critical in how they will experience their professional transition beyond their Postdoc time.
Weirdly, this reminds me of a poem from Khalil Gibran:
"Speak to us of Children."
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Maybe it is strange to add this poem here. I am adding it, as a way of reminding research leaders that they can see themselves as the archers for the world of tomorrow. The way they can support their PhD students and Postdocs become the best thinkers they can be, will impact the world of tomorrow in so many ways. It is hard to predict where PhD students and Postdocs will continue their professional lives, but what a privilege to work with such people.
o As a research leader, what will you do to build the confidence of your research team members, so that they become the innovators and positive contributors of tomorrow’s world?
o What will you do to empower them to grab their own brilliance so they can move on in their own journey without the baggage of guilt, when they are leaving research behind?
“There are lots of other people who don’t tick those boxes but can do just as good a job that I can, but we’re not including them because our idea of diversity is very narrow. While I am black, I’m a black version of what is acceptable for white people essentially. I think that kind of thinking, we need to move away from.”
