Getting a PhD in a STEM field is a great start to a winning career

Abstract

A PhD in a scientific or engineering discipline can lead to a multitude of interesting positions, spanning from research in academia and industry to grant-making for a philanthropic organization to science policy positions in state and federal governments. I know because my career path has given me opportunities in all of them, and in each position my skill set grew in new and unexpected, positive ways.

A SUCCESSFUL STEM CAREER REQUIRES A WINNING STRATEGY: OPEN-MINDEDNESS

In 1994, I regularly participated in outdoor volleyball tournaments, and thanks to a great doubles partner, we frequently advanced to the finals. Waiting to find out who we would face in the next round provided a lot of time to sit around under a beach umbrella and think. And I had a lot to think about. I was just completing my PhD from UC Berkeley, and it was time to decide what would be my next professional step. What to do? Did I want to stay in academia and do a postdoc? Or get a job in biotech? Or leave research altogether and use my PhD in some other science-related career? Although I had a poor grasp of the range of career opportunities ahead of me, I used to play endless “what if” games while l waited for the next opponents, trying on different options in my mind to see how they felt.

What I realize now is I never could have guessed that, in some ways, the correct answer to my speculations was “all of the above.” The path to my present position has taken me through a stunning variety of jobs and positions, all of which required a PhD and none of which I was fully prepared for by my PhD studies. Although my path has been unique, there is a basic truth revealed by my experiences: don’t get locked in on one outcome. Staying open to opportunities is a key part of a strategy that has led to unanticipated rewards.

CREDENTIALS AND ANALYTICAL THINKING SKILLS UNLOCK A LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES

Earning a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathe­matics)-related PhD means developing a deep, specialized knowledge in a specific scientific or engineering discipline. And it also forces you to develop multiple conceptual and methodological approaches to address complex problems. These assets, especially the latter, are useful in a wide variety of disciplines. For me, the ability to apply the scientific method and the evidence-based decision-making skills I learned in graduate school have been essential components for my success in a wide variety of positions in a number of research-related sectors.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a worker with a bachelors degree or higher (e.g., masters, professional, doctoral) holds 12 positions over the course of a lifetime, with women holding slightly more (12.7) than men (11.4; Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2019). Since receiving my PhD in molecular cell biology in 1994, I’ve held 10 different positions:

1. postdoc at UCSF in genetics;

2. research scientist at Microbia, a start-up biotech company;

3. anti-infective drug discovery team lead with start-up biotech company Cytokinetics;

4. deputy vice chair for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine;

5. initiative lead for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation;

6. deputy director of the President’s Council on Science and Technology in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) under President Obama;

7. assistant director for biological rsearch at OSTP in EOP under President Obama;

8. biosciences director of strategic planning at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;

9. executive director of the Science Philanthropy Alliance; and

10. biosciences associate laboratory director at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Each of these opportunities was an unexpected next move that came as a consequence of unpredictable events: a start-up company was formed related to my expertise, California passed a stem cell proposition that gave rise to a new $3B state grant-making agency, a new philanthropic foundation needed a technical lead to manage a biological grant program, and a new U.S. President with a commitment to science and technology was elected and someone recommended me for a position with the new Administration. There would have been no way I could have predicted all of these outcomes while sitting under that beach umbrella in 1994. But one thing is clear, a PhD and a record of accomplishment were required every step of the way.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS MATTER

My PhD training didn’t fully prepare me for the future jobs I would have; additional professional skills were needed to execute the requirements of my jobs. Although I could write papers and give clear scientific presentations, I wasn’t trained to work on a team or on a multidisciplinary research question. I didn’t have the time and project management skills that would enable me to achieve deliverables on time and on budget. I wasn’t skilled in conducting effective meetings. I didn’t know how to motivate and manage people, including effectively providing (and receiving from my bosses) constructive criticism. I didn’t know how to respond to reporters who would want to interview me about some newsworthy effort. I didn’t know how to write a memo for the President of the United States. Well, perhaps this last deficiency isn’t likely to apply to a majority of PhD holders, but you never know… .

While new jobs frequently provide on-the-job training specific for the position description, there was one “training” early in my postacademic career that has significantly fueled my ability to accelerate through my series of positions of increasing responsibility. In 1999, my new biotech colleagues and I—all of us straight out of postdoctoral positions—took a short class called “Mastering Meetings” during which we learned things that would be key assets for the rest of my professional career: how to determine when a meeting is needed, how to articulate the purpose and desired outcomes of a meeting, how to decide who needs to attend the meeting based on its purpose, and if it’s a decision-making meeting, how decisions would be made—by consensus or majority. If I could add only one course to the curriculum of every grad program in the country, it would be a short class like this! I have found that the ability to conduct effective meetings leads to faster and better achievement of deliverables and wastes much less time and money.

EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A POWERFUL STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS

As an experimental biologist, I learned quickly that although a scientific result may be predictable based on the hypothesis and the experiment designed to test it, unpredictable outcomes are common, and that some of the most interesting outcomes arise as a function of unpredictability. So, too, can a career benefit from unpredictability. Under my beach umbrella, I had no way of knowing that my future would someday be filled with a dizzying number of federal government experiences, without which I wouldn’t know today how the priorities for the U.S. research enterprise are determined, or how it is organized and funded. For example, when I first arrived in Washington, D.C., I learned that each year the OSTP and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) release a memo for the federal agencies that fund science and technology (S&T) that describes the Administration’s priorities for the next federal budget, essentially a “road map” for where science funding will go 2 years from then.

I also didn’t know that I would become the primary author of a national policy document, the 2012 National Bioeconomy Blueprint (NBB; Maxon, 2012), foreshadowed by the FY2012 OSTP and OMB S&T priorities memo (Orszag and Holdren, 2010) Writing a document meant to shape the future of U.S. biotech policy was intimidating. At the same time, I knew my science chops would help me define the core questions and come up with reasonable strategies. While developing the NBB, I was also responding to urgent happenings such as the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, and a number of other urgent OSTP activities (Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, 2016) that served to make every day an unpredictable and exciting one.

Eventually I came to embrace uncertainty and the fear of not being perfectly prepared for job duties with which I had little experience. I began to see them as helping me to develop skills of resilience and resourcefulness. Now, as the Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, I see these as my main valuable assets when multiple competing priorities and intimidating assignments present themselves, as they always do. For example, when I first testified before Congress (Figure 1) in 2015 (Maxon, 2015), I did my best to overcome my fears by imagining the experience might be similar to my grad school oral exam. (Perhaps my grad school experience prepared me for more than I realized when I began this essay!) My past experience has had other ways of leading to interesting professional opportunities: to this day, my previous work on the NBB continues to result in international invitations for me to describe the development and outcomes of our national strategy.

FIGURE 1:

Mary Maxon, Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has testified twice to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology: here on March 14, 2018, in a session on world-leading innovations in science from the Department of Energy’s national labs. Photo credit: House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology—Majority.

NAVIGATING THE COURSE AHEAD REQUIRES UNDERSTANDING YOUR VALUES

With an endless array of career options ahead and the importance of choosing wisely, what approach enables sound decision-making? What I’ve learned is that there are three key aspects to making the right career moves. First, I try to understand the motivations of people who provide advice about my career decisions and learn whether they have anything to gain by my choice. I’ve made a mistake or two in not thinking about this before making a decision, following the advice of people I assumed might have my best interests in mind but in retrospect probably didn’t. Second, it is important to know what motivates me. Am I motivated by fame or praise? Am I instead motivated by impact, the satisfaction of a job well done, or helping others without the need for credit? Understanding this can determine whether a future position in “the limelight” or “in the shadows” fits with my personal motivations. Finally, when given a choice, I always choose the more “noble” option, however I define it at the time, and I have rarely regretted my decisions. Clearly understanding my own values is a strategy that has helped me make my own winning choices, and I bet that would be true for others.

At this point, it would be reasonable to ask whether I have anything to gain in providing the above career advice by way of sharing my personal philosophy. Not really, although it does help with my commitment to follow a noble path toward national-scale impact. And if you need any assistance writing that Presidential memo, I’d be happy to help.

Abbreviations used:

EOP

Executive Office of the President

NBB

National Bioeconomy Blueprint

OMB

Office of Management and Budget

OSTP

Office of Science and Technology Policy

S&T

science and technology

STEM

science, technology, engineering, and mathe­matics

UC

University of California

UCSF

University of California, San Francisco