- [Yaisa Andrews-Zwilling] Being able to explain
your science in lay terms,
or not super jargony terms,
is really a key skillset.
Because sometimes you
can even lose another
highly skilled scientist if
they're not from your field
if all you speak about is your jargon
and the particular area you're in.
So I think if you join these committees
or go to school to talk about science
to high school kids,
that that really expands number one,
your ability to speak to
different kinds of people,
but also to speak about
your science in a way
that's understandable and
approachable and relatable
which would come in
very handy later in life
when you have to do interviews,
when you have to try to get funding,
when you have to speak
with other stakeholders,
for example, because you want to pursue
a particular project and you need to have
some input from others.
So being able to speak
about your science well
is a huge asset.

- [Thi Nguyen] Hi, I'm Thi Nguyen for
Strategy for Scientists
at the University of
California San Francisco.
In this podcast, I talked to
Dr. Yaisa Andrews-Zwilling,
Associate Director of Research at SanBio,
a biotech company in Silicon Valley.
In our conversation, Yaisa
shared the differences
in working at a small biotech
versus running a research
program in academia,
and what it takes to be a
successful industry scientist.
She talks about how she got up to speed
on business vocabulary and
how she thinks strategically
about stakeholders.
I also asked her to share her experiences
doing science internationally,
and the strengths of
being a female scientist
and woman of color.
To get started, I asked Yaisa to tell us
how running a research program in industry
differs from academia.

- [Yaisa] We made scientific decisions
more or less based on
where the science took us.
So if we were looking
at a particular question
and the answer that we got was
not what we were expecting,
we would often then
chase whatever that was.
So the questions that were answered,
or the science that we did,
was very question and
inquisitiveness driven
within certain parameters.
Whereas at the company,
there's a clear company goal.
So whereas I still have a lot of freedom
when it comes to trying to figure out
like the mechanism of action of our cells,
which is my main task in the company,
I do have to kind of stay on track
in the research that I do.
So that's the biggest difference I think.
But there are certain
constraints to the number
of different avenues you
can potentially follow.
Whereas I think in academia,
you can more or less follow
whatever you want to do.

- [Thi] I asked Yaisa for an
example of constraint.
She said, "Coming from academia,
"working in defined
timeframes can be difficult.
"You have to be smarter
about planning experiments
"that get you answers."

- [Yaisa] At the company, which is
another really major difference
between when I was working in academia
and now working in a company,
is that we have SMART goals.
So your goals have to be
attainable and time-bound.
So for example, it was a
bit of a struggle for me
initially with these
SMART goals to say that
I would get this done by this time.
And I kind of really
pushed back against my boss
because I was like that's
not how science works.
I can't tell you when it's going to work
and what's going to happen.
And he was like, "Well,
you have a hypothesis
"and you know what you
think is going to happen.
"So you need to tell me
the timeframe you need
"to get to that answer."
I think that was the most
difficult thing for me,
to be able to beforehand plan
out the whole experiment,
think of the different answers,
and do that in a time-bound manner.
But that's a skill that I've
definitely learned quite well
since being at the company.
You don't have the luxury
of repeating things
multiple times because
you forgot a control
or you thought of something else to do.
So you really plan out
your experiments well
and execute within a certain timeframe.
And then based on those answers,
you make the next set of decisions.

- [Thi] Another culture difference
was the language used,
namely the business conversations.

- [Yaisa] Coming to the company,
I suddenly started having
conversations with the
Chief Medical Officer,
which was okay, and still
okay for me to deal with,
but also with Regulatory,
with Finance, with Accounting.
And all of these different
groups and departments
had their own language
and their own jargon.
So often, I would be sitting in meetings
with these different teams
and they would start speaking.
And often, I would not be able to follow,
not because I couldn't grasp the concept,
but because I simply didn't
speak their language.

- [Thi] Yaisa requested to
take a business course
for scientists and engineers
from Kellogg School of
Management at Northwestern.
It's a seven-day intensive
she said gave her
basic vocabulary in finance,
intellectual property, and marketing.
She said it helped her to
collaborate and speak with people
in different functions at the company.
And one of the most valuable topics
that they covered was stakeholders.

- [Yaisa] One of the things I learned
was where they were speaking
about project management
and stakeholders.
So stakeholders was never
really a term I learned before
because for the most part as a postdoc,
I was driving my project
and my major stakeholder
was probably my PI,
maybe another postdoc I
was collaborating with.
And then even when I was kind
of leading the small group,
I was making a lot of the decisions
and I had my team members
who fed into that.
But coming to the company
where a decision that I made
affected Clinical, affected
Regulatory, affected QA,
I had a lot more stakeholders involved
when a decision was made.
So just knowing that
there are stakeholders,
that your decision doesn't just affect you
and your team but affects a whole company,
being able to identify the stakeholders
and bring them into the
conversation at the right time,
was something that I definitely.
The concept was brought
to me at the Kellogg.
And then when I came back,
I was able to look at
all of these people around
the table with new eyes
knowing that even if I just wanted funding
for a particular project
that I wanted to do,
that I should go to Regulatory to see:
if I do this project, Regulatory wise
is it feasible for us to pursue
this as a new indication?
Then I would to maybe Clinical:
is this a clinical area
that we're interested in?
Is it something that
we can take to market?
So just thinking not just of the science,
which is my main focus,
but how does the science
fit in the whole big picture
of everyone else at the table
was really good to know.

- [Thi] Yaisa now collaborates
with academic scientists
from the industry side.
And so I asked her
about meeting deadlines,
especially because she's
seen that mindset before.
What does she consider
before getting started?
And what does she do to stay on track?

- [Yaisa] So I do try to make sure that
there are sufficient resources.
Because I need to make sure that the PI
is not promising something, and
then there's no conversation
with the scientists in the lab.
Because it's very easy
for a PI to be like,
"Oh sure, this postdoc can
work on it, or this postdoc."
But I usually also speak
with the scientists involved
to be sure that they are
on board for the project,
they know the parameters of the project,
before it moves forward.
Because the PI does not
always know the capacity
or sometimes maybe can
overestimate the capacity
of the people in the lab,
because they have their
own projects going.

- [Thi] Yaisa has done research internationally.
And I was curious about her perspective
going through the job search
process and working in the U.S.
I asked how she presents
herself and her strengths
as an international scientist.

- [Yaisa] I think that is a really great question.
So I'm from Trinidad
and Tobago originally,
which is in the Caribbean.
I did my Masters and PhD in Germany,
and then my postdoc and kind of the end
of my scientific training and beginning
of professional scientific
life here in the U.S.
So I do think I bring
a much more open mind to the table,
that different people are coming from
very very different perspectives
when facing a particular question.
And I think I got that especially
from living in Germany.
I did this course when we were there
on expectations when you enter a room
depending on the different
country that you're from.
And that was really eye opening,
because for certain cultures
when you enter that room,
you introduce yourself.
Because you're the one entering,
so you have to go and you
introduce yourself, et cetera.
Whereas from other countries,
it's expected that you're
entering that room;
those people should
welcome you to that space.
So just having that and seeing that
people are just coming
from different places
and usually it's never personal.
It's just your perspective
coming to the table
has helped me to deal sometimes
with very difficult conversations
where people kind of dig
in and have a very set
frame of mind.
It's a lot easier for me to say:
I understand where you're coming from
and why you have that perspective,
but this is where I'm coming from,
instead of kind of being combative
or also digging in myself.
So I think having that
international experience
really helps me to be very open minded
and be able to collaborate
with many different kinds of people.

- [Thi] I asked her to give an example of a time
when maybe someone wasn't
open to her perspective
or she faced discrimination
as an international scientist,
and what scientists can
do to prepare themselves
or have an open mind when
entering into collaborations.

- [Yaisa] I think I've been pretty lucky to not,
because I'm also of African descent,
for people who are listening.
So growing up in the Caribbean,
I was never a minority
because we are the
majority actually (laughs)
in the island, on the island.
And then going to Germany
where I was definitely
very much so a minority
and then coming here
and then having a minority status
that has a very different
meaning here in the U.S.
being perceived as African American.
So that was sometimes very
interesting to navigate.
Because I remember once showing
up as the keynote speaker,
and the person walked past me.
And I'm like oh no, hi, it's actually me.
And they said, "Oh, you're
not what I was expecting."
I'm like, I'm thinking
that's a compliment.
And she's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
And she blushed and so on.
For me, having moved from
the Caribbean to Germany
to the U.S., that experience has forced me
to sometimes step out of my comfort zone
to speak to people that maybe
I would be nervous about,
or speak up in seminars or so.
It was something that I
definitely struggled with.
And as a result of my experience of living
in different places and
with different cultures,
I've learned to be a lot more assertive
and to even in uncomfortable situations
to find my voice and speak to people.
And I think one of the things that I would
really encourage postdocs to do here
is to do something
outside of your science.
Your science is very insular.
It's usually you with
your project at your bench
working on it.
Even the highs and the lows,
like when you publish your paper,
you celebrate almost by yourself,
maybe with your PI, for maybe two days.
And then you're back at bench
by yourself doing your work.
So to find time no matter how
challenging your project is
to be on the Postdoctoral Committee,
be on the Diversity Committee,
be on a mentoring committee
or where you go to high
schools to speak to people.
But definitely to do something
outside of just the bench
to really expose yourself to
different opinions on things.
Also expose yourself
to other non-scientists
who are working in the
scientific environment
and how they think about questions.
And also, really to practice
your public speaking.
Because, again, often it's
just you at your bench
and you don't have to talk
about your science a lot
apart from other highly
technical scientists.

- [Thi] So Yaisa says that,
"It can be really nice
"to have a vision and a
plan, but you also need
"to bring people along
and build relationships."
I recently heard it's not necessarily
about getting in the room,
but about being comfortable in the room.
So I asked Yaisa when
she's feeling nervous about
speaking up if there's
something that she tells herself
or any strategy she uses
to communicate her plan.

- [Yaisa] I think I tell myself:
your question is not a stupid question.
I tell myself that and then
I force myself to ask it.
Because I have hard
situations even as a postdoc
where I think I was starting to gain
quite a bit of confidence
where I would sit in the auditorium
and I would have a question.
But I would be afraid to ask it.
And then, at least maybe
10, 15 seconds later,
someone else's hand would go up,
and they would ask the exact
question I was thinking of.
And I'm like: ahh, I should
have asked that question.
So I remind myself of those situations.
And I tell myself: your question
is not a stupid question.
Just ask it, because if you don't know,
probably someone else in
the room doesn't know.
And you should just ask your question.
So I think that's what I do.
I kind of psych myself
up, try to calm my voice
so it's not shaky and
then I just go for it.

- [Thi] My last question to
Yaisa was about a time
she had to make a strategic decision
about a direction to take a project
and when it worked out
really well for her.
She shared about a time she
had to allocate resources
and think about doing something inhouse
versus outsourcing it.

- [Yaisa] Traditionally, a lot
of the scientific work
at the company was outsourced.
And one of the things that
I wanted to do was to build
a very strong internal team
where we had a lot more control
over the experiments we were doing.
So we still outsource quite
a bit of our experimentation
to different academic
and CRO institutions.
But I've also built a really
strong scientific team inhouse.
And the company has also invested heavily
in like microscopes and software
so that we can do a lot of the
analysis ourselves inhouse.
Whereas we still outsource some
of the behavior experiments,
for example, because it's
large numbers of animals
and we have a very small onsite vivarium,
a lot of the pathological
analysis to really try
to figure out the mechanism
of action is done inhouse
by my team of scientists here
where we sit at the microscope
and we look at very high resolution
at the structure of what's
going on in the brain
and different processes.
So that was something
that I had to kind of
decide strategically: do I
continue just outsourcing
and working with external scientists
or do I build a strong team inhouse?
And I have a very strong
team of amazing scientists,
all women; and we really
drive the mechanism of action
of what our cells are doing inhouse here.

- [Thi] Since recording this podcast,
Yaisa is now Director of
Research at Annexon Biosciences.
I enjoyed talking with
Yaisa about her experiences
in academia and industry, and
how she thinks strategically
about stakeholders and
planning smarter goals
to stick to deadlines.
I loved her advice about
being curious and bold,
to expose yourself to
different environments
and stakeholders, and
practice communicating
your science with everyone,
and to be confident.
I hope you enjoyed listening.
(smooth jazz music)

- [Narrator] Thank you for listening
to Strategy for Scientists.
Interested in learning more?
Check out the online lectures
co-produced by iBiology
at the UCSF Office of Career
and Professional Development.
We'd like to thank the
Burroughs Wellcome Fund
and the NIH National Institute
of General Medical Sciences,
or NIGMS, for grant funding.
Thanks also to PRX
Podcast Garage in Boston
for the studio space and
helping us to get started
with this production.
Tune in for more stories about
scientists using strategy.