Career transitions

I am very proud of the work I accomplished in my four years at CZI/Biohub as a program manager focused on open science. It was gratifying to leverage my background in biological research to lead and support projects to improve the process of science, making it more reproducible, equitable, and efficient. My projects were diverse– landscaping new areas of investment, developing and shepherding proposals through the grantmaking process, supporting communities of researchers engaging in open source, evaluating the impact of a multi-year grant program, partnering cross-functionally to improve practices in the organization.

As I look towards the next step in my career journey, I’m thinking a lot about what parts of these projects I most enjoyed, and where my future effort can have the biggest impact. I’m surprised at the types of activities towards which I now gravitate: engaging cross-functional and multi-stakeholder teams, developing governance to improve planning and communication, building connections between disparate areas to transform the way we think about work. I love big, messy problems, especially when they leverage one or more of the professional hats I wear, such as researcher (genomics, bioinformatics, cancer biology), educator/trainer, community facilitator.

I’m looking forward to learning what types of opportunities bubble up in coming months that will help me exercise these skills, and learn new things.