Arielle Baker

What is your origin story? How did you end up where you are?

 

“I was born and raised in southwestern Colorado, and did my undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I’ll highlight two important elements of my time at CU Boulder. Firstly, all four years of undergrad, I did research in a biochemistry lab. This was of paramount importance to transitioning straight from my bachelor’s into my Ph.D. Secondly, I was a resident advisor, which entailed advising first-year undergraduate students on personal matters and university policies. I think this was my first meaningful encounter with higher education infrastructure — I learned about Title IX, mandatory reporting, and ombuds offices; I partnered with diversity, equity, and inclusion offices to bring social justice programming to my community; and I fostered a passion for inclusivity. As I look full circle, I have identified that was a piece of why I returned to science policy later.

 

Following my bachelor’s at CU Boulder, I got my Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Dartmouth College. I am an electrophysiologist by training; during my Ph.D., I recorded the electrical activity of individual cells in a slice of rodent brain, studying the ways cells are interconnected and the factors that influence their activity levels within the larger network. It's a really badass technique, I loved it, and I miss it every day.  Although I was successful in my Ph.D. by traditional academic metrics — I independently funded my work with an NIH grant, I presented my research at conferences and published it in peer-reviewed journals — I was experiencing a hostile work environment and it greatly affected my mental health and wellbeing. By my third or fourth year, I realized it was untenable for me and began seeking careers outside the Ivory Tower.

 

When you apply for an NIH grant, your application is assigned a program officer. Their job is to be the point of contact between the funding agency and you, the person applying for funding, as your application goes under review. Program officers have Ph.D. training and are well-versed in current scientific literature, but they don’t work in a lab. When I applied for my NIH grant, I became aware that such a position exists and from that and conversations during informational interviews, I came to learn about the space in which I currently work, at the intersection of science policy and program management. At the encouragement of a thesis committee member, I applied for the Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Fellowship at the National Academies. It's a three-month fellowship in Washington, D.C. I was accepted into the program, spent a whirlwind time at the National Academies as a fellow, defended my thesis two weeks after it ended, and transitioned into a full-time position at the National Academies. I’ve been here for about a year. Which brings me to today!”

 

How did that toxicity during your Ph.D. manifest for you?

 

“The academia that I experienced was toxic in many ways. I conducted my research in a hypercompetitive, hostile, and uncivil climate. I experienced significant power differentials predicated on archaic, hierarchical structures. I felt alone as a woman researcher in a department with less than 20 percent women researchers. I experienced gender harassment, the most common form of sexual harassment — verbal and visual conduct that conveys hostility, objectification, exclusion, or second-class status about members of one gender. When someone says in passing that they ‘try not to hire female postdocs because they tend to just get pregnant once they show up on the job and then you have to pay for their maternity leave,’ it makes you not want to pursue a postdoc.”

 

So now, you’re an associate program officer at the Academies. What does NASEM do and what does your job entail?

 

“The National Academies is a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution. It was founded by the federal government, by Abraham Lincoln, but it’s not part of the federal government. The bread and butter of the National Academies is what are called consensus study reports. They are exactly what they sound like — reports on which a group of experts on a topic have reached complete agreement, literal consensus on what the evidence says on that topic. Our work as staff at the National Academies is to facilitate the deliberations of these committees of experts. They review the literature on a particular topic, they discuss and argue and agree and ask questions, and then they produce a report stating their findings on that topic and their recommendations on how to move forward on that issue. In June 2018, the National Academies produced a report on sexual harassment. It found sexual harassment to be disgustingly prevalent in science, engineering and medical disciplines, and issued recommendations on how to combat it. 

 

As committee members and National Academies staff traveled across the country sharing the findings and recommendations from the report, they found that there was great interest within institutions to work to implement the report’s recommendations. As a result, the National Academies formed an Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education. An Action Collaborative is a coalition of institutions that come together to work on a system-wide problem and to identify and develop new and innovative solutions. In the case of this Action Collaborative, the National Academies provides a space for those concerned about preventing sexual harassment to exchange information, ideas, strategies, and tactics. Ultimately, the goal of this Action Collaborative is to identify, develop, and implement approaches and practices that can prevent and better address sexual harassment. My day-to-day job as the assistant director of the Action Collaborative includes planning and carrying out virtual and in-person convenings of the Action Collaborative membership and other key stakeholders, imbuing current research and evidence into our work, and strategizing on how to make lasting change in this space.”

 

What have you learned from that work? Did anything surprise you?

 

“Something that I've learned is that institutions are made up of a lot of different people that have varying levels of commitment to an issue. So an institution can be a part of the Action Collaborative, but what that may mean is that there are practitioners at the institution that really care about this issue and really want to make change. But there are simultaneously people there who don't care about this issue or don't even believe that sexual harassment is a problem. I think something that I have really learned over the last year is to not dismiss an institution's ability to do work or to make change, but to identify the leaders that exist within those institutions that we can push for change. If we don’t identify those people who are on the ground that want to make change, I don’t think that change will ever come about.”

 

How can people reading this get involved in the Action Collaborative’s work at their own institutions?

 

“If you're at an institution that's a part of the Action Collaborative, each member has produced a Community Engagement Plan that we've posted on the Action Collaborative website. This document outlines ways in which members within that institution’s community can engage in this work, to share their ideas, and to give feedback to their representatives. So if you're at one of those institutions, I encourage you to do that. The Action Collaborative holds an annual public summit that is very specifically designed to bring in voices from outside of our membership. That's an opportunity for folks to engage in person around this topic to provide input to the Action Collaborative. There is the ability to participate virtually, meaningful virtual participation, not just sort of passively watching, throughout the event. This event moves regionally around the country: in 2019, it was in Seattle; in 2020, it will be in Milwaukee. Of course no one institution of higher education, including the 62 institutions in our membership, has this problem solved. The more folks engaged in solving this issue, the better.

 

I’ll also say that I love getting random emails from people, whether they're in the Action Collaborative or not, that have ideas on how to combat this issue or know of an existing innovative practice. My inbox is open.”

 

I’m curious what was going on in your head while you were in this toxic environment at Dartmouth, and then you had this fellowship opportunity. When did you realize you wanted to do science policy and what were you thinking at that time?

 

“During my Ph.D., I helped organize an outreach event called the Upper Valley Brain Bee, a competition for students to learn more about neuroscience and the brain. In the months leading up to this event, we did outreach to rural schools in Vermont and New Hampshire. I really loved that activity, in particular, because we would go to these classrooms and interact with kids of all ages, of all races, of all genders that are stoked about science. That was so refreshing and grounding to me. I think it really hit me when I was doing my outreach work when I would sort of go out and have these experiences and then come back to Dartmouth and see the difference in the demographics of people around me. This helped me realize that I was interested in changing that, that that difference shouldn't exist. It compelled me to search outside of academic research for ways in which I can make that change. 

 

I had always stayed away from the concept of science policy because I am not a very outwardly political person. Sure, I’m civically engaged, but I don’t actively campaign for government officials or write congressional memos during my spare time. I think I’m more interested in policy with a lowercase ‘p’, specifically institutional policies. Informational interviewing helped expand my understanding of the types of policy that exist and led to my realization that this is work I wanted to get involved in.”

 

Did you feel like you had support from the people at Dartmouth? How did the people around you react to your career change?

 

“Generally, folks were supportive but didn't know how to be. They were sort of like, that's great, I’ll write your letter of recommendation for this policy fellowship, but like, I don't know how to help you or what is valuable for that career path. So it was pretty neutral, which was challenging to try and figure it all out on my own. Graduate students largely coexist with people who have taken the traditional academic research path — Ph.D. to postdoc to professor — so they don’t have anyone to advise them on alternative career paths. I know some schools are being more proactive in exposing students to different career paths and I'm all for that. I think that Dartmouth is geographically challenged in this space, and will need to invest time and resources to create such programs for their students.”

 

How did you make the choice to be open on Twitter? What are some challenges and benefits of making that choice?

 

“Twitter is amazing. I'm always encouraging people to get on it. I really think it played a role in helping me realize that I wasn't alone in my experiences in graduate school. I saw other folks talking about their frustration about the same things that I was frustrated with, which helped reduce my imposter syndrome. That was helpful in sort of empowering me to make change or call out inappropriate behavior.

 

I do have to balance my personal life and my work on that account. I started my professional Twitter account my third year of graduate school, and I have this fun mix of neuroscientists, diversity and equity folks, and science policy folks. I try to balance between my work and my interests. For example, I love hockey, so I’ll throw in a tweet about hockey every once in a while because that's who I am. It's been challenging going from being an autonomous researcher to a person who is part of a larger entity or organization. I am a piece of the National Academies, so I have to be conscious of what content I choose to put out there. That's true of any organization that folks work with, but the added challenge here is that the National Academies is a nonpartisan institution. It is challenging to balance speaking out on issues that I feel very strongly. Emotionally, my work is really challenging — hugely heavy and extremely personal. I strive to let my experiences inform my work. It's been difficult and I'm still learning how to do it correctly.”

 

How has your queer identity impacted you throughout your career so far?

 

“My experience has been, generally, that the science policy scene has been a very welcoming space. I definitely feel more comfortable proactively sharing my identity with those with whom I work and interact. I am significantly more comfortable doing that now than I was in graduate school. Preferring less commonly used pronouns opens my eyes to the ambient microaggressions that exist and are experienced by sexual and gender minorities. Things like having to find a gender-neutral bathroom, or having to fill out forms that force you to check either male and female in order to proceed. Every once in a while you come across open microaggressions, but I would say generally science policy has been very, very welcoming.

 

My identity has pushed me to more proactively consider how to be more inclusive in the work that I do. The report that my work jumps off of is very explicit in saying that folks in the LGBTQ+ community experience greater sexual harassment and intersecting types of harassment, and that greater attention needs to be paid toward solutions for those experiencing this greater harassment. I'm always really conscious of it — not only in my work devising solutions for sexual harassment but also when we host events, when we invite speakers, when I write communications. All of that is informed by my identity and experience.

 

The National Academies has some ongoing work that's looking at issues relevant to the sexual and gender minority communities. I've learned so much about intersex populations and about two-spirit populations. We recently held a Women’s History Month event exploring the role of science in evolving and expanding notions of sex and gender in a discussion that centered the lived experiences of transgender and intersex women. It's really amazing. I commend the National Academies for the work that they're doing to highlight issues that have long been unaddressed.”

 

What are some strategies or lessons you’ve learned for how to best engage with people about science and equity?

 

“I've learned the value of coming to conversations equipped with knowledge of the evidence. The best way to convince academics and researchers of the importance or the existence of something is to show them the data. Especially if there’s a power differential and you're talking “up,” being able to present a citation or a nugget of what a graph said, can go a long way as a strategy for engaging with people on equity issues. Another lesson that I have learned is the importance of listening. I do a lot of listening because I recognize that my experience is not the same experience as the person next to me. I think that folks could benefit from listening more — it helps get to the root of why they're resistant to equity issues or recognizing a problem. I really strive to listen and learn why people are either resistant to engage in equity issues or how they feel about equity issues.” 

 

What are some goals for the next few years of your career?

 

“I've been in this position for about a year now, and I really love the work that I do. I didn't anticipate how difficult working on sexual harassment would be. I didn't come into this work with the specific desire to work on sexual harassment, I was interested in sort of equity issues more broadly. Moving forward, I think my career will be more inclusive of other equity issues. I'm getting some really spectacular training in sexual harassment and how to implement equity solutions at higher education institutions, so I think my future career path will include elements of that. I get a little sad about no longer being connected to the neuroscience community and I miss the heck out of electrophysiology. I am trying to maintain a connection to that community because I love neuroscience so much, and I plan to take part in the 2020 Society for Neuroscience meeting.

 

So the short answer is I don't really know what my ideal career path would look like, but I'm confident that it would be in the equity sphere in higher education, and ideally would have some sort of neuroscience or science component to it.”

 

What would you go back in time and tell past-you? What advice do you wish you’d been given earlier on, that you might give yourself?

 

“I would have told myself to write. A lot. For a wide variety of audiences. Something that I found when I was applying for jobs in science policy was that many employers want writing samples. I had a review paper, which was a little too scientifically dense; I had some articles that I had written for my graduate studies office, which were not very public. But I wish that I had written an article I could point to as an example of my commitment to the issues that I was saying I was committed to, and as an example of my writing.

 

I also encourage people to apply for a lot of things. Even if it's really basic things, like entering yourself for the poster competition at your graduate studies poster session. It goes a long way in showing that you're being proactive, not just passive, in your graduate work. You don't want to get to the end of your degree and not have a portfolio of things you were doing outside of the lab. Opportunities build on one another — I don't think I would have been competitive for the Mirzayan Fellowship if I hadn't demonstrated accomplishment in my first four years of my Ph.D. 

 

The last thing that I tell people is to not be afraid of having phone calls with a lot of people that you don't know. It was so awkward at first to have my first call with my program officer about careers. But it eventually became natural, and I learned things that you can't learn from Googling. You learn about a person’s day-to-day work, and about their experiences at a particular organization often in a very frank way, which is very informative in choosing where you go and what you choose to do. So I always encourage people to do informational interviewing.”

 

Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like to share?

 

“I want to highlight that there are lots of avenues to get engaged with science policy. Fellowships are the cream of the crop way to enter, they're very straightforward, they help you make connections. There’s the Mirzayan Fellowship, the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship, the Presidential Management Fellows program, and there's a number of state-level science policy fellowships in New Jersey, Virginia, Idaho, California, and others.

 

But you don’t just have to have a fellowship to pursue science policy as a career — there are a lot of other ways you can get involved. Twitter is a great informal avenue to engage with people that are doing work in the space. My colleagues at the National Academies are very active on Twitter and so we share the events that we are hosting. Most Academies events are open to the public or virtually to learn more about these science policy topics.

 

If you don't have access to a fellowship, or if you're not in the D.C. area, folks that are interested in science policy should look around at opportunities at the local level. I think participating in student groups is a great way to access your institution’s policy space, even though I didn’t engage in this way. Higher education administrators often look to student groups to gather input on what they're doing. In the Action Collaborative, we’ve been working with some brilliant graduate students at UCSF, Emma Alme and Camille Simoneau, who have done some just magnificent proactive work on preventing and adderssing sexual harassment. They organized and facilitated a town hall for the UCSF community to discuss these issues. They gathered data at the event, assembled a compelling set of recommendations, presented them publicly, and advocated for change from their institution. I admire their hard work and passion. And that’s just one example of a grassroots way by which one can get experience in science policy and make an impact on real-world issues.”

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