Kilan Ashad-Bishop

I’d love to hear your origin story — how have you gotten to where you are?

 

“I am currently a postdoc in the School of Education at the University of Miami, and the director of college access at Breakthrough Miami. How I got there has a lot to do with me, very young, making the decision that I wanted to be a scientist. I had a natural inclination as a child for math, science, bugs, outdoors, and other things that would give a Black mom a heart attack. My family was very supportive. I told them when I was nine that I wanted to be a scientist and I wanted to heal the world with drugs. I had this whole plan and they were like, “okay, baby.” In high school, I had this really transformative biology teacher who inspired me to study biology and so I went to Morgan State University, majored in biology, started doing research, and eventually, it became very clear that what I wanted was a Ph.D. I didn't only want to be a scientist, I wanted to be a researcher. At the time, my intention was to have my own lab. I started looking around at grad schools and chose the University of Miami. I spent six and a half years at the University of Miami earning my Ph.D. and can now say that I'm a cancer biologist by training. I went into biology and biomedical science because I lost my grandfather to cardiovascular complications, so I very much went in with a personal connection, wanting to alleviate the pain of another family losing another family member. 

 

What was unfortunate, is that by virtue of my training experience, by the time I left, I had a lot more questions about education and training than I did about the nitty gritty of cancer biology. That was because halfway through my Ph.D. program, I was almost pushed out, and as someone who had very much wrapped her identity into her academic pursuits, that experience was really jarring for me. I did not end up being removed from the program, but I decided to diversify my portfolio of work, and start really exercising a lot of the transferable skills that I knew that I had, just in case my academic goal was ever threatened again. I ended up joining a leadership program and I was connected with a network of people who were doing climate advocacy. To me, the conversation was interesting because I had this health interest, and climate change is the great magnifying glass on the inequities of our society, so I saw an opportunity to shift some of the conversation to emerging health disparities in the face of climate change and the ways in which climate change would exacerbate existing inequities. Then, the opportunity presented itself to serve on a municipal board tasked with studying how the City of Miami could adapt to climate change. My first inclination was, “I can't do that, I'm not an environmental scientist.” However, it very quickly became clear that all I needed was to listen and communicate the needs of an underserved community in a way that would inform action. 

 

What was going on in your head during that complex time in your Ph.D.?

 

“When I had that experience where I was almost removed from my Ph.D. program, I had some time to wrap my head around this longstanding interest in civic service — I wanted to be a scientist of the world, not just a scientist in the lab. But they don’t really teach you how to do that. In my head, it was an interest to possibly pursue as a postdoc but it's easy to put things off until they're right in front of your face. What clicked for me during that experience was that I wanted to be something beyond what my training program would establish me as. At that point, I started getting very involved on campus. It really became about using this set of skills that I had as a scientist to effect change that I wanted to see, and not relegating myself to only being able to talk about cancer biology. Like I said, I left my program with more questions about education and training than biomedical science, so I started looking into how to exist in both worlds, and that’s when I ended up going off to the National Academies to complete a fellowship. It is also how I made my way to the position that I have now, where I’m still able to exist in academia, I'm still able to be a researcher, which is something I never want to let go of. But I'm also able to coexist as a practitioner and be able to see a program that I'm running affecting people in a positive way. So in a lot of ways, it’s finally merging — the things that I was doing for pay and the things that I was doing for free — into one solid career jump.”

 

What specifically are you doing in this joint program and what do you love about it?

 

“I work as the director of college access for Breakthrough Miami, and that is basically running the high school portion of an eight-year college access program. That program is actually a partnership between Breakthrough Miami and UM, so I’m the liaison between the two. I'm using my position in the program to drive some research and help out with some assessment and evaluation work. Generally, we serve under-resourced students in Miami Dade County. We provide Saturday enrichment programming and we do a lot of school choice work to funnel them into really competitive, really advanced high schools with a lot of offerings. We do the same at the middle school level, because we work with them for eight years. We do what we can to funnel them into prestigious colleges. But as I'm sure you know, there's a reason that we deem certain colleges prestigious, and there’s another, similar reason that we don’t deem other colleges prestigious.”

 

Did you see yourself working with kids when you began this journey? How is the experience now?

 

“I did not, but I am so glad to be in this position. When I originally came across this position, it was for the postdoc, not necessarily to do this hands-on program management work. I was always going to be affiliated with it, but in partnership with someone else. Eventually, it became clear that there was an advantage to taking both positions and being able to leverage them as necessary. I am already a regular volunteer for a variety of STEM outreach efforts, but I don't know that I ever would have predicted that I would end up doing this level of work on the figurative ground. It has been rewarding — by virtue of my presence, I make sure that they’ve met a scientist and a Black female scientist. And I think what is also really inspiring about this is just the fact that there's so many dreams among this lot of students. I mean, they are really, really ambitious, they're really driven. So the opportunity to be able to support that — when they’re like, ‘I want to do this and I don't know how,’ and it's just like, ‘Alright, sit down, we'll figure it out.’ It feeds into the problem solving that I love. It’s a different application, but it’s definitely equally rewarding if not more.”

 

Why is Black representation in STEM important to you?

 

“When I was saying that I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid, my family was like, great, so we're gonna buy you a telescope, we’re not sure what you’re going to do with it, but have fun. I had support, but I didn't have that much representation and I think that plays a large role in the reason that I was strongly encouraged to attend a Historically Black University, which I did, Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. By virtue of that experience, seeing a Black scientist or a female scientist was not a surprise to me. It was not a rarity — I had Black instructors. At the University of Miami, it was a lot different. I had one Black instructor my entire time at the university.

 

I was very determined to pursue science and I honestly don't know how it happened. I guess it was ordained. I was very clear in not only my desire to be a scientist, but also my desire to understand the world and how it related to health. I was not able to be moved. It didn't matter how much I struggled in my classes. AP Calculus made me cry. Like, it didn't matter. That's not the reality for so many people. There's so much attrition of women and people of color from STEM that when I read the literature on that topic I feel so amazingly lucky and blessed. So, however I can contribute to being some kind of motivation for the next generation, I do because I feel obligated to give thanks by paying it forward.”

 

During your Ph.D., you participated in the Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the National Academies. What was that experience like?

 

“So I was looking at National Academies reports during my time in grad school, I was familiar with them. The Board of Higher Ed, whom I ended up doing the fellowship with, published a report on Graduate STEM Ed for the 21st century that I like, held onto and cried with when things were not going well in my program. So I was familiar with the work, and when I saw that there was a 12-week fellowship, my essay was like, ‘my training experience has been so tumultuous, I don’t understand why things are like this and how people are so passive about these circumstances,’ — it didn't say that, obviously, but the tone was there. When I came into the Board, they were already aware that I was there to understand something that was very personal for me, and the experience was great because they understood that. 

 

My mentor at the Academies, he's the chair of both the Board of Higher and the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He allowed me to travel to meetings with him, give presentations, and arrange town hall meetings to university leadership — it wasn't one of those things where they're like, this is the role of a fellow and you just need to stay in that. It was amazing for me. Sometimes in graduate school, the level of investment that your boss has in you is commensurate with whether you want to go into academia or not. Even though I was upfront about not wanting to stay in D.C. after the fellowship, he still invested in me as a fellow and supports my efforts to this day. 

 

The Mirzayan experience gave me the time that I needed to really flesh out the niche that I wanted to occupy. It was only by virtue of helping with those higher ed studies that I realized that there was literature on things like negative mentoring experiences and the intersection of Blackness and gender and how that affects your experience in STEM education. One of the places where you contribute to that base of knowledge and can implement policy change is academia, but not necessarily the lab. So I definitely credit the fellowship with this full circle return to academia and UM.”

 

You also serve as the vice-chair of the City of Miami’s Climate Resilience Committee. When did you get involved in local climate policy and what is your role on the committee?

 

“I joined the board almost four years ago, and ever since have primarily functioned as the communicator of ways in which we can have intersectional climate conversations and when we're thinking about legislation and recommendations, how we can include vulnerable communities. What I thought would be my greatest detriment, which is the fact that I'm not an environmental scientist or a landscaper or a developer or an attorney, ended up being my greatest asset, because the lens that I brought to the work was just so different that I was able to very radically transform the conversations that the committee was having.

 

People look at the world through the lens of their expertise, and this was a group of people with expertise in urban planning, development, land use — of course, these people are primarily talking about buildings and properties. So my initial work was shifting the conversation. We started with a workshop that was basically a listening session for people in the city to meet with the committee and let us know what they felt like we should be prioritizing, especially the more vulnerable residents of the city. They highlighted three things: emergency management, climate gentrification, and outreach and communication. We are in Miami, right in the midst of hurricane territory and we have a pretty active hurricane season, and it’s during a crisis where you see a lot of vulnerable people really struggling to adapt. A representative from Emergency Management actually sits on the committee and so we started asking questions about how we send messages, how are we communicating with residents, how are we making sure that residents are receiving messages and utilizing those messages. We wanted to apply that critical thinking and figure out how to get data to prove that we are or are not serving folks equitably.

 

With affordable housing and gentrification, Miami is a city that was built by Black Bahamian residents, but Black people weren't allowed to live just anywhere. The idea was to keep the beach and areas close to the water for the rich and Black people lived inland. Now, we see this shift where people are having to consider coming away from water because of rising sea levels and flooding events. Climate gentrification is a concept that low-income communities were screaming about for years and it got no attention until a Harvard study came out with empirical evidence. It provided evidence that there was rapid property value appreciation in areas that were high above sea level. It reframed the conversation because before, it was just anecdotal and coming from the community. This was very much an academic conversation and an academic manuscript that could be cited. We were eventually able to get a climate gentrification resolution passed that was very, very mild. I mean, it was the first in the country, but when adopted by the City Commission, it just directed the city manager to do some research and come up with some solutions. If anything, it got the city to think about their infrastructure for research, and if we're actually adopting evidence-based policies and vetting that evidence. 

 

The third thing that came up was outreach and communication. As a board that’s tasked with serving the whole city, how can we say we do so if we only ever meet at City Hall. We started moving our meetings around. That doesn't mean all of a sudden we had attendance from around the city. But, you know, it was a step in the right direction showing we were open to leaving the dais in City Hall and immersing ourselves in the communities that we talk about. Getting more people involved in the conversation and changing the conversation so that it benefits everyone — none of that is easy work. But it’s good work.”

 

You are obviously involved in a lot of things — how do you balance your research with your science and policy advocacy? How are they interconnected for you?

 

“So for me, it's all about a shared goal. I kind of have two jobs wrapped into one and my volunteer commitments also function like full-time jobs, but to me it's less about the differential scopes of work and more about the common shared goal of breaking down barriers and bringing equity into all things. My consistent interest is in human health, so I'm always doing something that relates to the ability of human beings of various backgrounds to live healthy and happy lives. I think that's very apparent why I do the work that I do on the Climate Resilience Committee, making sure that all of my city has a prosperous future. And then, in my Breakthrough work, it’s educational equity. So it's making sure that formal education, which is very much a social determinant of health, is an achievable goal with the proper support. My postdoctoral research is designed to further my work at Breakthrough. So even though it sounds like very different things, all of my work has a shared goal and I can flip the switch when I need to, but everything is intentional and moving in the same direction.”

 

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

 

“Science tends to adopt a one size fits all message. It's very much like, this is my experiment, these are my results, this is the background, but I'm assuming a certain level of knowledge so that people understand that background, and to conclude, here are future directions. So the primary thing that I’ve learned is that there is no one-size-fits-all conversation. Every conversation that I've had, every comment session that I’ve had, every workshop that I’ve coordinated or attended, has had to consider the audience. Even on the Climate Resilience Committee there are six or seven very different audiences. Rapid progress is made when you actually consider that from the beginning and plan for that and account for that, instead of adopting the conventional ivory tower approach, which is not a real-world approach.”

 

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

 

“When I came out of grad school, I was not feeling the lab life, I was not feeling the academic life, and I think if you told me that I would be doing a postdoc now, I would have laughed and it would have been a hearty laugh. But my time outside of academia really put me back in touch with the reasons that I love research, like the pursuit of knowledge and solving problems, answering questions, that is what I'm passionate about. And there is no better place for me to exist with these passions than academia, at least for now. There's very few places where you can exist purely just to pursue knowledge. I intend to pursue a faculty position with a dual appointment, so I would very much want to occupy almost exactly the role that I have now, but as faculty so I would also be leading a research team and teaching. Or, I will have a position in one sector or the other, as long as I don't have to give up any aspect of the work that I'm passionate about.”

 

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?

 

“Because I was having some very interesting, challenging experiences with my primary mentor, I was not very hopeful that a good mentor was something that I could find or would have during graduate school. That would be the thing that I would tell myself to change — ‘okay, go find one.’ Because I had this interest in education and there are people at UM doing STEM ed research, I could have easily gone over to the education school and audited a class and really started establishing a foothold in that world prior to the Mirzayan fellowship. I think that if I had done that, it would have potentially made my path to this postdoc position a bit more linear. I could have started publishing in education alongside my science publications and expanded my portfolio, had I had the right mentor to do so. So that would definitely be the thing that I would say. Because in academia, time is everything. 

 

Also, I was already a serial networker, but I don’t know that when I was in the process of switching fields that I worked my network the way that I should have. I think I could have been more vocal about the fact that I was looking for something that would allow me to bridge my love for science and education and outreach, and let people come up with a job description for me the way that Breakthrough Miami did. As soon as I got the job with Breakthrough, people came out of the woodwork, saying ‘I didn't know you were looking.’ I was like, really, when I told you I graduated with my Ph.D., what is it that you thought I was doing besides job hunting? But, people in the world at large don’t know what to do with us, especially if you're a scientist interested in going beyond the lab, many have no idea what you can do or what you should be doing. And so you have to be really good at showing that off, showing your versatility.”

 

Is there anything else you want to share?

 

“I think that especially now, there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of space for scientists with STEM backgrounds, even if they're not super specialized, to carve out different roles for themselves. There's all this work getting more people into STEM, but we need to be really innovative in what we choose to pursue once we get through the STEM training process. Even further than being innovative, we need to be vocal and visible with our journeys. I have a Ph.D. in cancer biology, I worked in a lab for seven years and now I direct a college access program. Until we do that, the world will never be able to reconceptualize their image of a scientist and what a scientist can do or what someone with a STEM background can do.”

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