Dr. Sarah Stamper, PhD in Psychology | Chief Research Officer at Murmuration

In this episode, we discuss how Sarah’s interest in understanding people drew her to pursue a PhD in psychological and brain science, the ways her curiosity and her desire for impact led her into several different roles before she landed in her current position in a civic tech nonprofit, and her advice for trusting your instincts when it comes to finding a career that aligns with your values and goals.

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

To connect with Sarah and to learn more about her story, visit her page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Lois Dankwa

Hi! I'm co-host Lois Dankwa, and this is the 100 alumni voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 Doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Sarah Stamper, PhD in psychological and brain science and current Chief research officer at Murmuration. Hi, Sarah! 

Sarah Stamper

Hi Lois. How are you?

Lois Dankwa

I'm good. How are you doing today?

Sarah Stamper

I'm good thanks for having me on. It's amazing to get to hopefully inspire and connect with some current Johns Hopkins PhD students.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah. I'm excited to dive in. Well, I wanna first start by hearing a little bit about why you wanted to pursue a PhD in psychological and brain sciences, and also just hear a little bit more about your work and your time at Hopkins.

Sarah Stamper

Of course, I think my time at Hopkins broadly, was one of the most influential moments that I have had to date. I think the educational experience and the research that I got to undertake was really transformational for getting me where I am today, and so I'm super grateful for it. But gosh! I did not get there on any sort of linear path. So, it is it's a winding tale, I think, like for many where I still don't know what I wanna be when I grow up and you're collecting experiences along the way. So, I ended up at Hopkins in Psych and brain science, because I think I had a really strong conviction that people are powerful, but people are messy, and many of the problems we're facing today rely on people to solve them, and taking an approach of understanding people, of being able to say what motivates them? What makes them tick? How do they come together for action? What are the barriers that make behavior that people want to engage in really hard? How do we start to solve these problems? And I found that through studying bats and dolphins, and all of these weird critters, where, one of the approaches of neuroscience and neuroethology more specifically is to take these champion animal systems and to say, this is the greatest thing, right. Bats echolocate and they fly, and we can't even make planes that do that as well as bats do. So, I really took this approach of champion model systems and studying the neural correlates for behavior, and like building up from like all the way from neurons to like really complex societal organizations with lots of deviations along the way.

Lois Dankwa

I love everything you said for a lot of reasons, one, because my path also was certainly not linear. But then also, I'm someone that weirdly went from studying neurons to now doing systems change work. So, it's all they're all networks.

Sarah Stamper

They're all networks. And now, in my day-to-day one of the teams that I lead is a group of data scientists and many of the approaches that they do rely on neural networks and various other avenues and methodologies for machine learning but neural nets is definitely still finding its way into my day to day life.

Lois Dankwa

That's really cool. Well, I wanna kind of, I guess not so much dig in, but hear more about how your experience of having it not be a direct path of being like being in the moment where you have your PhD how that informed, then how you approached being in the program, and what you thought about what you would do afterwards.

Sarah Stamper

Yeah, I think. I think that when you sorry to harp on this, but when you think about the really big things that we're facing, when you think about in energy and climate crisis, when you think about protecting our democracy, when you think about ensuring that everything kid has access to high quality public education, when you think about these really big problems that we have to come together to solve, thinking about that as a domain like oh, chemistry, or math, or engineering, doesn't get you there, right. Like you need lots of different ways that people think. You need lots of different skill sets and that's what sort of neuroscience and psych and brain science did for me was it gave me a place to say, let's take a multi-disciplinary approach. Let's weave everything that you've learned together in school. And let's apply it towards understanding something extraordinarily complicated. And I would still argue that, like a human brain, is probably the most complicated thing that exists on earth. And and so I think that was the approach and what that meant when I was in my program was I had collaborators who were in mechanical engineering, who were studying animal locomotion and sensing for robotic design, and I had collaborators then in cognitive psychology and collaborators in biopsychology and collaborators and neuroscience. And so, I've always thought about things, not only on my own path of being a very winding hodgepodge together, but when you think about solving problems, making sure that you're bringing lots of different groups and views, and and even though the program was psych and brain science, right while I was in it, I was all over the place on that campus. So, it's like a little bit on Krieger, and a little bit in Hackerman, and a little bit in Aims. And where are you going to find the skills and the expertise to really think interdisciplinary about these kinds of big problems.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I certainly understand that. It's I think it's both a plus and a minus where it's starting thinking big, sometimes it can be a little bit tricky to then narrow in and hone in on one specific thing, or figure out how to communicate that to someone who's not in your brain right?

Sarah Stamper

Yeah, I think that ultimately that was what precipitated my shift out of academia. So, when I started thinking about one, gosh, I spent a lot of time in a basement staring at fish. And is there another way for me to have impact? And is this, in fact, too narrow of a focus for the kind of thinking and and the way that my brain works? And so, I did branch out. I took a little bit of a break. I went and started a high school neuroscience program. And I thought that was going to be a one-year experiment of hey? What if you took the greatest pieces of neuroscience like, let's record cells, let's slice open brains, let's dissect eyeballs. What if you took the best of the best that you don't get to do until graduate school, and instead did it with 16-year-olds? Like would that help particularly women and underrepresented students persist in STEM fields, which in many cases are designed to weed out students and to make it harder to persist, right. Like nobody loves 8 am 3 days a week calculus like, it's just, or O-Chem. But if you know what's on the other side, like, if you know the coolest stuff that you could do, would it help? And a one-year experiment became 2 years, 2-year experiment became 3 years. We spun it up into a summer camp and started working with some Baltimore city schools. The wise program, the ingenuity program, etcetera, to really get this more distributed across Baltimore, which was awesome. I don't remember the point.

Lois Dankwa

That's okay. I'm.

Sarah Stamper

Like I said, I cannot keep a straight line to save my life. So, I in fact, am on my own tangent right now.

Lois Dankwa

That's I typically have tangents. But I love that you shared that because it made me think about how I often like to do things or make sure be intentional that the work that I'm doing has some type of impact towards the community that I'm in in particular. But then also just the other spaces around me, and I love ink how you found an opportunity to apply kind of the science, academic, professional interest you have to just the space that you were in, and I'm curious what kind of motivated you to do that? How did you think, oh, let me do that? And just hearing more about that.

Sarah Stamper

Yeah, I think that at my core there are lots of different things to optimize for. You can optimize for money. You can optimize for impact. You can optimize for all kinds of things, right? Like, I'm an impact person. And so, when when I had the pleasure of teaching intercession for Hopkins, when I had the pleasure of teaching really talented undergraduates and ultimately graduate students really wanting to make sure that we were building a really strong pipeline of STEM students. You know, when I think about my work today and the role of big data and data science and the bias that we introduce as humans, right? We have bias around the questions that we ask. We have bias around where we curate and bring data in from, we have bias around how we do our analyses and how we interpret it. And I think that there's been this push towards science as objectivity, right? That there is an ultimate truth, and our goal should be as objective as possible, and I think that one of the things that has always resonated with me is well, is there an alternative? Like could we actually, instead, just declare our values, own them and use our values to shape the work that we're doing. And starting a program for students was sort of a reflection of that, right, of valuing the diverse points of view, of wanting to see more representation of women and of students who don't look like me actually in STEM fields and developing so that one day they're sitting at the tables and their chief research officer, and they are starting to try to make these decisions. So that was kind of that right like it was a here are the things I care about. Like I care about school. I care about kids and their education. I care about making sure that there's opportunity and access to have these really enriching experiences. And I care about making sure that I can be a mentor and a teacher, and help to drive that kind of connection and motivation. And I it was really that was how I got on the impact path, right, of like now, I work at a nonprofit right? Like, there are lots of ways that this manifests. But ultimately it was really all about sort of trying to declare values and saying, this is important. And I wanna prioritize it.

Lois Dankwa

That's really, it's really cool for a lot of reasons. I think it's it's funny, because I've only ever thought about like I thought about understanding kind of the skills and lessons that you're getting from a doctoral program as things that you figure out how to apply to a future thing. So, it's like, okay, if I'm doing health services research, I'm applying whatever lessons from my program to whatever role I'm in and whatever type of project I'm in. But this just from what you said, this is the first moment where I've also thought about it as you're applying your interest and how you view the world to whatever job you're doing, whatever that thing is which I think that's so cool.

Sarah Stamper

Yeah, I I it. That's exactly it to me, right? Like when I think about what does it mean to be a scientist? It means you're curious. It means that you move around the world, and you're constantly making observations. You're asking questions. You're probing the boundaries, and it's that curiosity that drew me to a PhD program, right? Like you have to be curious to spend years in a basement staring at fish. And that, then, is the thing that shapes my work right. Like when you talk about like data science like it's a curiosity to understand what data exists, how it can come together, how you can use it to build narratives and to tell stories about people, who they are, their experiences and what drives them to action. It is curiosity when you lead a product team and you are building out new software with features and functionality and you need to know, like, who's going to use this? What are their pain points? What is making their job so hard? It's curiosity when you're thinking about, how do we build this organization? What does this look like? What kinds of people do we need? How do all these functions come together? So, for me, right like, it's the love of learning. It's always wanting to grow, and all of that is rooted in I'm a walking, talking, manifestation of the scientific method which ultimately just boils down to being really, really curious.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I understand that. So, something I'm curious about, though. 

Sarah Stamper

Yeah, I see what you did there. 

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I I wasn't trying, but it worked. No, but I. So, I think about how, for some people it can come really naturally to understand that kind of be aware of how their feelings can motivate whatever professional direction they can go in, or should go in, and what is true to them. But I think about how, for some people they might be more kind of logic and like technical based. And it could be hard for them to identify how to attach what their personal desires and values are to the type of work they're doing. And I'm curious if from your work you've seen people like you've learned how to communicate the kind of squishy stuff to people that are less inclined to think that way.

Sarah Stamper

I mean. Squishy is squishy, and and I don't think that everyone has to, right. Like I think that there's definitely roles and ways to motivate and drive your professional career that are rooted in logic and your technical skills. That's just not me, and so I think my advice is ultimately, even if you're not sure what is driving your motivation, and you don't understand exactly, or haven't gotten to the point where you're articulating your personal values, and when you're reflecting on that in a professional context, you're still gonna kinda naturally gravitate places, right. Like, there are gonna be jobs that appeal to you and jobs that don't. There're going to be organizations that speak to you, and organizations that don't, right. Like maybe you're a material scientist, and you have spent your PhD developing some like brand-new super, cool fabric that is ultra-wicking, and the thing that like is tugging at you is that you wanna work for Patagonia. Like that probably actually, says something about who you are, what you value and what you want in an organization to put your skills to use at. If instead, you're like oh, no, I should go work at Nike or on it right like I think that there's all these sort of subtle signals that that probably help over time. You know, I mean, if you think I'm 2 decades in, right, like so, I didn't know this 20 years ago. I you have started to refine and understand as I have gone through lots of jobs right. Like I went from running the high school neuroscience program to consulting and doing strategic planning and initiative work for colleges, universities, and schools across the country. Again, I was like so curious. How does all this work? Like and what kinds of new educational programs can we design that are really interdisciplinary, and that have these really big changes? And then I went to a tech company. And now I'm at a nonprofit right? And so, like I think that as you look at the path that you end up taking, and you try to tell yourself the story of how you got there, particularly when it's actually just a bowl of spaghetti, and you've never really had a plan, you start to see some of the through lines. 

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, and that's, I think, one of the biggest lessons I've also learned from having a story that was not actually direct. But then, noticing the parts that are actually consistent throughout. I tell this story sometimes to people where I was interested to go to med school in undergrad and a letter that I wrote to a professor who I asked to write me a letter of recommendation. I basically wrote way too long of an email, but it was valuable in that it detailed why like the type of impact I wanted to have in this world. It's been years like decade, like 10 years since I wrote that letter. But going back to look at it now, it's what I'm doing now. And it's like, right, I didn't realize that what I wanted to do was this, and this isn't the version I wrote for myself. But it's fine, because I just continued to follow my gut. 

Sarah Stamper

Yeah, I, think we need to be kinder to ourselves in many ways. And a lot of things that seem not direct, that seem like mistakes, that seem like oh, gosh! Why did I do that? It's all learning opportunities, and it doesn't mean it doesn't suck. It doesn't mean that sometimes you don't get your teeth kicked in, but I think that for me there are lots of false starts right. Like, when I actually graduated in the summer of 2012 with my PhD, I had a job at Virginia Tech in their integrated science program, and I was super excited about it, and Lois, I lasted 7 months right before I was in the Dean's office, being like, actually, I'm really sorry this is not for me. It's okay, right like. And then I went back to Hopkins. And I did a postdoc because I was like, clearly, I'm not baked enough and I have not figured out the answers to these questions, and so I did. I went to mechanical engineering because I knew that one of the things that I felt was holding me back was that I didn't have coding. I didn't know how to program. I wasn't very computational, and when I looked at the sort of direction that many of the most interesting questions about our brains and and how we all work like there was no doubt that it was going to require a lot of computation. And I loved that right. Like it was like a whole other chance to be a learner all over again. And eventually you have to you know, like, go get a job. But at that point I knew that the job probably wasn't gonna be to be, you know, a full-time professor who eventually, just kind of right. This is like not a knock, but right like it's a lot of grant writing and like you're not always the one doing the science. And and so for me, like I wanted to stay like really doing, and and had to find other pathways first through teaching, then through consulting. Turned out consulting wasn't for me right. Like I don't wanna say yes, if the answer isn't yes, and like I said earlier. Right? Like I'm not optimized for revenue. So, like if it's a dumb project, I'm not gonna do it. I don't care what you wanna like offer. And and then, you know ultimately, now, my role sort of through the civic tech space into, you know, broader impact.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that's it. You said a lot of things that I probably needed to hear today. So, I love that.

Sarah Stamper

Oh, there you go!

Lois Dankwa

And it's always it's always good to hear the message of be kind to yourself. So, I have one more question for you, and I'm curious what inspires you right now?

Sarah Stamper

So, when I think back to November of 2022, that I still feel like we're on pandemic time. So, time just like completely warps. But it wasn't that long ago. I, like many people, felt that we were headed into a—it was called in the media a red wave, but what it represented to me was an attack on our democracy and on the fabric of our society in a way that felt really scary, and I was inspired and heartened that the American people right like that coming on the tail of like Roe v. Wade being overturned, of coming on the tail of like gosh! Like there's like a a tax on our democracy, that people showed up right. They showed up. They voted, especially the Zoomers, right. Gen Z you know definitely early counts of the midterm suggesting that they're maintaining a level of voting that's consistent with the highest rates we've ever observed, and they have no reason to right. Like they have come to age during a global crisis against a backdrop of climate change, they've lived through the longest war in US History, 9/11, Katrina, the 2008 crisis, the opioid epidemic, political turmoil, like violence, mashed it right like I mean, they have every reason to like check out and to say, like, yeah, okay, no, thank you. And instead, they're resilient. They're engaging. They're showing up in some really disfunctional systems to do what they can. And it might have been because I had the pleasure of getting to teach a lot of them, and I'll always have a soft spot but it's also because when I think about the the future and the problems that we have to tackle, I'm very heartened to have allies like the younger folks who are, who are coming up and trying to make big change. So, I don't know if you count as a Zoomer, but if you do, I' say that's a roundabout way of saying you and and many of your peers are very, very inspiring.

Lois Dankwa

Well, I it's great to know that you're not sure if I'm a zoomer or not, I'm not. But.

Sarah Stamper

Okay, well, there you go.

Lois Dankwa

I'm gen Alpha, actually. I'm just kidding those. They're like 10.

Sarah Stamper

Okay. Look I make no no guesses about when people do PhDs in in their sort of age history.

Lois Dankwa

Right. Well, in any case, yeah, it's great to see people fired up about just things and change, and all of that. Yeah, so I wanna thank you so much, Sarah

Sarah Stamper

No, thank you.

Lois Dankwa

Just for taking taking time to chat. It's been wonderful to just hear your perspective and hear a little bit about your experiences.

Sarah Stamper

Amazing. Thank you for the opportunity. And hopefully, I can continue to be helpful to Hopkins and students and alums. I would love that. So, thanks.