Dr. Ashley Pitt, PhD in Biology | Associate at McKinsey & Co.

In this episode, we discuss Ashley’s childhood interest in science and what led her to pursue a PhD in Biology at Johns Hopkins, the ways curiosity has guided her personal and professional journey and helped her to develop the crucial skill of asking questions, and her take on the importance of communication, accessibility, and equity in the sciences and beyond. 

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

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

Transcript

Lois Dankwa

Hi I'm co-host Los Dankwa and this is the 100 Alumni Voices Podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of the diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Ashley Pitt, PhD in biology and current associate at McKinsey and Co. Hi, Ashley.

Ashley Pitt

Hey, how are you?

Lois Dankwa

I'm good. How are you today?

Ashley Pitt

I'm alright. It's Friday.

Lois Dankwa

That's right. It's Friday. I'm excited to chat. Excited to dive in and I think I want to start by hearing about what made you first want to pursue a PhD in Biology and also just hear a little more about your graduate work at Hopkins in general.

Ashley Pitt

So, I think when I was a little kid, I've always been interested in science. When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a paleontologist. I I don't know where someone under five years old decides that's what they want to do, but it was. And so, over the years, I think it hasn't been a question of like, do I want to do science. It's just been about what, what are the topics within science that I'm drawn to, and I think that's kind of what led me down the path. You know, I had considered paleontology, medicine as I'm sure most people do, as well as chemistry, organic synthesis, like you, you name it, I probably thought about it. What landed me in biology, our biology program specifically was around having, I looked for opportunities where I could learn the most and what and what I mean by that is like I wanted to go to school for an umbrella program. I either wanted to get very specific and do you know natural product synthesis or I wanted to get very broad and say, hey, what are the things that—I know I love chemistry, but what are the things I don't know that I may be just as drawn to given the fact that like over the years, I've been drawn to many things. And so that's kind of what brought me there. During my time at Hopkins, I did what is a joint program. It's called the graduate partnerships program with the National Institutes of Health, where my first year I was up in Baltimore on the Homewood campus, taking courses, as well as doing rotations. And then I did my actual dissertation research down at NIH in Bethesda, MD. My PhD work was working on, I really liked biophysics, so I worked on mitochondrial membrane protein structures. So, you know, trying various techniques to get my real membrane protein expression working, get it to scale, and then ultimately solve the structure. And during my PhD things kind of took a bit of a unexpected detour when, you know, we were able to identify novel interaction between two protein partners of the mitochondria. So that is a little bit about my journey and my PhD work. I think I say often anyone who's ever talked to me about Graduate School, I say often it was and continues to be one of the most enjoyable experiences that I had. I really loved working in a lab. I loved my lab. I loved my PI. I love the support that I got during Graduate School and before answer before moving on, I just want to flag the like the value of how heterogeneous the PhD experience can be. And I think the work itself is hard. There's no work around for that. You have to work hard. But I do think there are some ways where like the the, there are some difficulties that are manufactured. And so just emphasizing the importance of just being in a good environment for you that will allow you to thrive and develop not only as an as scientist, but as an individual and whatever it is you decide to do next.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that's such a good kind of thing to highlight from the jump. And I also love how you mentioned that your interest in science really started from an aggressively early age, which I think happens for a lot of people. I'm curious though it sounds like you your interest being both broad and narrow, meant you were interested in a lot of different things, and I'm curious how that manifest while you were in your doctorate program, but then also how you managed what it seems like a a general curiosity for just different scientific processes like in the the biological sense?

Ashley Pitt

No, I think I think you're you you hit it on the head quite, quite accurately, right? Like there are things that I can definitely drill down on and and you know, like I'm interested in this and then I will, you know, dive in on it and and and kind of develop a significant interest, but I think broadly I think the theme of my life, particularly professionally, is around curiosity, and so during my PhD, like the work is the work right. And I was super I was interested in the work. I was passionate about, about the work, but I also just love going to talks. Like one of my most memorable times of at my time Hopkins in particular was I remember they were on a job search and so they had tenure track talks that would come. I'm not sure about. I don't remember the frequency at this point now, but it was like one of my favorite parts of the week, right? Like going in I don't know what is going on, but like over time you develop like with curiosity and if you stick with it long enough overtime you develop some type of knowledge base, you learn how to ask questions. And I think that is like the uniform translatable skill that I think will will help you for the rest of your life, no matter what you do, whether it's science or or what have you. But learning how to ask questions is something that I I think being curious, you are just naturally just inquisitive and bombarding people with questions, but over time, I think in Graduate School in particular, it honed my ability to ask questions. Like how do you know what to ask when you don't know what to what you know you don't know what you do not know? And over time, I think my willingness to just ask the question, to raise my hand and say, hey, does this mean XYZ or well, what implications does this have for this other thing that I may know something a little bit about? And I think that is what that, that exploration and the willingness to ask questions is something that I think I've carried with me throughout my life but Graduate School helped me hone, but it also applies outside of science, right? Like before, I went to Graduate School, so in undergrad I had many interests, right? Like I was interested in policy. I was interested in science. I was interested in social justice topics. Like you name it, I was interested in it. And so, for me, when I was in Graduate School, I knew that the the number one, the main thing, the like primary thing had to be my research. And, you know, things fell to the wayside, but it also was important for me to also highlight some of the other things that I was passionate about outside of research, and so that could be things like I liked, really was interested in the process of teaching. So, I taught right, like I I thought it was interesting to like figure out how to explain simple concepts in in the clearest way possible and how do you explain complex concepts in the simplest way possible right. Like super interested in that. There was a period where, like, I just really like talking about science. And so, I started a podcast, right. Like it's just you, name it. It is this approach to this approach I've taken to my life of just like I'm curious. I'm interested. What is stopping you from going after the thing, right, and not not feeling like you need a formalized way of doing anything. Like I I I say all the time in my personal life, like nothing's really real, like you can just do it, right? Like within reason obviously. And so just like that willingness to take the jump and willingness to try something new. I've kind of carried with me and and so like, I don't know if I ever did hone in on something, right. I think what a lot of my like career choices professionally were around like people. So, I got to grad school, I did rotations in a myriad of topics. Before I went to grad school, I worked in a postbac lab at NIH and it was in membrane protein structure. Doctor Anirban Banerjee was my mentor at the time and I loved it. I loved it. I loved the idea that I could figure out what something looked like before anyone in the world. I liked the idea that the approach to membrane protein structure at the time, right, where you're balancing a lot of classical techniques as well as like at the time like cryo EM was on the rise. So, all of these new techniques were all on the rise and it was like you could figure out a way to not only master very classical like techniques, but also figuring out how to integrate new things that were coming out by the week at that point. And so, when I came to grad school, I came to Hopkins, I said, alright, I'll do my rotations in all the structural labs that I could find, but I wanted to really take a different approach to like, class work where it's like, I don't really know much about cell biology. This is a place that is rich with that. Let me figure out, let me learn about this. And through that process I don't know if I ever honed in. I just kind of said right, well, I really like this thing. And then what are things within this that I also like? Like, OK, mitochondrial membrane protein structure, that's something within that that I like. But I also chose the people, like I loved my PI. My PI was super supportive and had a lot of the characteristics that I thought it was important that would allow me to thrive in, in, in a lab, and that's how it ended up. And that's kind of been my approach just alright you could be interested in virtually anything within reason. What are the things that like you want to grab first? Like, you know, like I think about it like as a buffet. Like I may not eat steak and broccoli for the rest of my life, but what are the things I'm gonna put on my plate right now? Like, what's my first pass and you get you get you build your little plate, you sit down, you eat and you're like, I really love that. I'm getting that on my second trip. But I also want to check out that brownie that I saw right. Like it, it's been my approach to life that I found that has allowed me to just never feel too boxed in and allowed me to pursue things that I'm interested in without feeling like I had to, like commit to the rest of my life to being a biologist or a biophysicist, you name it.

Lois Dankwa

It's so cool to hear what your what your approach has been and for me it it's almost like the what's sticking out to me is really the commitment to effective communication and just having strong relationships and also just like recognizing and being aware of the opportunities that you have access to. It's like your your comments about your earlier comments about learning how to refine a question and being able to then know how to ask for help or ask the specific question you're talking to had me thinking about different audiences that you would then have to change how you ask questions to. And basically, my brain is exploding cause my I have so many different questions that I could ask you. But, I'm curious it if it if a commitment to communication and different relationships was something that was really guiding you, how did you how did that inform how you maybe enjoyed your degree, but then also how you were thinking you wanted to have an impact after your doctorate?

Ashley Pitt

For sure. So, I think the commitment to communication is a broader underlying value about how I think I want to move through the world. I think that a lot of times simple things, I think in many ways. Let's talk about science specifically. I think we are often kind of trained early like that in a way that deters asking questions, in a way that deters transparency and vulnerability, right? Like, I think there's this lot of like, the way our educational system is framed in particular, there's just like a lot of indoctrination for a lack of better terms that like by the time people get to grad school or even college, we're like they it's not even just, I don't know how to ask a question. I don't think I'm supposed to ask questions, and I if I do ask a question, it has to be the most poignant thing and the response has to be each time, well, that's a great question. People have studied this for millennia, right. Like everyone feels like they have to get the perfect question, and I think by having just this underlying commitment throughout my life of just like transparency, I don't know right. Like I would if I get asked the question like you know you're you see the movie is like Socratic method like the teacher asked you a question and you feel like you have to get it. My answer sometimes is I don't know. I can tell you what I think, right? Like I can give you my best guess. I can walk you through what I'm thinking. You know, like you could ask me something today and it's like, hey, Ashley. Walk me through XYZ and it's like I don't know the answer, but if I had to think through how I would get to the answer, here's how I would do that, right. And that willingness to share not only a gap of knowledge, but also give people insight and background into like how the wheels are turning, what what are the things you do know that could be applicable, right, like bringing in some of that external knowledge I think is something that has served me fairly well. How has it showed up? I think that within my graduate degree, it was on the micro level with like postdocs in my lab, other graduate students in my lab. It was coming into the lab, something not working and not feeling like me troubleshooting was something I had to do in isolation. It you know, and sometimes it's as formal as you're in lab meeting and you're you have a discussion page and these are the things you want to discuss. Here are the questions you want to do, and sometimes this is as informal as I walked into the lab today, I did an experiment. It didn't work. I'm putting down my pipette, taking my glove off, walking five steps to someone in another bay and saying, hey, I just did this thing. It did not work. Have you tried XYZ lately, right? It's like that on the go, on the spot troubleshooting that can happen, which I think push allowed me to like not spin my wheels as much during my degree, right. Like going to my PI and saying I've tried this experiment, this experiment, this experiment. Here's what I'm getting, and I think a pivotal moment in my PhD was, you know, I talked about how there was this detour to discovering this novel interaction, and I think that was facilitated by my PI saying, OK, well, you have this protein that keeps being pulled down with your protein of interest. What if it's a just an interaction between both of them? If that is the case, how would you pursue that? How would you test that? How would you kind of walk through that, right? And that was started through a conversation of me saying, hey, I can't get this thing to work the way I want it to work, right. And having a PI who says, alright, you want it to work this way. That is fair, valid et cetera. But let's pursue why maybe it's not happening the way you want it to. Or maybe it's not happening the way you designed or expected. And I think that's the scientific process, right. And you have to engage people openly and honestly to give them an opportunity to kind of give you your aha moment to help you see things from a different perspective. And so, through my graduate career, just like taking that approach to questions, taking that approach to communication, taking that approach to just like bringing the people who wanna see me went along on my journey is ultimately one of the things that made the experience gratifying and made the experience like fun. Like I, you know, like the the running joke of like, people say their glory days was high school. Like I feel like that about grad school. It was so fun. I had the time of my life. I got to do what I wanted to do. I got to pursue things. I got to go to conferences. Like it's it was a fairy tale, so to speak. In terms of after my career after Graduate School, it's the same thing. It's it's asking questions. It's a lot of my job now is communication, thinking about who am I talking to? Who is my audience? How do I want to? How do I want to kind of convey this message? How do I do this in a way that like makes makes it understandable, right? The purpose of communication or one huge aspect of communication is just like thinking about how to tailor your message. And so, like teaching, also taught me that right, like the way I would talk, teach a fourth grader is not the same way I teach a college grad, but I also can't make assumptions along the way, right? If especially knowing that, like, not everyone's gonna say they don't know. So, like thinking through like, alright, if I had to explain, I don't know cell division in 30 seconds and I couldn't use meiosis or mitosis or any of those words, how would I do it right? What's the analogy I would use? If I had to talk about DNA replication, how could I talk about this in a way that was accessible and so like, I think it the the other side of the communication piece is around accessibility. And I think that we overcomplicate a lot of things science and in science in particular and just everything is about accessibility and using that lens to communication and using that lens to just like troubleshooting problem solving has served me very well. And it has allowed experiments, experience and experiments rather that could be tricky to go a lot smoother, right? Like I don't have to go at things alone in a silo trying to solve a problem. I'm bringing people along my journey and I think that approach and that commitment to communication and and quite frankly it's, excuse me, accessibility has made a lot of things that are hard enjoyable to do. It doesn't mean it's not hard. Like grad school was still hard and frustrating, and all of those other things but it it becomes a lot more enjoyable when you're not trying to like muscle through everything.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, you said so many great things and I think that so, I have two more questions for you, if that's OK. 

Ashley Pitt

For sure.

Lois Dankwa

And so, the first is I'm so glad that you mentioned accessibility and that you can't make assumptions when you're responding to someone’s question or you're explaining something and I'm glad you were like ohh if I was explaining cell division, I thought mitosis, and you said and I can't use mitosis or meiosis and I thought, oh no, what would I say? So great example. But I think about how so many people could admire someone’s ability to be able to ask questions or respond to something really thoroughly and like respond to something at whatever level the audience is understanding the topic at, but they could be nervous 1) to practice those skills, but then they could also be nervous to be the question asker because it feels confrontational or it feels outside of how they're used to engaging in social interactions. And I'm curious what advice you have for someone who's hoping to enhance their ability to communicate with other people, regardless of the setting.

Ashley Pitt

Sure, I think the 1st and most important thing is kind of internalizing this idea that people want to answer your questions. Again, I want to flag some of it is just delusion, right? Like I do not have the thought that is, you know, but what if they think I'm stupid cause I asked this question right? Like what if there's this like unforeseen negative consequence of me simply asking a question? And there is a good degree of delusion involved, right? Like there's this good degree of just like before the thought even forms of just like OK, like that anxiety. The questions already out of my mouth. It's just like it just skips processing entirely. So, part of it is just like this kind of internal is, it's like internalizing this idea that like if you don't ask, how are you going to know, right? The other part of it I think is in terms of practicing it. I think part of it is starting with the places where you feel safe, right? I had a classmate—we're still very good close today—who you know I was the I was one in my class where I was just gonna ask the question. There was no question like there was just no question that I wouldn't ask. I'm just hand up. That makes no sense. Please walk me through it. Like I treated each classroom like you were there to, to teach me, right. And I was going to for a lack of better terms like you're going to earn your paycheck, right. Like teach me, right. Which is easier to do in smaller settings. And I had a classmate who like you know, who's like you are always just willing to do the thing. And I need to do the thing. I recognize that like by simply asking the question, raising my hand, doing the thing it could have these outcomes. And I I can't go on without recognizing without also flagging, you know, there are times I ask questions and people were like, I'm not answering your question, right. Like not everyone is like willing to kind of just jump in and respond. And you again, that's the delusion and kind of comes to play then. But also, if you're just practicing in safe spaces, so what we did was we like sat down and was just like, alright, well well let's just talk about it. It's me you're talking to, right? Like this is safe. And part of it is taking those safe experiences, blowing them out and magnifying them. And while you can't control the external things around you, you can't control how people respond. You can't control any of that. It is just taking treating it like this is just a safe space, whether it's a classroom, whether it's a one-on-one conversation, whether it's a webinar, or whether it's a seminar, right. Like I treat those moments and those kind of experiences like how would I say this if I was talking to a friend of mine, right? And then you do have to tailor it like I said, but like the the underlying ethos is finding ways to bring your safe experiences into all places and as many places as possible, and also recognizing when like an environment, a space etcetera, is unsafe and not feeling like you have to endure through that right, like not feeling like it's a reflection of you right, like not internalizing other people's perspectives of yourself. And and just kind of kind of blowing out the safe moment. So, like to summarize delusion, blowing out your safe moments, practicing in safe places, finding the people that you you can really trust, and then also being willing to kind of recognize when an environment is not safe and making the appropriate steps to as much as possible, protect yourself and keep yourself safe, right. So, I think safety is a big part of it. I think that's the best advice I have to kind of giving it a shot.

Lois Dankwa

And that's such a good point because asking questions can certainly make you feel vulnerable. So, practicing that in spaces where you feel comfortable being vulnerable is a great first step. So as my last question, I'm curious what inspires you right now?

Ashley Pitt

It's big. It's gonna get big, very macro, but I think throughout my life I have become more and more value based. I've become more and more in tune with what my core values are and what are the things that, you know, dictate my behavior and do not dictate my behavior, right? So having a core set of my own values and what that has enabled me to do, which is the thing that inspired me, inspires me, is to envision very clearly what I believe is possible for those around me and for myself. And what that looks like is on a very large scale thinking through like I know accessibility and communication and parity and equity are core values for me. Those four things are core values for me. And what is inspiring to me is being able to blow out those four things and many more and extend it to the world around me as much as possible. So, thinking through, how do I make I can't make the whole world a more equitable place, but how do I make all of the things that I do have within my purview more equitable? How do I make my interactions with others more equitable? How do I make my communications more accessible? How do I make sure that my communication is clear and direct right? So, I think over the years I've developed kind of like this like it's like a Tootsie pop. It's like my little chocolate center. I've developed this little chocolate center that doesn't move, but it does allow me to then with my outlook on the world with the things I have access to to to kind of answer the questions around like these are things that have worked really well for me that I think could work really well for others. How do I create systems that would enable that? And so, what's inspiring to me is just like being able to do that, whether it's just one-on-one and interpersonal relationships, but also being able to do that at scale, whether it's programming, whether it's policy like whether it's any number of things. It's just knowing that these four things are central. And knowing that, I think that the world would be a better place if we had more systems that would enable that. And so those are the kind of like, you know, becoming value based and being able to live my values and extend that beyond myself I think is the thing that inspires me now.

Lois Dankwa

I love that. I of course have like 5,000,000 other questions that I could ask, but I think I'll I'll end with a statement instead and say Ashley, it's been so amazing to just chat with you, hear about your experience and yeah, just learn from you. I've been obsessed with everything you've said today. So, thank you so much.

Ashley Pitt

Thank you so much Lois for taking the time and allowing me to share a little bit more about myself and my journey.