Welcome to Chain Reaction, a new podcast from the American Chemical Society, where we link chemistry's past to its future. I'm your host, Margo Wall.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Shane Hanlon.
SPEAKER_02What? Where's Sam? What did you do with her?
SPEAKER_01I mean, you invited me, uh, but in all fairness, for the listeners, I'm Margo's colleague here at ACS. So my official title is executive editor of Brand Lab, but basically, we're a group here who help tell ACS's story. And in this case, we're talking about ACS's 150th anniversary.
SPEAKER_02Yay, another excuse to say sesquin. Never get it. Anyways, this is a big deal for us. 150 years as an organization, that's that's a lot of years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, it really is. And we're doing all sorts of things to celebrate this year that are really focused on the past, present, and future of chemistry.
SPEAKER_02That's what we're all about here, Chain Reaction.
SPEAKER_01And I was thinking about that dynamic, and it reminded me of our presidential structure here at ACS and how that works. I can see, I can see your eyes glazing over.
SPEAKER_02No one can see that. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER_01I'm putting you on blast, and I can hear the listeners' eyes glazing over.
SPEAKER_02You can hear that.
SPEAKER_01Just wait, just hear me out. So we have a president-elect, a president, and an immediate past president. So past, present, future. And each one of them, they have their own priorities and initiatives that they really care about. So I thought, what if we talk to them? Or better yet, what if they talk to folks about the things they're passionate about? So, over the next few weeks, we'll feature discussions between the presidents and their colleagues and peers with a special treat for the final episode of the series that we're terming chemistry is everyone.
SPEAKER_02Ooh, some foreshadowing.
SPEAKER_01I know, I know. I like a good hook, a good lead. So, with all that, this week, leading the discussion is our immediate past president, Dorothy Phillips.
SPEAKER_02As listeners will remember, we interviewed Dorothy back in mini-series one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so something she's really passionate about is showing that all sorts of folks can and should be in the sciences and showcasing their journeys throughout their careers. The first person she chatted with was Carrie Zipolo, an accessibility expert and research developer working at Educational Testing Service. Now, he's a chemist who is blind and is always trying to find ways to make it so that other vision-impaired chemists can do their research.
SPEAKER_02Wow. That's really fascinating because I feel like so many parts of chemistry can be like really visual, like seeing reactions happen and things like stereochemistry.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. But as you will hear, Carrie finds ways to navigate all of these challenges and hopes to help others in the future to do so as well.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm excited to listen.
SPEAKER_03And that was my first real barrier to accessing education as a 16, 17-year-old high schooler. And I didn't know any other blind people really that were trying to go after a calculus math subject. So I was recommended to take business math, which is a useful skill set of calculating gratuity, sales tax, checkbook balancing, and life skills, which is good. But senior year, I wasn't doing calculus. And when I had to start exploring a major in college, my guidance counselor said to me, Carrie, what do you want to study in college as a major? And I said, I want to be an electrical engineer. And then he said to me, Well, since you can't do calculus, let's pick something else for you to do. And he proposed the ideas of psychology or social work, which are two at that time very common fields of study for blind people to consider. And I eventually settled on a psychology major with a minor in business and off to college. I went. And fortunately, right after graduation, I went to uh a consumer organization of blind people, and there were thousands of blind people in attendance. And one of the first speakers I saw on the platform was a blind high school calculus teacher. Oh, wow. And that presentation just rocked my world for the better. And I realized the skies was the limit and I could do it. And I came home and shortly after fall semester started, I changed my major into engineering. And, you know, I bounced around between engineering and education and eventually settled in the chemistry major.
SPEAKER_04Wow, that is powerful. Those things that say we can do is always important for a role model, right? A teacher was a role model for what you could do in the future, and that's really great. What keeps you motivated to persevere when you're facing barriers and environments that aren't inclusive but that seem not to include you?
SPEAKER_03I will say there are a lot of those in this field at the moment. I encountered a number of them when I was in graduate school, and they had to do with accessing research grade laboratory instrumentation and the ability to take the outputs, the spectroscopic data, mass measurements, other digital readings. Nothing was accessible to me through technological means. And so I adopted a methodology that I learned when I was an undergraduate student. We call it the director assistant approach, where I'm working with a sighted person and they act as my eyes and hands in the laboratory, and they're only supposed to carry out the tasks that I instruct them to do. Okay, so I got fairly proficient at this as an undergraduate student. Now I've got to take this into the research environment and start doing experiments that likely have never been done before and are not almost 100% likelihood to lead to a positive conclusion. Yeah. You know, the high percentage of laboratory experimental failure was new to me in grad school. And these individuals, they they range from men and women and various backgrounds, and most of them were majors in chemistry or other sciences. And I trained them not only to describe color changes, evolution of bubbles, formation of precipitates, but they also got the training on taking X-ray diffractometer data and converting that into a tactographic form that I could then feel under my fingertips and interpret. And then a lot of the laboratory instrumentation also was interfaced with a computer with software that again, I could not control it myself. So they had to set in the experimental parameters, start the data collection, end it. And it's this whole model of access to the chemistry ecosystem, if you will, that can be really demotivating for people who are in a situation similar to myself, being totally blind or vision impaired, that might want to pursue a job in the chemical enterprise. And the system says they can't do it themselves. As my longtime mentor, Dr. David Wollers told me, Carrie, we are the survivors. We were gonna do chemistry no matter what. And we did. But so many people are not as devoted to this profession as we were and are. And I think it's the barrier of lack of access to what the tools we commonly use to do the research that we know and love to do.
SPEAKER_04Did other scientists who were vision impaired, did they adapt some of your methods and able to them to finish their work as well?
SPEAKER_03I would say in the early stages, I did a lot of learning and asking questions about how to do a lot of things from managing the cited assistance to keeping braille notes in an organized three-ring notebook so I could study my observations throughout my graduate career and learning how to use a talking calculator to do fundamental calculations and keeping a notebook on a computer. That was kind of a new thing when I was in grad school. Keeping a laboratory notebook in a digital form. And I would say, you know, it was that knowing David Wollers, a chemistry professor who was blind from Truman State, and his willingness to serve as my mentor really kept me on the path because he was the first blind chemist I'd ever met in my life. Now, I have heard of others further in the history of the ACS, and there are a number in the field today, but the numbers are small compared to other populations. Statistics say that one out of five people has a cognitive or physical disability. But the number of ACS members that are genuinely vision impaired or blind is much smaller than one in five.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and that's very few because you can hardly encounter anyone. Yes. But I think that's really very interesting, Carrie, how you found a way to get your work done and probably set the stage for future vision-impaired scientists to also be chemists. And I think that's part of what our passion is, right? Is enabling other young people to follow us and take advantage of the things that we have learned.
SPEAKER_03I feel the access technology tools that this generation of blind students have, I could only dream about when I was their age. Oh it was almost a thing of science fiction, if you will. An example, refreshable braille has always been limited to one line of characters since I believe it goes back as early as the early 1980s. And you think one row of characters, maybe 20, 30, 40 characters per line is what we could feel on one display screen. And we were limited to that for decades. And in the last couple of years, finally the engineering challenges associated with developing new refreshable braille devices that could accommodate what are called multi-line displays. So now we have the ability to have two or four or eight or ten lines on one surface. But the beauty of this is not only can we do braille characters, that in essence represents an entire page of displayed on a computer screen, but it can also display graphical information on the same surface with the braille. Oh wow. And not only that, the whole concept of scrolling up and down and left and right for a blind person and zooming in and out of images is all new to us. Everyone else has had those tools for a long time, but we have always been limited to the physical constraints of an 11 by 11 and a half inch braille page. But now for the first time, we can have images go beyond those dimensions and we can scroll around the screen and see one part to the next to the next. And when you're dealing with really large organic chemical structures, that can be a challenge. It can be a challenge. But now the technology is well underway to being developed and becoming more widely available. I'm optimistic that blind children of this generation and future generations will have more equitable access to the content that will hopefully get them to feel confident that they can truly understand organic chemistry. And there's a lot of people out there that say to me they don't like organic chemistry. It was hard, took a lot of time, a lot of effort to study. It was just really hard to visualize that content. It's one of my favorite subjects.
SPEAKER_04It was mine too. That's why I decided to go pre-med. And I said, Oh no, I love organic chemistry. I'm not gonna go pre-med. So I enjoyed organic.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So between the refreshable tactile displays or RTDs, as they're called, and the talking laboratory tools that I've had the pleasure of developing over the last 15 or 20 years of my professional career. Basically, I had the pleasure of inventing all the toys that I wish I had as a scientist. And we've done that in the classroom context. And I would love the opportunity to collaborate with other research grade laboratory instrumentation companies to work with them to make their devices similarly accessible. So that's I guess that's my next big career aspiration.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that was an amazing interview. I like really hadn't thought about the unique challenges that would come along with being blind in chemistry. Like I thought about a couple, but there were definitely ones I hadn't thought about, and all of the ways that Carrie has found a way to get around those and be able to have like a full career as a chemist. Great start. So who do we have next?
SPEAKER_01Next, we have Zemin Berhe. Zemin is a chemistry teaching professor at Simmons University in Boston. She's actually the first black woman to earn a PhD in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. And when I asked Dorothy about folks she'd be interested in chatting with, I think Zemen was the first name that came up. Their discussions centered around their surprisingly similar journeys, even though they were separated by decades.
SPEAKER_00So the first time I ever seen a black chemistry professor was in 2017 when I joined Dr. Emanuel Ujadi's research lab. And that's where the first time I thought, oh, I can actually become a professor. And I remembered in his office, I said, Oh wow, so I can become a professor if I really want to pursue that career. And my professor said, Yes, of course. But if you don't see that, you don't think it's possible. So in high school, where I really started thinking that I could be a scientist, a chemist, but actually when I was in grad school, I thought, oh, I actually can become a professor as well.
SPEAKER_04So does that sort of set your way of doing things and make sure you have a chance to touch the lives of other underrepresented groups who may not feel that they can be a chemistry professor or a professor at all?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's the reason why I entered academia because I really wanted to make sure that students who look like me and other minorities, first generation students, refugees, feel included in the science spaces. Being a refugee child, I mean, originally I'm from the northern part of Ethiopia called Tigrae, and my family immigrated to Germany back in the late 70s. My family and not just me alone faced a lot of challenges and barriers. But when I was in high school, I never knew about chemistry. I mean, once I had the class, yes, but I at that time I had no idea about grad school, PhD, professors, I had no idea. So it was not just being a refugee child, but also being a first-generation student and not just college, first generation high school graduate, because my family never went to school, and also being an international scholar now in the United States, also being a black woman where often was seen as the only one that comes with a lot of challenges and also financial insecurity. So I really depended on stipends, teaching fellowships, research assistantships, imposter syndrome, and also language barriers. Before I came to the United States, I didn't know how to speak in English, so I had to learn that before. That was one of the biggest one of one of the challenges that I had to face. And then also last year probably was one of the most difficult times for me. I graduated last year in the summer, and two months after my defense, while I was still editing my dissertation, my PhD advisor, Dr. Imman Aljari, passed away. So that was probably the most challenging time because I couldn't ask him for advice. So I had to reach out to other professors to help me submit my final dissertation. So I would say there were many challenges, especially in the lab, teaching for the first time, especially in grad school every day. How about you?
SPEAKER_04Definitely. From the integration, being one of the first students to integrate Bandeville University, it was new to me, and I was new to them because I had not been in an integrated environment. That was something for me to overcome as well. Now I I found a way to get past these barriers. Is there something to your getting past many of these barriers to make that move forward?
SPEAKER_00All the time. And that was basically being resilient, that all the challenges eventually will pass. When you have a bad day, that will pass. And also having a community. For me, definitely was the ACS, American Chemical Society, that helped me very early on when I got to America, to UMass. I quickly got involved with my local chapter, the Northeastern Younger Chemist Committee, where I joined as a career chair. I had no idea about career, but I wanted to be part of the local chapter to really expose myself to other chemists from different backgrounds and have a network of chemists that can help me and also me helping them along the way.
SPEAKER_04You mentioned earlier, and I think I have this same focus of supporting diversity and inclusion in science. And how can you, as an instructor, support inclusion and belonging in science?
SPEAKER_00I'm only here because I had wonderful mentors and teachers and educators. And also hiring, especially when we look at academia, hiring and retaining diverse faculty is also, in my view, very important. And ensuring that classrooms and labs are actually inclusive spaces where all students feel valued. And also institutions need to recognize intersectionality, supporting students who may face multiple overlapping barriers. I think that needs to be recognized, and those students need to be supported so they actually feel included in the lab, in academia as a whole.
SPEAKER_04You're absolutely spot on in that discussion because that's a passion of mine as well, is to be there for other underrepresented students and promote, support, make sure there are ways that they can move forward. And that's a challenge. It becomes more of a challenge now where we're seeing some pushback on this whole area of inclusion and belonging. But it's an area that I focused on in ACS when I was on the board. We worked really hard to go from having a committee on diversity and inclusion to actually having a department that's now called inclusion and belonging with a vice president over that department. So they can work on things like accessibility as well, not just demographic by race, but by accessibility in other areas. And so as I go around and speak, I'm always got an extra smile for that underrepresented person meeting that demographic in the audience. Because they need people to see that they can make it. Yes, as you mentioned earlier, seeing your professor. Now I see that as an important role that those aspiring chemists can now have a chance to realize this is possible. So I think we're very similar in that area of supporting and wanting to support diversity. One of the things I was wondering as I was talking with you, for you coming to the United States to go do that postdoc, did your family stay behind in Germany while you came to the States? And so you had to kind of build a family here that could give you the support that you needed?
SPEAKER_00So I actually went by myself to the United States. But I have some family members who live in Georgia, Florida, that section. But in in Massachusetts specifically, it's just me. So I had to create my community in Massachusetts. And the ACS, especially the Younger Chemist Committee, really gave me that belonging and family and also my university and my department. So I'm very grateful for that.
SPEAKER_04You have been very effective as a young chemist committee person here in the Northeast. That's something that I know you're proud of, and I'm proud of how you have been involved with the local section. So, what advice would you give to young people who've had a hard time picturing themselves as a scientist? What would you say to a young person?
SPEAKER_00I would say you belong in science exactly as who you are authentically. You don't need to fit a mole to contribute. Your perspective, shaped by your very unique story and background, is, in my view, valuable and is needed in the science space. I would definitely encourage people to seek out mentors, build a community, join your local chapter. And remember that every scientist once started as a beginner, just like me, filled with questions. And I would also encourage young people to hold on to your curiosity. It's the greatest tool you ever have.
SPEAKER_02Hold on to your curiosity. I love that. And man, I cannot imagine losing your advisor during your dissertation. Must have been really tough. I mean, listen, I went through a PhD and I just, yeah, I can't imagine that.
SPEAKER_01I mean, Ditto, right? And there's enough adversity with just getting a degree, let alone everything else. Uh it was really also nice to hear Dorothy and her talk about paying forward the mentorship that they received to the next generation and being the representation that they didn't always see coming up in chemistry.
SPEAKER_02Definitely. So, Shane, who did Dorothy talk to next? I know there's one more interview.
SPEAKER_01There is. So finally, Dorothy talked with Simon Shannon. Simon is with 3M, the giant manufacturing firm.
SPEAKER_02Heard of him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. You can see their logo kind of everywhere if you start looking. But his work focuses on data centers and integrating 3M products into the data center market. Now, I know that when folks hear data center, they might just tune me out.
SPEAKER_02Eyes glazing over once again, Shane.
SPEAKER_01I know, I know. This is this is becoming a pattern, but stick with uh because I really like that Dorothy talked with folks across the professional spectrum. And Simon is an at-large board member for our sister society, No Bachet.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. That's um just for those who don't know what the acronym means. It's the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for saying it. Uh this is a bit of a mouthful, but a fantastic organization that we're very fortunate to partner with quite often here at ACS. And so Simon and Dorothy had a great discussion, talking about his journey from bench scientist to a leader in industry, what makes a good mentor and mentee, and the importance of representation in science.
SPEAKER_04What lessons did you take from your years at the bench into now your business role?
SPEAKER_05One of the lessons one of my mentors had told me as I was considering business is that marketing and business, they're also technical, right? So there's finance, there's accounting. These are all technical skills that you learn even on the business side. There's many different steps and facets to marketing and processes associated with that. And business development itself is it's more of an art. And science can also be an art form, you know, in terms of how you generate new ideas, technology, and frameworks, all these things you need to learn in order to be successful in business. So it's not something different.
SPEAKER_04Totally agree with you because I made a similar move from research into marketing. But the one point that I found was that you still needed your science background because you're in a chemical environment, a company where the customers are mostly chemists or scientists. And so to interact and understand what they're bringing to the table, that science background makes a difference.
SPEAKER_05That's a great point. And often I find myself being like the translator because there are some people that are just business, some that are just technical. And by knowing both, you are helping bridge that gap and being able to capture what they need and being able to turn it into a technical version so the technology or the technical folks can understand, and vice versa, understanding what we can do internally and translating that to a customer and saying, hey, here's the value, here's why it's important, so forth.
SPEAKER_04You mentioned advice about the mentorship role, but what other advice have you received? But you actually ignored that advice. It's a tough one, you know.
SPEAKER_05But I would say I was told stay focused, stay in one area. One of my mentors, you may have known Dr. Lester Benson. He's had a really great, successful career as a corporate scientist. He's reached the highest that you could reach in 3M. He's retired now, but he literally moved maybe 15 feet his entire career at 3M in the space's laboratory where he was to his office. But all of his process equipment and research equipment, he was right there and he could was completely focused. That's one thing you can do to succeed. But I get bored pretty easily. And so I've kind of become a jack of all trades. I would say master of one. Of course, I have a PhD in organic chemistry, but I think really my critical skill is cross-functional leadership. And that's come because I've been exposed to many different areas from the laboratory, from business process improvement, from marketing, from supply chain, even some legal aspects. And I can easily collaborate with all of these people and also help advance a broader goal that they may not always have all the pieces together. So for me, the focus piece was something I ignored. And just getting really broad and that breadth of experiences has been central to my success.
SPEAKER_04What do you wish people knew about your identities and how they influence your career?
SPEAKER_05When I think of identity, it's identity of being a scientist. Yeah. It's identity of being a black man in corporate America. Those two things come to mind. You know, it influences far beyond your technical expertise. Identity does. I've been often, and I'm sure you have too, one in the few in the room. This can sometimes impact your confidence, your sense of belonging. But once you realize that the identity is not a barrier, you know, it's just another perspective that in itself strengthens how for me, how I build my own relationships, how I communicate, ultimately how I lead my own team from my own cultural perspective.
SPEAKER_04I'm sure we have faced similar challenges over the years from that standpoint. But in seeing where you are now, I realize you definitely have found a way to achieve and move forward. What is the most pressing barrier to entering STEM today?
SPEAKER_05I think it goes even back to the identity question is there's a lack of representation and limited exposure of people that look like us in STEM. And we're making strides to try to get there, including the work that we do with Noboche and the American Chemical Society. But I remember an AI tool, I was learning about this new tool called a stable diffusion. It's to do image generation with AI. And I just generically asked for scientists. And the default was a figure that looks like Albert Einstein. And I think that's what everybody kind of thinks of. It reflects that underlying perception of what STEM is. And because that representation is limited, the exposure to it becomes harder.
SPEAKER_04This year, as president of ACS, I've had a lot more been out there more and talking to groups and universities and students. And I have started to realize, maybe I realized it even before, but more strongly now, the importance of students from underrepresented groups seeing someone that looks like them, that says to them they can have a place in STEM. So it's actually a blessing to have that time with those students so they can see that. I was at Tennessee State University, which I attended for a couple of years before going to Vanderbilt. The students were so very warm and welcoming because I think they saw someone like them who was being successful in their career. So I think that's the role model that we are, that you and I both and others are.
SPEAKER_05Agreed. You have absolutely been a trailblazer for us in many different facets. So it's only helping the cause to see a person like you driving the American Chemical Society.
SPEAKER_04Well, thanks, and all that you do in the Novache space is so important as well. So we got to keep all those organizations going and keep ourselves before people.
SPEAKER_02Shane, I love how Dorothy like relates to all these different people in her interviews, kind of interspersing her journey along the way. And I'm also really happy that she brought us Carrie, Zemin, and Simon to hear about their stories.
SPEAKER_01I know. I'm I'm so used to being the one doing the interviewing and not really processing in the moment what folks are saying. Yeah so it was really such a treat to be able to just sit in on these interviews.
SPEAKER_02And I'm sure that there's more amazing discussions to come as part of this special 150 series, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, definitely. So next week we'll hear from current ACS president Rigoberto Hernandez.
SPEAKER_02That's next time on Chain Reaction. This was Chain Reaction, a podcast by the American Chemical Society. Our executive producer is Sam Jones. Our producer is me, Margot Wall. This miniseries was also produced by Shane Hanlon in partnership with Brand Lab. Production help from Michael David and Matt Radcliffe. Theme song by D. Peter Schmidt.