When Science Speaks

On this week's episode, David Rosen, CEO of Acrelic Group, Adviser and Mentor at Signal Lake (VC), TechLaunch (Accelerator), and several tech hardware and software companies, discusses the leadership pillars he's developed over the course of his career and related performance-optimizing strategies. Highlights include:

The qualities and skills David believes make an effective leader

Why can it be challenging for some scientists and engineers to effectively communicate with investors, for example, or policymakers, and how Acrelic helps them overcome these challenges

With historic challenges across all sectors in society due to COVID, what leaders - whether in corporate America, government, or the non-profit world - should be doing right now to help their organizations navigate these challenging times

Thinking about the knowledge, skills, and abilities of effective leaders - and as a longtime mentor - how David helps his mentees develop and use these skills to advance their companies and their own professional careers

The mission and operations of Notiphy, where David is an investor and co-Founder.

Details about the Boston Chapter of the Private Directors Assocation, which David established

As an experienced leader in the world of entrepreneurship and startups, what lessons David has learned that could help someone just beginning as an entrepreneur or thinking about starting a company

On this special episode of When Science Speaks, award-winning executive coach, leading author and international keynote speaker Dorie Clark shares insights from her just-released book, The Long Game.

- Dorie discuss ways to get "unstuck" professionally, sharing her own experiences and describing how she's built a successful, high-impact career - and you can, too. Topics discussed include:

- The theme of reinvention throughout Dorie's own professional journey and some of the factors that made her own transition points successful

- Strategies and techniques Dorie has found helpful in distilling her message without losing accuracy or the interest of the audience

- Dorie's thoughts about the role of emotion - particularly when speaking about business and data-heavy topics - an environment in which many listeners find themselves

- What led Dorie to write The Long Game and the main themes and lessons readers of the book will take away from it

- How The Long Game fits in the pantheon of Dorie Clark classics along with Stand Out, Entrepreneurial You, and the others

- The types of reader personas Dorie was thinking about as she was writing - i.e., who she was writing this book for.

- How Dorie's readers and listeners abroad - in Europe, for example - respond to and think about her themes - the fluidity of a professional career, the ability to reinvent and change course - in an educational system and professional environment that can be more rigid than in the U.S.

This week's episode features Lisa Fain, JD, CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence and founder of Vista Coaching, the coaching division of the Center. We discuss a range of issues associated with mentorship, including:

Lisa's professional journey, with its theme of creating inclusive, productive workplaces

The common pitfalls or missed opportunities she often sees mentees experience

What mentees should look for in a mentor

Key success factors for strong, productive mentoring relationships and how mentee attitudes and behavior contribute to positive mentoring relationships

How scientists outside academia where mentorship may be less formalized should go about seeking mentors

Similarities and differences between mentors and career coaches

Lisa's thoughts on the statement: With COVID shaking up the way people work, it seems having a mentor would be even more important, as workers navigate new norms

How to professionally and efficiently end a mentoring relationship

This week's episode features an interview with Tyler Parsons, Ph.D., a medical scientist with strong communication and leadership skills. Tyler has presented and won research awards at university, state, national, and international conferences and is passionate about translating complex discoveries at the bench into understandable, tangible science to reach a broader audience for the ultimate goal of clinical application and improving patient outcomes.

Tyler also has a personal connection to his current research, a topic we explore during the episode. Additional topics discussed this week include:

The unusual career journey Tyler has charted so far, starting with his interest in being a lawyer focused on intellectual property, and how he found his way from his focus on a legal career to being a Postdoc at Washington University School of Medicine

First in his family to graduate college (not including his siblings), and then to earn a Ph.D, Tyler responds to my hypothesis that strong science communicators often are part of the first generation in their family to graduate college

Challenges Tyler has experienced in sharing his research with general audiences, even as a seasoned and skilled science communicator

Tyler's experience in speaking to, and entertaining, audiences as he was growing up

Tyler's experience in public policy, including as a leader in student government activities.

The key success factors - and pitfalls to avoid - Tyler has encountered during his science policy activities

Tyler's recent powerful and inspiring LinkedIn post that connected the two of us and the story behind it

Kaan Mika, Ph.D. is a computational biologist who takes vivid, creative, and fascinating pictures of the natural world on his Instagram, slice_of_science, while also highlighting the inspiring work of other scientists.

This week's episode focuses on Kaan's photography, research, and approach, including:

How Kaan's Instagram account reflects his goal to "show that scientists are people like any other, accessible."

What attracted Kaan to his field of research

Whether he originally was a scientist first and then a photographer, or a photographer who then developed a passion for science

What makes a fascinating photo he wants to post on @slice_of_science

Why Kaan decided to get onto Instagram and whether Kaan thinks Instagram activity among scientists will eventually catch up to scientists' activity on Twitter

How science influences his photography, and whether Kaan's perspective as a photographer influences his scientific work

The backstory of one of Kaan's favorite photos - how he was able to capture it and what surprised him

Douglass and Lisa-Marie Hatcher are the co-founders of communicate4IMPACT, a business storytelling training firm focused on helping businesspeople take what they do naturally (tell stories) and apply it to what they're professional lives.

On this week's episode, we explore a range of topics related to the power and structure of effective storytelling, including:

What storytelling has to do with science, and what science has to do with storytelling

Whether there is room for storytelling in the world of data and analytics - where and how?

What makes a good story—the elements and structure all good stories have

Common missteps people make in telling stories

When you should recognize you may be veering off course in telling a story, and how to get back on track

Whether some people are naturally better at telling stories than others, and how Douglass and Lisa-Marie help everyone—regardless of innate ability (if it exists) become a strong storyteller

Douglass's and Lisa-Marie's book Win With Decency - the focus of the book and how it can help readers advance their careers

Resources mentioned in the episode

Win with Decency

Communicate4Impact

Douglass Hatcher

Lisa-Marie Hatcher

What's curiosity have to do with leadership?

This week's episode of "When Science Speaks" features Erin Sullivan, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Healthcare Management at Suffolk University's Sawyer Business School and Lecturer, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Erin shares her insights on health care, leadership, and "translation" skills gained from her role as an experienced leader in research and education and strategic thinker who empowers teams to achieve results in complex environments.

We discuss these topics and more, including:

Erin's latest research work on leadership in the health care space

Elements her research suggest need to be active to provide exemplary primary care to patients

What makes an effective leader in the science and medical fields

Whether scientists should be leaders or just follow the data

Some of the pitfalls that scientists and medical professionals experience when they're in leadership positions within their respective organizations

How to handle the thorny dynamic arising when promotions happen because someone is good at what they do technically, but more than such technical expertise is needed to be successful in leading a department, for example.

Thinking about physicians, how organizations should respond when their high-performers in this technical world turn down leadership opportunities

The need for, and value of, "translators" - what Erin means by that, and how to develop those translation skills

Erin's recommendations on one thing listeners can do to build their translation skills

This week's episode features Kimberly Arcand, Ph.D., Visualization Scientist and Emerging Technology Lead at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

We discuss a range of topics related to effective storytelling about the abstract topics of space and the cosmos.

You'll hear about:

What makes a story compelling and how Kim goes about crafting hers

What Kim means by the ethics of storytelling and speaking to audiences with intention

Some of the favorite stories Kim tells about her work to general audiences

Why it's important to make talks a "two-way street" - more of a dialogue than simply a presentation that's received by the audience with little interaction

What Kim means by the "little presents" she gets from interacting with her audience

How Kim encourages audience questions and makes her listeners feel comfortable asking them

How Kim makes the abstract topics that are the focus of her work not merely understandable but also engaging and relatable to non-experts

Resources from the episode:

TED talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kTMr5LqIBQ

Books

https://www.amazon.com/sk=kimberly+arcand&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

https://www.kimarcand.com/media

https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2020/sonify/

On this week's episode, Adriana Vela, a multiple award-winning market and technology trends expert, strategist, entrepreneur, and certified business and leadership coach, shares her insights about disruptive change and how to handle it.

For three decades, Adriana has been an ardent observer of the effects of disruptive change and paradigm shifts, studying behavior trends in both Fortune 100 companies and start-up ventures.

She has launched dozens of products, driven technology industry standards, led million-dollar initiatives, and defined new markets.

During this historic period of change, we discuss emerging paradigm shifts and behavior trends and other topics, including:

- How Adriana made transitions and thrived as an IT developer, in a corporate role, and within a research environment, and how others can learn to adapt and succeed throughout their own career journeys

- Blindspots Adriana experienced when working with research scientists in industry, and some of the "shining examples" of talented scientists who were both experts in their fields and also successful in business

- Some of the signals Adriana looks for to get clarity on emerging trends and which new developments may be just over the horizon

- How Adriana thinks the ongoing pandemic will affect science and business moving forward

On this week's episode, Dr. Katherine Himes, Director of the University of Idaho's McClure Center for Public Policy Research, shares her expertise in science diplomacy, international development, public policy, and more.

We discuss a range of science communication and public policy issues, including:

How Katherine made the transition from neuroscience Ph.D. in Minnesota to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, DC.

What she means by "muddy boots science policy", a term she coined while at AID, and the importance of getting out into the community to really understand it BEFORE starting to stitch together a policy affecting those stakeholders

Katherine's work in a fascinating entrepreneurial office at AID - what it was like and, more generally, what entrepreneurship looks like in the federal government

The McClure Center - its mission, focus, and the work the Center develops and undertakes

The Idaho Science and Technology Policy Fellowship program - how it was developed, what the program is up to these days, and Katherine's hopes for the future of the program