Career

Because I’m starting a new role at Science for America in May 2023, I won’t be looking for a new role any time soon.

Companies

I’m excited about companies working on existential problems or focused on public & social impact.

My ideal company:

• impacts society through public health, climate, or via some other population-level impact
• harnesses computational biology and ‘omics data to achieve impact (ideally)
• preferentially works in areas with large disparities, and endeavours to reduce them
• centers its values in every aspect of the scientific work it does

Some general areas that interest me include climate, public health, social impact, nutrition, agriculture, and progressive politics.

In terms of disease focus, I find myself gravitating toward infectious disease and chronic diseases that affect large numbers of people, and am usually uninterested in oncology. Interestingly, personalized medicine companies are a mixed bag - if they’re focused on diseases that impact a lot of people, then I’m pumped!

Additionally, I’ve really enjoyed working at a company that has an actual product out in the world that people use, and think that my experience & skillset would transfer well to a company creating scientific consumer products.

Roles

In my next role, I’d like to continue serving as a technical advisor, ideally also while building my IC skills.

I enjoy being a technical lead, meaning that I:

• work with other data scientists & analysts to review their work, help them frame their questions, and connect their results back to the bigger picture company needs
• provide subject matter expertise to help guide architectural and data model decisions
• bridge software and data teams by evangelizing software best practices on data teams and educating about the wonders and power of data to software teams

My favorite analogy for my current tech lead role is that I am like a cave guide: I go down into the rabbit holes with our brilliant scientists, but I also bring the rope and flashlight to make sure we know where we’re going and can always come back up to the big picture. I’m excited to continue serving as an early-stage, jack-of-all-trades technical employee - I’ve really enjoyed being in this position at Biobot, and feel that I’ve done a good job helping our company scale successfully.

In my next role, I’m excited to find somewhere with the space and/or support to continue building my technical IC skills, in addition to continuing to serve as a technical leader. I have two years of management experience and enjoy managing small teams, but growing as a manager is not a current priority for me. That said, I do love building teams: figuring out what roles are needed, hiring to fill those roles, establishing a strong and positive team culture, and growing a team to make myself redundant.

Finally, I’m based in New Hampshire and am primarily interested in remote roles (I’m fine with west coast-based companies). I’m happy to consider hybrid roles in the Greater Boston area (1x/week max), but strongly prefer somewhere with flexibility.

Future

I don’t fully know where I want my career to eventually take me, but two enticing options are as a VP of Data Science or CTO-like character at an exciting impact-focused company, or a freelancer working on cool projects at cool companies. I’m ideally looking for roles that leverage my training in biological data, but I could see myself transitioning to a pure data science role (i.e. no computational biology) for the right company and mission.