NINDS's Building Up the Nerve

S3E1: What is a mentor?

• NINDS • Season 3 • Episode 1

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The third Season of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Building Up the Nerve podcast helps you strengthen your mentoring relationships with tools and advice from both trainees and faculty. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help—it's our job!

In the first episode of the season, we will set the stage by defining who a mentor is and discussing different types of mentoring relationships, and mentoring models.

Featuring Claire Horner-Devine, PhD, Co-Investigator of BRAINS and Founder, Counterspace Consulting LLC; Fátima Sancheznieto, PhD,  Assistant Researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR); and Corey Welch, PhD, Director, STEM Scholars Program, Iowa State University.

Resources

Transcript available at http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/.

Lauren Ullrich:

Welcome to Season Three of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's Building Up the Nerve, where we help you strengthen your mentoring relationships with tools and advice from both trainees and faculty. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help. It's our job.

Marguerite Matthews:

I'm Marguerite Matthews, a program director at NINDS.

Lauren Ullrich:

And I'm Lauren Ullrich, a program director at NINDS, and we're your hosts today.

Marguerite Matthews:

Welcome to Season Three! Did you miss us? This season we will be talking all about mentoring. For this first episode, we will set the stage by defining who a mentor is and discussing different types of mentoring relationships, and mentoring models.

Lauren Ullrich:

Our guests today are Dr. Claire Horner-Devine, Dr. Fátima Sancheznieto and Dr. Corey Welch. So let's get started with our introductions.

Claire Horner-Devine:

Hi, I'm Claire Horner-Devine. I'm the co-director of the NINDS funded BRAINS program, and I run that out of the University of Washington in Seattle, and I also run Counterspace Coaching and Consulting. In my work, I help individuals, teams, and organizations leverage their values, their strengths, and their experiences to realize their purpose and their self-defined success. And when I think about mentoring, and my mentoring philosophy, the three words that come to mind are open, curious and grateful.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

So my name is Dr. Fátima Sancheznieto. I am currently at, uh, UW-Madison with the School of Medicine and Public Health. I finished my postdoc last year, so I'm an Assistant Researcher now off the tenure track. I currently work on doing research on training environments for early career researchers, particularly underrepresented minority trainees from their PhD and postdoc career stages. We also do a little bit of research with junior faculty. I'm also the president of the nonprofit advocacy organization, Future of Research. And I would say that, for me, my mentoring philosophy in three words would be that mentorship should be transparent, mentorship should be intentional, and mentorship should have accountability.

Corey Welch:

I'm Corey Welch, I'm the Director of the STEM Scholars Program at Iowa State University. It's an undergraduate focused program. I also do a lot of work with SACNAS, so Society for Advancement of Chicanos Hispanics and Native Americans in Science which is a national organization. Um, it's diversifying who does STEM. And there's a lot of research on diverse scientists lead to better solutions, and I would argue traditionally how we train students in the STEM workforce undermines the success of women, minorities, low-income populations, and people with disabilities. And so I use a strength-based approach to using the student's background that I would argue makes them a better scientist, health professional, and leader. And as far as my mentoring style, it's inclusive, it's iterative, and it's non-directed.

Marguerite Matthews:

Those are words I don't think I've ever heard used to describe mentoring, so that's actually really quite nice to hear, Corey. All right, so for our first question, can you all tell us who gets to be a mentor, who gets to call themselves that? What are some of the roles and responsibilities of a mentor, and maybe more importantly, what constitutes an effective mentor?

Claire Horner-Devine:

So those are so many good questions.[background laughter]

Marguerite Matthews:

Well, that's why we've got season three going,'cause we ask really good questions!

Claire Horner-Devine:

That's right, that's right! I think I'll start with the kind of who is a mentor, and who can be a mentor, and what is mentorship? Just bring it down to three. So I think of mentorship as a partnership that supports a mentee's experience and their self-defined success at its core. So anybody can be a mentor. Everyone should, if it's okay to use the word should, if they're able to be a mentor to many people, um, in a range of experiences, in different parts of their lives. And everyone can, and I hope has access to being a mentee, um, in a wide range of parts of their lives and throughout their entire life and career. So that's a start for me of talking about mentoring and mentorship, and I would love Corey and Fátima to add in because it's just going to help us broaden what it really means to be a mentor, to everyone.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

I absolutely love that you use the word partnership. This question is always one of my favorites to answer because everyone has so many, you know, definitions and they're all, for the most part, really good if people have thought about it and have some experience, right? The National Academies gave us a report two years ago that actually provided us with, like an official definition decided on by experts. And I think that one works really well, and it includes the partnership aspect that you were talking about, Claire, that bidirectionality, right? Mentors can get a lot out of the mentorship relationship. I think for me, the most important piece that tends to get lost, particularly in STEM spaces, is that the support that the mentor provides the mentee is not just a professional and career development support, but is also psychosocial support. And I think we tend to forget that in STEM spaces, because sometimes we can be a little bit afraid of feelings [laughs] or like who we are as people outside of, of science. But it's so important because so many of us bring all of us to the bench. I mean, we all do, right? Um, and so to understand that a mentor is providing psychosocial support, which tends to, I would say scare a lot of supervisors who think that they don't want to, or that they can't, or they don't know how, they're not capacitated to do that. But I agree with you, Claire. I think everyone should strive to be a mentor in some capacity to the people in their lives, and, um, also a mentee. Once we get into the specifics in the official, like, who's required to do that within a science training program, then I think we can, you know, sort of go back and forth as to who does or doesn't deserve that title or responsibility.[laughter] But, um, I really do like your idea of the partnership because there are so many beautiful, wonderful things that mentors can get out of the relationship too, if it's done in an intentional and transparent way where, you know, expectations are aligned.

Corey Welch:

Thank you for stealing all the good answers.[background laughter] No, but I love that you brought in the word that I was going to lead with, Fátima, which is, you know, I like partnership for sure. I view it as it's a relationship and the psychosocial support thing is important. You know, there's often a power dynamic that needs to be acknowledged in the mentor- mentee relationship. And for my students, I point out that, you know, yeah, you're already a mentor. You've got siblings, you've got cousins. If you're the first in your family to go to college, if you're navigating some of these spaces, your experiences has power. Um, the other thing I'll say about mentoring is particularly in the STEM and academia is there's no formal training typically. And so, you know, you mentored a few students when you were a grad student or a post-doc, or your philosophy of your PI , the couple of labs you worked in. So your sample size tends to be pretty low about what is an effective, uh, mentor and leader within the hands-on part of things. And, thankfully I work in a job that I've worked with a couple hundred students now over the last, well close to a thousand students over the last 10 years. And so, I don't have a nice articulated answer that I could say for it, but there's a philosophy and approach to listening and building up trust and realizing that that relationship will change, um, and that I had limitations as a mentor. And I want that student or who I'm working with to try to be aware of where I'm not going to probably give the best advice and don't take only my advice. That's the non-directive statement I said earlier about my philosophy is I could be wrong. I'm not going to tell you that you're going to do this activity or apply to this program, or this is the good school to go to, or anyways. But I want to empower the student or the mentee so that they can take ownership and give them enough information that they can make as an informed decision as they can on that process. And sorry, I sucked all the oxygen out of the room there with that long answer.

Claire Horner-Devine:

[laughs] No, no, we're still breathing. We're still breathing.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

Well no! I was going to say, I think you just hit the nail on the head, why so many people are afraid to approach mentorship is they're not trained to do it officially, which I'll just give a little plug and say, we offer mentor training, like, that's one of the things my team does! Um, but we're not trained in how to do it. And it's so much this like amorphous, no right answer, going back to that psychosocial, requires you to know how to support students in drawing out answers for themselves. And that tends to scare a lot of us when we are so used to like, you know, oh, there's one answer and one way to do things on a protocol, and this is how you do things.[laughs]

Corey Welch:

And given that reality from a student's perspective, I would argue they often overemphasize individual mentorship. So if it's the first time they're hearing from somebody with a PhD like myself or a academic advisor, and they'll take, oh, you're not going to succeed because you didn't crush your grades the first two years of college, and it's like, no, that's not a deal breaker. It's a problem you can work on. And so a lot of times the challenge I have with my mentees is making sure that they know that they can get bad advice and not to over sell themselves on one person's viewpoint of what's right for them in that situation.

Marguerite Matthews:

And I think this goes back to what Claire said at the very beginning, a mentor supports a mentee's self-defined goals. So however you're providing support to them, it has to fit that person. And so there's no one way to be a mentor to someone who defines what success is for them or what failure is for them. And sometimes maybe that's even misguided, right? And I love what you said, Corey, your experience has power can maybe influence the way in which they see their goals or help them redefine their goals or decide that like, these are goals that someone else had, these actually aren't my goals, they're what I thought I needed to have, and so I do love this idea that mentoring is not, um, does not have to fit a specific type of person, but it should incorporate some of these things that a few of you mentioned, and I think we'll get into a little bit more as we go on.

Claire Horner-Devine:

I just want to go back to the point, um, I think that Corey and Fátima both made it, but that some folks in STEM and academia also outside of STEM and outside of academia to be honest, let's be fully transparent, have a fear of not being an expert in mentoring or thinking, well, this wasn't my job or I, you know, I didn't have a good mentor, so I don't know what to do. And in some of the work that I do, I hear that again and again, especially when I have the chance to work with folks one-on-one in coaching where they say some of those things out loud to me. And what I see is that there are many folks in the academy who feel, um, really confident in one part or one area of their expertise, right? You got your PhD and everyone tells you you're the one who knows all the things, you know, of course you don't, but that's where you're--you're growing as an expert and what cognitive dissonance to realize that there are areas that are now things that you are expected to do and expected to do incredibly well, that you don't know how to do. So it's helpful for people, I think, to sometimes just name and know that, that we don't have a way yet in our culture of providing people systematically with a wide range of mentoring skills and capabilities that they can then apply to who they are and in the context that they're working. I also like to remind people that, especially as scientists, we're talking about super smart, super creative people who figure things out that maybe no one has ever known. And so taking that approach to mentoring and thinking, okay, if I'm working with Corey, I don't know him. So I got to do all, I gotta learn about him. We have to build our relationship. We have to figure out how to work together. What's important to Corey? It's really this path of creative discovery and then doing a series of experiments. And that gets back Corey, I think to your iterative piece, right? So what do you want, what do you need? What can I offer? And then also what are my boundary conditions? What can I not offer, right? People provide psychosocial support in a wide range of ways and are comfortable and proficient or even excellent in a wide range of ways. And some have an incredible breadth of this type of support that they can, they can supply or offer as psychosocial support and other people it's a narrow band and that's okay, as long as there's some transparency about, here's what I can offer you. And if you need something that I can't offer, how can I help you? What do you need to find that support elsewhere? What would it take for you to find support that I'm not offering? Because I am not the end all be all, you know. Surprise![laughs]

Marguerite Matthews:

And I would argue that that's exactly psychosocial support, right? It's allowing...

Claire Horner-Devine:

ah ok!

Marguerite Matthews:

the space... Fatima Sancheznieto: yeah exactly! to get what they need. It looks like Fátima and I are sharing a brainwave on that because I think that's where the bigger issue is. You're not a trained psychologist. You're not a trained counselor. There's probably going to be a bazillion things that you don't know how to handle in a way that's maybe going to provide the best opportunity, but giving people the space to do it, recognizing that you will have to maybe allow time or other resources for that person to handle the situation they're going through. And to me, that seems so important, which often is missed. People are like, well, I don't know how to deal with it, so don't bring it to my doorstep. I don't know. And that's probably not the right way to handle that, um, when you're thinking about being an effective mentor, especially if that's your charge, it is your business to be able to open the door to allow people that time to, to get what they need.

Claire Horner-Devine:

I love that. It is your business.

Corey Welch:

Yeah.

Marguerite Matthews:

It is your business.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

And that gets into the idea of networks, right? Which is what both you and Corey, uh, were saying Claire, and that is that no one person has the answer and recognizing that we need, as a culture, to stop focusing on like the single PI as the mentor to the student or the single advisor as the mentor to the student, and to say, how do we capacitate our mentees to have mentors from a wide variety of backgrounds from a wide variety of expertises, who can support the different aspects that the students need, so that exactly as Marguerite just said, when someone comes to your door and says, Hey, I need help with this. Well, I might not be able to help you, but I can listen to you, and then I can put you in the right direction to three other people who might be able to support you in that way.

Corey Welch:

That intentional work of seeking out new mentors, my goal for my students is to not need me. That they'll move on professionally enough, that they're past my lane of expertise or, where I'm at professionally with these students. And the alignment of values with this process of finding mentors throughout your professional career, I mean, it ties in well with kind of the research by Kenny Gibbs and Kimberly Griffith on postdoc value alignment and career exploration, time, work. And so all of those things will lead to much higher retention for historically excluded and underrepresented populations.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

I love that research. I'm so glad you brought it up![laughs]

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, we're big, we're big Kenny fans over here too, so...

Marguerite Matthews:

Absolutely.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

We love Kenny[laughter]

Claire Horner-Devine:

One of the things that, um, is coming to mind for me, and I'm going to give it in the context of the BRAINS program, which if you don't know yet about the BRAINS program that I get to help lead, um, please check it out. It is amazing. It is the best thing that I get to do in my life beyond helping to raise and get to know my children, um, and partner. But, it is work that is, uh, transformational for, for me and our leadership team. And then also for our participants. That's how we get funded because it's for our participants. But honestly speaking, you know, as myself right now, it is work that I love. And one of the things that has been so important for me to learn and embody and then to share with folks that come through our program, um, is that when you are sharing your experience to remember that you're telling someone a story, just a story, one story, and that you're telling that story about how it was or how it is for you. That you don't get to and you never do know how it is, right? So that comes back to some of these questions and issues of power, Corey, that you've brought up that, in particular, as a white woman who is overeducated and has had many privileges through a suite of my social identities, it's really important for me in any conversation with a mentor or mentee to be thinking about and reminding that, what I'm thinking and the story that I'm telling myself when I listen to people share their experiences, I'm listening in the context of how it is or how it was for me. And so that that's where the curiosity and that's where this sort of questioning and iterative process of me saying, say more, tell me more, what's going on for you? What does success look like for you? What does mentoring mean for you? can be so important. So that thinking about how many stories there are is important, and then the second piece that has resonated a lot with me is remember that you're telling people or sharing how it is for you, not how it is.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, so I think BRAINS is a great segue to sort of talk about the many different kinds of people that can be mentors, right? So I think most of what we've been talking about so far has really been like the PI mentor/ mentee kind of model, but BRAINS is peer mentoring. I would love for you to talk about your peer mentor circles, and any other examples of the peer mentoring, near peer mentoring, all these other people that are in our lives, and we have these great, productive relationships with that we might not necessarily think of as a mentor, but definitely count in this space.

Claire Horner-Devine:

Yeah. I would love to talk about that. I think the thing that comes to mind first, when thinking about peer mentoring is the importance of recognizing peers and near peers as people with incredible expertise and experience and ability to help you. Like all the people you know have incredible possibility in asking you questions that can totally shift, stretch, change how you think and open up new possibilities and new stories for how you might move forward, how you might define success, right. And how you might align your values with some decisions that you might be making. So peers are incredibly powerful in a growth mentoring network kind of space. So in the BRAINS program, a core part of our program is peer coaching circles. We started them as peer mentoring circles and life is such a work in progress and a learning process that we realized over time that they are not peer mentoring circles. They're really peer coaching circles. And they're incredible. So actually, let me say the difference between coaching and mentoring, because I think that that is really important. Um, so if you had a Y axis that was like a relationship or process, and at one end you had asking and at the other end of that axis, you had telling, that the mentoring and advising space would be more in the telling part of that axis. Um, sharing, telling. Coaching is more up in the, the asking part along that axis. Now of course this is not a black and white coaching or mentoring all the time, it's a gradation, as everything seems to be in life, but in the peer coaching circles, you meet every other week with a group of five to six peers. So people who are at the same or a similar career stage with whom you share a suite of identities. So in our BRAINS program, they're postdocs or early career, uh, pre tenure or tenure equivalent, researchers in neuroscience. And then they all identify as members of a marginalized or underrepresented racial or ethnic group or individual with disability. So still a wide range of identities, but some shared experiences. And they also really share values around inclusion and excellence. And in those circles, the peers act as coaches for one another, and they basically learn basic coaching skills that allow them to use questions and curiosity to help their peers figure out what they want to do about situations and how to move forward. So it's incredibly empowering. Um, it's really simple, and it means that you, as a participant, get to decide what's gonna work for you because you know better than anyone else what's going to work and how you want to do things so that it really resonates with, like I said at the start, your own success that you define in your values.

Corey Welch:

I love that answer and that just delineation between coach and mentor. And I'm thinking about ways that I bounce between those two, depending on where I'm at with the student or where I'm at with the mentee and where I'm at when I need help from my mentors. The peer to peer learning is a core value of the program I run. You have to give back to the community is a core value. And as such, if they go do an impactful professional development activity of any kind, a research internship at NIH, NSF, et cetera, then those students know that they're going to come back and teach a workshop to their peers. And this is how I can scale what I do to 160 students in the program with just me, and that modeling of mentoring really helps the students understand that, you know, they're already a mentor or a leader in their family, being the first in their world to go to college or they're a minority or low-income population, et cetera. I loved the description you described Claire. And I just think the scaling of this when we think about diversifying the STEM workforce or diversifying mentoring opportunities for all students, I think this is a great way to go.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

Yeah, I'll bring it back, maybe from my early career perspective to how we can find mentors, um, in terms of who can be a mentor. I'll do a quick anecdote and I'll say, uh, you know, Drs. Angela Byars-Winston and Christine Pfund who are leaders in the field of mentoring themselves.

Claire Horner-Devine:

And who we love![laughs]

Fatima Sancheznieto:

But yeah, became my mentors in the field of mentoring, uh, before I even knew that this is the field that I wanted to go in. And it happened because I literally told someone in my program that I had written a blog and Chris and Angela were coming to give mentor training, and this person was like, you need to have dinner with them. And, you know, they had like five minutes. There was another time I remember where literally the only time I could get Chris's time was walking her from the conference we were at to her hotel room[laughs] and she turned around and said to me, you should do a Ted Talk at some point and five years later, she is now my supervisor and I've given a Ted Talk. So those kinds of things stick. But I think the thing that sticks with me is they don't have to be formal mentors, right. Show up, ask questions. And with the near peer stuff, I love mentoring other people. Um, and sometimes that honestly just happens over Twitter. Like my DMs are open and people will send me a message and say, Hey, I need help in this, or, you know, what do you think about that? And then, that person, even if it's just for a brief interaction, becomes a mentor, right, and then maybe a mentorship relationship develops from that. But I think there is something to be said about reaching out to people and asking, I would say, when you're doing the ask, don't just say, oh my gosh, I want you to be my mentor, because that feels very scary, but have a very specific ask, right? Like do the Inigo Montoya method. I don't know if you all have heard of it, but it's like, you introduce yourself with your name, how you're connected to the other person, and then what your specific ask is, like set the expectations. So, that was a lot, but that sort of...

Corey Welch:

Without the dying part.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

Without the dying part, yeah. Hopefully!

Claire Horner-Devine:

Thank you, Corey.[laughs]

Marguerite Matthews:

And I will put in a plug for our next episode that will talk a little bit more about going about finding a mentor, even if you're a shy person and maybe you don't connect it to that person. Um, so thank you for sort of priming that, Fátima.

Corey Welch:

Just to build off of Fátima's last comment, I was the only Native American in every grad program I've been in. But I made sure, particularly when I'm at my second institution, that I, um, found other Natives to hang out with. And none of them were in science, but this was a community that was really supportive. And when I was thinking about quitting my PhD at one point, that was what kind of kept me supported in ways that I wasn't sure I knew how to ask for within my existing cohort, within my department, within my PI relationship and my grad committee. And so that part of intentionality that you've been talking about, and formal and informal mentoring opportunities, the power that can have for you. Um, I just think really needs to be highlighted. So thank you for bringing that up, Fátima.

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah, and thinking about sort of these informal/ formal relationships, can you all talk a little bit more about this? And Claire mentioned the difference between coaching and mentoring, but what about advisors, advocates, sponsors, supervisors. There's so many different terms that I think we bundle up into mentorship maybe you all can speak to this, but also I heard Corey mention being on a continuum of coaching and mentoring. And so it seems that there are people who can play more than one role of one of these supervisor, mentor, coach. So help us define sort of what some of these terms are and should someone play multiple roles?

Fatima Sancheznieto:

I just had this conversation with my partners, not with mentors, but the question came up, what do we call each other, right?[laughs] And I said, I don't care what we call each other as long as we are aligned on the expectations of what that means. And I think as long as the people in the relationship have sat down, and even if it means making a list. Okay, what does that mean for you and I to be in this relationship, right, professionally, um, are you going to send emails to people in your network and say, look at this great grad student that I have, right? Are you going to introduce me to people at conferences? Um, how often are we going to meet to talk about what needs to change in this relationship? Are you going to give me advice about my career? Are you going to support me about being a trans student going through a PhD program? I think there is so much overlap between these terms because a lot of the roles that people have played historically in science involve these pieces and we tend to call them different things. And so I think it's important to draw distinctions between them. But I'm more concerned about people drawing distinctions between them who are in the relationship because it's different for different people.

Claire Horner-Devine:

Yeah. I think that that is crucial, and w hat you're making me think about is that language in this case, all these terms or labels, for some people can be opportunities. And so, you know, if I were to write a story about Corey right now, you know, you tell Corey these 10 different terms and labels and roles, and I can imagine him saying, Ooh, I can do a little of this, little of that. Oh, this student needs sponsorship right now. I'm going to act as a sponsor. So, Corey, I'm making some assumptions, but I think they're mostly positive, so [laughs] I hope that's okay. For someone else, it could be that those terms serve as constraints. Well, this is what a sponsor does and I'm not your sponsor, so I can't do that, right. So what do you do with that? I think, again, this is where transparency is really important. Where possible, people in a relationship have that discussion. And, you know, are you going to give me advice? Well, you could say, I would love you to give me advice on X. A problem comes up there, or a challenge, in that often we have hierarchical relationships where there's some really real social and positional power differences. And it can be hard for the more junior person or the person that has less power to make some of those asks. So there is an extra responsibility when you identify that you are in powerful positions to help create opportunities for the other person to ask. Like what else do you need? You know, just to be really helping to prime those conversations. Um, it's also an opportunity where institutions can think about how can we help the folks in our community understand what goes into being a sponsor, an advocate, a mentor, an advisor, a coach. What are all those things? What could they look like? How can they co-exist? So to give people a way of knowing that they can live as a number of these different labels or identities, um, from their own position and their own power. And that, that actually might be a way that they can be contributing to the community. They don't always have to make a choice between one or the other.

Marguerite Matthews:

I like that.

Corey Welch:

I just want to say since Claire, you know, called me out, how dare you?[background laughter]

Claire Horner-Devine:

I know oh my god, right?[background laughter]

Corey Welch:

I'm kidding. Of course.

Claire Horner-Devine:

Oh, those poor thousands of students.

Marguerite Matthews:

I am ready for this book. I actually want this book to happen. Can we do that?

Claire Horner-Devine:

The story of Dr. Corey Welch...[background laughter] But I bet actually, if you asked those thousands of students that you have touched, that there would be lots of different stories about who you are as, you know, we could say mentor, but I am sure that some of them would use other language. I'm sure that some of them would emphasize your roll in sponsorship. Some would emphasize your role in psychosocial support, you know, and in different ways.

Corey Welch:

Sure.

Claire Horner-Devine:

And that's all from you, right. From one person. Um, and that's where I think mentoring is amazing, right? When you are interacting, first of all, that many people is amazing, so thank you on behalf of everyone. And, imagining all the roles that you can and get to play in so many different people's lives. That's where you're being really intentional about mentoring and supporting individuals in a whole ecosystem of scholars.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

Yeah, Claire. And I'll say the one, one thing I'll add to what you just said, cause it stuck with me was you mentioned the institutional dynamics and I think that's when it gets really important to define these labels and to define these roles, because then we're talking about what responsibilities are people in power, i.e. supervisors, or PIs, or, you know, whatever you want to call the person doing the mentoring, um, is taking on when they take on a student, as opposed to when the student is seeking out these relationships informally to expand and enhance their own network. And I think, that's when it gets really important, even more so to be transparent, because of those power dynamics and because that aspect of responsibility.

Corey Welch:

Yeah. That's a fantastic point. Your first comment related to understanding what the individual barriers or challenges for that student is in relation to the institution and then their major or their STEM subdiscipline, and trying to prepare them. And I just hate to say, this is the reality for right now is, um, they're navigating some toxic places. And so, the nice thing I say from the students from historically excluded backgrounds, if they're already here in front of me at an institution in grad school or undergrad, they already have a PhD in navigating our society and structural barriers. To me, this is that strength based perspective that I think leads to better scientists, better health professionals, better leaders.

Marguerite Matthews:

Thank you all for sharing your wisdom today. Can I ask each of you one last piece of parting advice to give to our audience?

Fatima Sancheznieto:

I guess when it comes to early career researchers, the one thing I always say is, all of these tips and strategies that we give you are in order to empower you, not to place the burden on you to do the work. Um, and that is ultimately the thing I always keep coming back to and reminding students it's the institution's and the people in power's responsibility to put in the work to make sure that you are getting the best environment ever. And unfortunately, that isn't the reality that we are faced with as underrepresented minorities in science. So my advice is follow all of these tools and resources and advice as a way to empower yourself, not as a way to burn yourself out because you're putting all the burden on yourself to make sure that all of these needs are getting met. You are worthy and deserve to have these needs getting met. So I guess my advice is this isn't on you, um, is what I'm trying to tell others like me.

Corey Welch:

I often tell students, it's not your job to fix the diversity problem at your institution. Just get the letters.

Marguerite Matthews:

That part!

Corey Welch:

Get some diversity, equity, inclusion receipts so that you can move forward and have some professional training, but it's the staff, it's the faculty, it's the leadership at our institutions that have to do this labor. And it's everybody's labor, not just women of color, LGBTQ plus, et cetera, so... Uh, as far as when I think about mentoring and changing around diversity equity inclusion, um, the solutions are out there. There's model programs. I'm ripping off a model program from UC Berkeley that I worked at. We just have to scale these things to address the needs of science. We need to change the institutional incentives around hiring retention, promotion and tenure, or in the training towards the STEM workforce and what it's like to work in the tech and other agencies in science. The solutions are out there. And I think if I was a higher education researcher, I would literally rip my hair out at this point. See what happened to me? I'm bald here.

Lauren Ullrich:

[laughs] This is an audio only podcast.

Corey Welch:

I know! The visual display of that joke; just didn't land it!

Marguerite Matthews:

For those in podcast land, Corey has a head full of hair![laughter]

Corey Welch:

Yeah.

Marguerite Matthews:

It's flowing and giving Fátima a little bit of a run for her money. So just FYI.

Fatima Sancheznieto:

Yeah well, I was going to say, Corey, I feel your pain. Hormones helped a little bit, but they didn't give me back everything.[laughter]

Lauren Ullrich:

[laughs] And what's your advice?

Claire Horner-Devine:

I think I want to start from the context that life is super messy. Um, it's complicated. And you know, landscapes, especially academic landscapes, can be really challenging and, can also be really hostile and Corey and Fátima have both talked about that some already today. So, that's the context that we're working with. So you're in that landscape and you bring so much to it, right? As Fátima said, you're deserving. You bring all your experiences, all your strengths, all your questions, all your looking around at that landscape saying, why is it like this? Couldn't it be like this? What's going on? I don't understand, right? So you bring all of that to where you are at this point in time. If I could borrow from the disability community, um, I think a lot about ATP. So not adenosine triphosphate, but it is something that is a source of energy. And in the disability community, when people talk about access, they say, Ask The Person, ATP. So here you are in this messy world in a complicated landscape that perhaps was not made by people that are anything like you, or was not made with your success in mind and you are here. You're deserving. So ask for what you want and what you need, um, until you find that you can get access to it. Now, it's on the institutions, right, to make access more accessible. And keep asking. Ask again and again and again, because you know what you want and you know what you need. So if you can do some reflection on what is important to you, what are your values and what do you want your success to look like out in this crazy world, then ask the people around you to help you figure out how you can get what you want and what you need to thrive.

Marguerite Matthews:

Love that. Lauren, do you have any advice?

Lauren Ullrich:

Yes. And actually it dovetails perfectly with what Claire was talking about, because I think, it's a lot about, like, having sometimes difficult conversations with people and like building relationships and things like that. And that in and of itself can be very hard for people. Like I used to be so conflict averse. I would, like, break out in hives thinking about having to have a difficult conversation with somebody. And it was hard on my mentoring relationships. It was hard even, you know, on friendships and till I was put into a situation where I had no choice but to speak up for myself. And that's really not the best way to learn that lesson. But I am grateful that I went through it because it taught me that with practice, you can get better at these things. And even though, you know, still sometimes I do feel that way, I know now, this is survivable. You can do it. You might feel bad for a little bit, but it's not the end of the world. And things have gotten easier and easier and easier the more I practice. So I think, if anything that we've been talking about in this episode feels like I could never do that. I want to say, I think you can. I think it just takes practice. Bite off little pieces. Start with a small conflict or a small thing that you've been avoiding, and then you can kind of build your way up to conquering those bigger things and really feeling like you can be your own advocate. Uh, Marguerite, what about you?

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah, I think I'd just love to build off of these points. Your experience has power and authority and a title doesn't create power, right? Who you are right now, today, um, your CV may be three lines and you have something to offer someone else, so I guess my encouragement goes out to all the people who don't consider themselves mentors or would love to be a mentor, but maybe they, they are having some of these anxieties that Lauren just mentioned. And remember that this process is creative discovery and you get to discover what you have to offer, and I think something that Fátima really outlined very well is that it's okay for you to define what you have to offer someone. And that thing that you say, you can expect this from me. This is what I feel really good about. This is what I know. And I'm happy to help you find someone else to help you with these other things. I'm kind of like Claire, like as a mentor, as a person in a position to help other people, like, that's one of my favorite things about being a part of formal mentoring programs is that I get so much from it. I hope my mentees get something from it.[background laughter] Like really, I am the winner for this. So I really see this as an awesome opportunity for so many of you, uh, maybe you've never thought about it before, but you probably are and didn't know it. Um, and definitely just continue to step into that power, as Lauren was mentioning.

Lauren Ullrich:

That's all we have time for today on Building Up the Nerve. This season, we're ending every episode with a reflection question. So this episode, we invite you to reflect on, uh, consider some mentors you've had and characterize the type of mentoring relationship you've had with them. What characteristics did your most effective mentors share? Thank you to our guests this week for sharing their expertise. And thank you to NINDS program director, Dr. Bob Riddle, who composed our theme song and music. We'll see you next time for episode two, where we discuss how to find a mentor.

Marguerite Matthews:

You can find past episodes of this podcast and many more grant application resources on the web at NINDS dot NIH dot gov. Be sure to follow us on Twitter@NINDSDiversity and @NINDSFunding. You can email us with questions at nindsnervepod@nih.gov. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on apple podcasts or your favorite podcast app of choice, so you don't miss an episode. We'll see you next time.