Relaunching careers in scientific research and biomedical engineering - 5 years later, where are they now?

Five years ago we held a panel on launching or relaunching scientific research careers after a career break, working in an unrelated field, or after a delayed start. On April 7th, we bring back the same panel to talk about where they are now. This promises to be an excellent discussion about career progression, with each participant giving us a retrospective view of their career path choices, including comments on "what I wish I knew."

Panelists
Indira Krishnan, 13 year career break, Research Associate / Staff Scientist, Harvard Medical School
Enith Morillo, 9 year career break, President and Principal Consultant at Cadoret Global, LLC
Theresa Singleton, 8-month career break, Owner and Principal Scientific Writer at Singleton Science, LLC
Carol Waghorne, 10 year career break, Senior Curation Specialist at Trapelo Health

Moderator - Carol Fishman Cohen, CEO & Co-founder, iRelaunch (11 year career break)


Date and Time: 
  
April 7, 2021
6:00 - 7:00 PM

Agenda
6:00-6:05pm: Welcome
6:05-6:45pm: Panel Discussions
6:45-7:00pm: Q&A
7:00-7:30pm: Optional Networking

Location:  
Zoom

Cost:   
Members: $5; Non-Members: $15

Given our mission is to promote women's development in STEM we would like to offer a free spot in our workshops to those in transition between jobs or who cannot afford the ticket price. Please contact [email protected] if you qualify.

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Register Here

 

Speaker Bios

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of career reentry firm iRelaunch, which produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, works with over 100 global employers to build and expand their in-house return to work programs, engages with a community of more than 82,000 "relaunchers," and runs the iRelaunch Job Board. iRelaunch co-leads the STEM Reentry Task Force with the Society of Women Engineers, which has 32 corporate members, each charged with starting a return to work program for returning professionals in technical and other roles. Over 600 relaunchers have participated in Task Force company return to work programs and 86% have been hired. Cohen's TEDtalk "How to get back to work after a career break” has over 3.5 million views and has been translated into 30 languages. Cohen hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast, which has released nearly 170 episodes that have been downloaded over 270,000 times. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) Magazine article “The 40-Year-Old Intern” and writes regularly for HBR and other publications on career reentry topics. Cohen has been featured dozens of times in the major media and has addressed over 600 audiences. Cohen is a relauncher herself, having returned to work at Bain Capital after an 11 year career break before co-founding iRelaunch. A graduate of Pomona College and Harvard Business School, she resides in greater Boston

Indira Krishnan’s education includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and an M.S. in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi), India. At the peak of her professional career, as a Senior Scientist at Immunomedics, an antibody engineering biopharmaceutical company in New Jersey, she decided to go on a hiatus to focus more fully on the needs of her children. While on hiatus she continued her own professional development, completing coursework at Case Western University (RNA Structure and Function) and online continuing education in Experimental Genomics, teaching College-level Chemistry and Biochemistry and volunteering. Her passion to return to research led her to join the Career Reengineering Program at MIT. As a Career Reengineering Program Fellow, she completed a fellowship at Novartis in siRNA therapeutics along with serving as a Liaison between MIT and Novartis in their Biology to Biotechnology Bridge Program, a mentoring program for Post Baccalaureate students. She finally returned to research after a 13-year break when she secured a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Center for Life Sciences, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, in translational research using single-cell RNA sequencing technology. This was followed by Staff Scientist position in the Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School where she was the Project Lead for single cell RNA sequencing studies studying aging in Daphnia magna. Indira recently transitioned to industry as a Senior Scientist in the R & D department of Mission Bio, a single-cell sequencing company in South San Francisco, CA.

Enith Morillo is President and Principal Consultant at Cadoret Global LLC, a niche GXP quality and compliance consulting company that specializes in supporting emerging, virtual and early stage, small pharmaceuticals around the globe to successfully take their drug candidates into clinical studies. Before founding Cadoret Global, Enith worked as a Quality Consultant and Auditor, building phase-appropriate quality systems, managing quality operations, and traveling the world to qualify and oversee her Clients’ outsourced activities. Prior to consulting, Enith led quality operations and supplier quality at a Thermo Fisher Scientific site and held positions of increasing responsibility at a generics Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO), where she began her career as an analytical scientist. Enith is a passionate supporter of women and minorities in STEM careers and enjoys mentoring young professionals. She holds a Master & Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). 

Theresa Singleton, PhD is Owner and Principal Scientific Writer at Singleton Science, LLC. She holds a BS in nutritional science from Cornell University and a PhD in microbiology and immunology from Boston University School of Medicine. Theresa completed a Ruth L. Kirschstein postdoctoral fellowship in mucosal immunology at Children’s Hospital Boston. Towards the end of her postdoc, she learned about the field of medical communications and became an active member of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA). She took an 8-month career break in which she transitioned from the bench to an industry scientific writing position, from which she eventually branched out on her own. Theresa is a former AMWA board member and past president of the New England Chapter of AMWA. When she’s not in the office, Theresa enjoys studying and performing rhythm tap dance. She is a member of Percussive Urban Swing, a Boston-based jazz ensemble.

Carol Waghorne received her PhD in medical Genetics from the University of Toronto and then, as an Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, where she directed a nationally funded cancer research program. After moving to the US and retiring from her research career for 10 years, she obtained a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for re-entry into science careers in 2002. Under this program she worked as a research fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston. In 2008 she graduated with a master’s degree in Clinical Sciences from Harvard Medical School with a full scholarship from NIH.  She was able to reestablish her career in cancer research, this time in industry, first at ArQule directing their biomarker program and now as senior curation specialist at Trapelo Health.