file under: PROCESS NOTES
this one is from: LIZ

I am evidently a bit of a monster: I am unbothered by, and sometimes even enjoy, listening to recordings of my own voice. But reading my own quotes from interviews? Yiiikes. So it’s taken me longer than it should have to read and share a rather important thing I did earlier this year. In April, I was interviewed by editor Cheri Sirois for a Conversations feature in the journal Cell (it’s paywalled, sorry, but you can email us for a PDF).     

WHY IT MATTERS: Cell is one of the really important journals in the biochemistry & molecular biology space, so I knew I was functionally on stage in front of thousands of researchers. More importantly to me, I knew that this piece was going to be part of a special “focus issue” dedicated to immunology, which just happens to be the originating discipline of the non-profit I co-founded in 2021, Solving For Science (we often call it SolvingFor or abbreviate to SFS). SolvingFor gave me an incredible opportunity to create a brand-new professional development course last year. The 10-hour ENGAGE program is the first time I’ve ever really been able to dedicate an entire block of programming to the underlying values and philosophies of why we do science communication and public engagement, instead of rushing into the details of how to do it.     

This interview was an incredible opportunity to distill complex ideas for an important audience, all by using the skills that we teach to convey the values that animate our teaching. Tidy, isn’t it? It is also a gift that keeps on giving: I don’t just have a product to share, I have an opportunity to learn from the process. Each interview I do is a chance to iterate and improve on my interviewing strategies and tactics. I love working this way! It gives me a chance to celebrate the things that went well and to minimize agonizing over the things that didn’t, because I can learn from them.