Science and math have always been my interest. They provided solutions to my questions and material for deeper exploration, though I never thought I’d be a scientist growing up and truthfully did not really know what one was. Sure, I had heard of Galileo, Einstein, Bohr and Curie, but they seemed more like Rock Stars than actual day-to-day scientists. In college, I started by following the typical pre-med track – biology, chemistry, etc… It seemed the logical thing to do at the time. Plus, it gave my parents something exciting to tell their friends and colleagues. It went over particularly well with my mom since she was a nurse and hoped I’d following her footsteps into medicine. But college was my time to explore and something didn’t feel right about the pre-med track…maybe it was the overwhelming popularity of the major or the rigorous routine that needed to be followed to get into medical school. I just wasn’t having it. I tend to prefer the road less traveled. Maybe it’s the excitement of being the first to discover something new or maybe just an insecurity. One thing for certain is that it makes for a very winding road.

By the end of my second year, I had changed paths. Now, I was part of the MB&B (Molecular Biology & Biochemistry) program. It was a new major offered at my university, only two years old, and there were about 30 of us enrolled versus the 1000 or so pre-med majors. Now this was more my speed, plus it required that I actually join a laboratory and do research which was something I always wanted to do. For the next two and half years, I worked in a virology lab learning the tools of the trade: PCR, southern and western blotting, DNA sequencing, and cloning. At that time there weren’t Qiagen kits or automated gene sequencers--everything was done from scratch and usually following protocols passed down from generations of students and postdocs. I enjoyed my time in the lab and came to recognize my technical talents when it came to doing experiments, but once again something didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it was the many lonely nights in the lab, or the rollercoaster ride of success and failure at the hands of the PCR machine, or maybe it was the disconnect I was feeling between my work in the lab and how I was somehow helping society grow, or not.

By the time graduation came, I thought maybe I had made a mistake not going pre-med. I was in a tailspin, trying to locate the ground. I needed time to think, reorganize and find my purpose. So I took my BA and got a job in a local Borders bookstore, much to the chagrin of my parents (remember, they were hoping I was going pre-med and now I was making as much as my younger brother who happened to still be in high school). My time in the bookstore was truly a life altering experience. I was never much of a reader growing up. Rather, I’d lose myself in my imagination exploring the woods and river by my house or playing ball at the local schoolyard. But now the books seemed a have answers for me. I read voraciously discovering the world around me, the far off places I’d love to visit some day (being the typical American I didn’t travel much outside the country). It also helped me explore modern science from another perspective, looking at how pervasive it had become and how essential it was to societal growth and development. But at the same time I noticed how unequally distributed it was and when used inappropriately how much harm it can cause. It was this point in my life that I knew I wanted to explore this connection between science and society. I knew I needed to get closer to the action to see the process by which science gives way to medicine.

With bills racking up and needing a change, I took the technical skills I had learned in lab and looked for an opportunity to apply them. I got a job as a technician in a development stage biotech company. There I was able to get the inside scoop on the R&D process and the know-how of drug development. This led to a position at a cancer hospital in New York City and my eventual entrance into a PhD. Program. Getting a PhD in the biomedical sciences was more a right of passage for me than a defining career move. I knew going through the rigors of graduate training and the thesis defense would provide me with a wealth of knowledge and experience as well as give me the analytical tools to successfully navigate life’s challenges and complex problems. And being a card-carrying PhD also opened up many doors to networking.

During graduate school, I was amazed at what little training we received on the application and implication of our scientific endeavors. As my thesis project progressed, my community of scientific peers became smaller, more specialized. I went from being a member of the development genetics community to a member of the fly community to finally being one of a handful of people studying DNA repair in Drosophila. I wanted out. To think, I entered the PhD program expecting to expand my knowledge, but in the end found myself being relegated to a niche discipline understood by only a few. So, as I did many times before, I went exploring. I started taking classes in business, law, sociology and kept networking. I met some great people along the way who opened my eyes to the need for scientists to reach beyond the bench and help society understand science and technology.

I only first became aware of equity research while in graduate school. I never owned any stock and knew little about the capital markets. But this was the heyday of the day traders and the biotech bubble. Postdocs in the lab where I was doing my graduate work were constantly watching their portfolio of companies, taking positions in stocks or selling through their e-trade accounts almost daily, and at times what seemed almost hourly. Did they know what they were doing? Maybe. Did they make some money? I am not quite sure, but if they were like the other novice day traders of that time I can bet they were happy to have their science careers to fall back on. One thing was for sure, I was intrigued.

Then one day a postdoc in the lab landed a job in a hedge fund as an analyst covering the biotech sector. Months later, visiting the lab, she told me all about the exciting science she had been learning, from the newest HIV drug technology to the latest in therapies for cancer. To me, she was no more the specialist, but rather had become a generalist schooled in the translation of science into medicine. Being a biotech analyst seemed the right fit for me to begin my journey exploring the how the basic science I had for so long been doing in the lab and learning in school could be put to good work. And finally I could put that rollercoaster ride of success and failure to bed, at least as it pertained to doing bench science.

What my experiences to this point showed me was that I needed to keep assessing my situation, to seek out information when things become unclear, talk to as many people and read as much as possible, and never give up the search for what feels right. No one is going to force feed this information to you, so do your homework and be prepared. You never know when an opportunity will appear. In subsequent articles, I will provide you details on how I made the transition from scientist to equity analyst. I’ll provide you the names of resources I found helpful and hopefully some good advice. The road may be windy, but hopefully I can provide you guideposts to make it less bumpy. Stay tuned!!!