Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome to the Cohort Sisters podcast, where we give voice to the stories, struggles and successes of Black women with doctoral degrees. I'm your host, dr Yama Cola, and today we have a true trailblazer in our midst Dr Jamie Valentine Miller. She made history as the first African American woman to earn a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University, and her journey has been one of breaking barriers and inspiring change. She's the founder of the organization African American Women in Physics and she's committed to fostering diversity in STEM. Dr Miller's outreach work with young physicists and engineers is equally impactful and, beyond her thriving career, she's a wife, a mother, a licensed Sumba instructor and an explorer of cultures through travel and cuisine. So welcome to the Cohort Sisters podcast, dr Miller.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. I'm looking forward to a good conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:14

So am I. So I know that we just kind of heard about your accomplishments and accolades, but tell us a little bit about who you are like really like where you from, where do you live? What are some things that you like to do when you are not being a? Well, I guess you can't stop being a trailblazer in STEM.

Speaker 2: 1:29

But what are some?

Speaker 1: 1:30

things that you like to do when you're not on the clock.

Speaker 2: 1:33

So I mean I'll start from the beginning. I'm originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I grew up in a time, fortunately, where there was a thriving program to encourage minorities who were interested in engineering careers. It was prime Philadelphia regional introduction from minorities to engineering and that program allowed kids who were interested in engineering and who had some talent and math to spend each summer on a different local university campus learning prep for classes that they would take in the fall, taught by campus students. So you got like this whole pipeline of energy and education where you have professors, you had undergrad, you had grad students, you had high school, you had middle school. I think I started in around seventh grade and I stopped around the 11th grade. So I was very fortunate to be a part of that program. I went to a gifted middle school, which also helped. You know, even though it was a, it was. It was kind of influx at the time because Philadelphia is a city that back in the 80s was still doing busing and desegregation, so there was some challenges there, but I feel fortunate for the time I was there.

Speaker 2: 2:47

When I got to high school, I attended a vocational technical high school, which means that everybody had a trade. So I'm a big believer in having a trade. If college is not for you, there might be a trade that will help you to have a very successful and profitable life. My trade was computer science, so that put me on a college track, and during my senior year, the you know, we had our college fair. It's a small school but the college fair came and different universities came, and I was very fortunate that the alum national alumni president for Florida A&M University was from Philadelphia, and so he personally went and took a team to every single high school in Philadelphia, including my little hood high school, and at the end of their spiel he was like all right, now I want to see your valedictorian and your class president. And I said, well, doesn't he want to talk to me too? And he said, well, why would we want to talk to you? And I said, well, I have the highest SAT score in the school for the past five years. All right, well, you come to, you come to. And so from that they hosted a trip for top students in Philadelphia who were interested to travel down to Tallahassee to Florida A&M University for their student preview week. We got to meet the president one on one, Dr Frederick Humphries. May he rest in peace. And he, on the spot, offered me a full four year scholarship, including four summer internships, to Lawrence Live More National Lab. I mean, who could say no? Right, I was like I'm in, get my t-shirt, I'm going to be here, I'm a rattler, let's go. So that is how he ended up attending Florida A&M University.

Speaker 2: 4:27

While I was there, I had a great time. I learned a lot, I made a lot of good friends, and it was really a unique time at the university because the president focused on bringing in as many top black dollars undergraduates as he possibly could. So two of my four years something like that we had more national merit scholars than Harvard, and so it's not weird for me to be a physics major. My roommate was a chemistry major, my current husband, who I met at Famuse, Computer Science, and there was a girl who won a million dollars in scholarships and I just had this one. So I didn't feel like I was standing out by being a physics major. It was very normal to be a black scholar at that time, and so it was a wonderful place to learn and grow.

Speaker 2: 5:15

When I left FAMU, I applied to graduate schools, and I'm going to do a little more detail here than I would do for most, because this is the cohort system, so I want to make sure that you all know. When I got ready to choose a graduate school, my advisors at Famuse said I got into a number of good schools and they said you should go to Vanderbilt because we know people there, we know that they have had other people who have graduated. We know you'll be well treated, we can peek in on you. And I said I am going to pick this Ivy League school because it's Ivy League and that's what I did. And so I went to Brown University in Rhode Island where it was a very good school. I had a great learning opportunity and I did good research.

Speaker 2: 6:03

But I really was challenged with those qualifying exams. It was two days, eight hours a day, and I took it once. I failed. I took it a second time and I did not pass and so I had to leave. So I said, OK, I talked to my advisor at FAMU, I talked to my research advisor at Brown and my advisor at Brown said Jamie, I know that you are excellent in the lab and you can be a good physicist. If you choose to reapply to grad school, I will write a strong letter for you.

Speaker 2: 6:32

And of course, everybody at FAMU was like we know you can do it, you should go to Vanderbilt. I'm going to go to Vanderbilt. And so I put on my brown sweatshirt and I printed my resume on very nice paper Y'all don't do that anymore. And I went to the National Society of Black Businesses Conference, which was February. I think I had the exam in January, the conference was in February, and so I said I'm going to go to every recruiter who's at this conference because these are schools who actually really are interested in having black students and helping them to succeed and do their best.

Speaker 2: 7:11

And when I got there I was really struck by the students and a professor who at the table for Johns Hopkins University, because they were so chipper, they were just happy and cheerful. And so in my opinion at that time, at Brown the undergraduates were deliriously happy and the grad students were really kind of miserable. But at Hopkins the undergraduates are so stressed out because they're 65% pre-med, they're 25% engineering everybody needs to A in physics and the grad students are kind of like hey, you know what?

Speaker 1: 7:45

we've got to live.

Speaker 2: 7:46

So I made the switch, I applied and got in and switched to Johns Hopkins University, which was a great move for me. Long story short, I was the first African-American woman to get a PhD in physics at Johns Hopkins University. But as I look back and as I have done my research, which I'll talk about a little bit more I was also the first African-American woman to get a degree in physics from Brown University, brown founded in 1764. I was the first black woman to leave FAMU and continue on to get a PhD in physics in physics, not also in physics. So I'm like Dr first and I own it now and I'm super happy for all of my experiences. But for all of you out there who are also Dr first, nobody is going to tell you. Nobody told me until I started doing research on it. So if you've never heard of somebody at university with you I get a PhD in biochemistry, you might be the first, and you know, look it up and claim it. So that's my educational experience.

Speaker 2: 8:49

As I was finishing up at Hopkins, I was really feeling a sense of isolation and so there was a. The year was like 05. And so I went to the big physics conference and then we went to there was an international conference for women in physics in Rio, rio de Janeiro, brazil, and then I went to the NSBP conference and so I had met all of these different black women in various fields in physics and I said I'm just going to start, I have a notebook, I'm going to write their name down, what school they're at, what's the email address, and then I converted that into an Excel spreadsheet, I made it to a website and then, as I continued to keep track of all of these different women in physics, eventually that became African American women in physics incorporated. And so now we are a small nonprofit who seeks to continue to increase diversity in physics, astronomy and all related fields. We do we certainly help undergraduates, grad students and postdocs and we do what we can to help them to be encouraged and stay on track.

Speaker 2: 9:53

And we also do senior scientist check-ins, where we talk to the older dolls in physics and astronomy and we make sure that they are okay and we listen to what they have to say for hours on end if they want to, because the truth of it is that people older than my generation and I'll be 50 next year if you were a woman in STEM and you're older than me. If you decided to start a family, you might have gotten kicked out of your lab and lost your health insurance. That would still happen in the 90s. So a lot of our older scientists don't have children. Some do, many don't, and so I'm all of their daughters and I just check in on them and make sure that they're doing okay.

Speaker 1: 10:35

Yeah, oh, my goodness. So many amazing things that you brought up. I'm like where do I even start? Do I talk about the childhood programs? Do we go into the intergenerational nature of your organization? I kind of want to go in chronological order, so we're definitely going to get back to AAWIP, but let's start. Why physics? What is it about physics that interested you, that sparked your curiosity?

Speaker 2: 11:05

So I was really good in math and science. I can recall my junior year in high school. I'm not athletic, I'm kind of classy, but I was some team manager, so I can keep the statistics and you know all that stuff. And so I would miss the physics class two or three days a week, but I always show up on exam day and I was like, ah, but I would do well in the exams. And so my teacher, mr Rabinowitz, was like you know, you're really good at this, you have a talent for it.

Speaker 2: 11:35

And so because of that prime program, I knew I wanted to choose an engineering field. And because I grew up in the Projects of North Philadelphia, I knew I needed a full scholarship. And so when I looked at all the magazines I said, okay, well, everybody in their mama is major engineer and nobody's choosing physics. So I'm going to pick physics because it will increase my opportunities to get a full right scholarship, because all the crazy people are going to choose physics. I couldn't choose anything when I was like I will increase my eyes to get a full ride if I choose physics. And that did work out for me. So I had an interest, of course, and I had a natural talent towards it, but most it was because I really needed a full ride scholarship.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Yeah, I love the calculations that you are already doing in high school. I know what I need to succeed in life and I'm going to make it happen Good for you. I don't know if high schoolers today are thinking that way, with all the TikToks and whatnot to occupy their time, but I love that tenacity and really the desire to control your own destiny. So I appreciate you sharing your experience at Brown, because there aren't a lot of people who talk about. Actually, I haven't met a lot of people who have had to transfer doctoral programs unwillingly, and so can you kind of talk about how did you feel when they said that you couldn't stay and how did you channel that feeling into action? Like, did you wallow a little bit in your thoughts, did you cry, and then how did you kind of transform and then pick yourself up and then start going to that conference to find another program for you?

Speaker 2: 13:12

So for me, of course, you know, when we're young we know everything. So I'm like, oh, this is a travesty, I've been robbed. But I mean I know that, like looking back on the question, that I didn't perform up to the highest standard, so it's fine. But I also knew I'm a good scientist, Like it's okay. So I gave myself maybe a day or two to have a pity party and to cry and you know, and call my mom and all that stuff. But then I reached back to my professor, the family, and I talked to my researcher Pfizer, who's James Dallas. He's still at Brown today and I said, OK, well, let's make a plan to move forward. Either I can go back to Philly or preference president McDonald's or I can reapply to grad school. Because that was always my fallback, which is not a great fallback Because, as I haven't mentioned, I'm a patent examiner for the US Patent and Trademark Office. I could have left Brown and taken this very same job and had a great life.

Speaker 2: 14:08

But for me, I was so focused on getting the PhD because my entire undergraduate career they're like well, if you're going to major in physics, you have to get a PhD. Because part of the goodness that comes out of HBCUs is that they push you towards the highest goals possible and they inspire you and hype you up like, look, you're going to do it, you're going to be great. Everybody oh yes, we're all here for you. So when I failed that exam and I reached back to those professors, they said to me oh, this professor also had to leave this program because it's a program. It is common In fact I don't know why Neil deGrasse Tyson left his program and finished somewhere else, but it's very common that people leave one program and finish somewhere else, whether it's an exam or an advisor, or the climate or whatever it is. And so I love to tell my story so that students know if it's not working, you can move, you can go somewhere else, because you can have a different experience. That would be more healthy for you.

Speaker 2: 15:09

So I at the time I was very embarrassed, I felt shame, but I also was very determined. I felt like this is something that I have a calling and a drive to do and nothing but God can keep me from it. And that's a color purple, but I'm going to continue as far as I can until somebody tells me that, you know, it's absolutely just can't be done. And so perseverance was a strong thing. Yes, I absolutely love that.

Speaker 1: 15:35

Another thing that you mentioned was how you were not only the first at Hopkins but you discover that you were the first, you know, in these other places. Can you kind of talk us through, like, how you actually went about figuring out you're the first, like? Did you email someone like and say, hey, can you confirm whether or not I'm the first black woman to get a job? Can you confirm whether or not I'm the first black woman to get a doctoral degree here? Just like, what did that actually look like?

Speaker 2: 16:03

So for me, I there's a young woman she's a current grad student named Jamel Watson Daniels and she completed her bachelor's in physics maybe five or six years ago and she's in. She's a rock star and she was like you know. She gave one of the class speeches at graduation at Brown and she's amazing all around. But in the articles that they wrote about her they said she is the first African American woman to get a bachelor's in physics from Brown University.

Speaker 1: 16:32

And I said oh, five years ago.

Speaker 2: 16:34

Wow, well, she's the first to get a bachelor's and we have no PhDs, then that makes me the first to get a master's. So first to get any degree, and then for FAMU. Because I keep the history of all black women in physics on my website at awpcom, I was able to see no other people had a bachelor's degree from FAMU who completed a PhD elsewhere.

Speaker 2: 16:59

Now I think that when I was 1718, if they had said to me oh, you have to get a PhD, after all, you'll be the first oh, my gosh, I would have been intimidated by my would have. I don't know that they knew or didn't know, but it would have definitely been too much of a way to bear. But also, we are the gatekeepers of our history and if we don't keep our history, nobody else is going to do it. When I call schools every year and say, oh, do you have any? You know African American women who have graduated or who are grad students, and for the most part they don't keep those statistics. The NSF does annual surveys but they didn't always ask questions on these things because our numbers were so low. So we're the gatekeepers of our history and a lot of us are first and we just don't know because we never asked. We're just like putting our head down and staying in the lab and getting our work done.

Speaker 1: 17:50

Yeah, yeah, that's so fascinating. I'm wondering, I'm like excited actually to hear if, after folks listen to this episode, if there's anyone who is like who finds out that they ended up being the first or that they will be the first if that's you and you're listening or watching, please let us know so we can help you up and celebrate you, because it is. It's amazing. But it's also astonishing to me that in the year 2023, they're still the first like we're still checking off boxes, and it's crazy. I love it for us, but it's still. I'm just like wow, in this millennia, we're still making history. We have a long way to go.

Speaker 1: 18:25

Let's talk about mentorships. When you finally landed at Hopkins at the program where people were chipper, that was I'm like envisioning people being happy at this conference and I feel like that's so funny. Did you have any black women mentorship? It sounded like you had a lot of really strong mentors at FAMU, but at Hopkins, what was it about Hopkins, aside from the graduate students being happy? What kind of mentorship did you receive there, especially if you've had any mentorship from black women or other women of color, how did how did that mentorship, kind of like pursuit, help you persevere?

Speaker 2: 18:59

So at Hopkins at the time there were no African American Professors in the physics department. It's the department of physics and astronomy and we didn't have any. Hopkins is very closely aligned with the space telescope science Institute, which is across the street. They run the Hubble and I think they were in the James West, the J W S T, and so I didn't get African American mentorship in the physics department. But I definitely have professors in the physics department who were in my corner and who were there to cheer me on when times got tough.

Speaker 2: 19:33

One thing that was very different about Hopkins is that when I left the physics department and met with other black grad students, 90% were in stem, as opposed to it Brown, the other black grad students. There was a huge program. There was a like all of it. Most of the black grad students were in social sciences and it was just like 5 of us who were, you know, physics, engineering or whatever, and so at Hopkins we were all in stem. So if I say, oh, I haven't seen sunlight in a week, they're like me, they could kind of relate to what's going on, and that made a difference to me.

Speaker 2: 20:10

So I had those close interaction. Also because Hopkins is in Baltimore, which is a predominantly black city. Most of the support staff is African American and so there's a cleaner lady who would come and clean my office every day and at the holiday she bring me a sweet potato pie baby you still here and she would look out for me, and the girl the coffee cart would look out for me and just check in on me. Because you know, you need many different types of circles of people who support you. You have your homegirls, you have your family, you may have a sorority, you may have, you know, friends from your elementary school. You need all of those different circles to support you in different ways, and so I got a lot of that happens.

Speaker 2: 20:52

I was involved in the black faculty and staff association, which was essentially people who've been at Hopkins for 30, 40, 50 years, and then admin or, as you know, whatever their position is.

Speaker 2: 21:04

They've seen it all, they know what everything is, and so that was very, very helpful for me and I'm grateful to all of those different circles for helping me to get through and, of course, my research advisor who was a very traditional Chinese tough love kind of advisor.

Speaker 2: 21:20

He treated me exactly the same way that he treated all of his Chinese students, except that I was not Chinese. I was like, oh, I'm being tortured. But in the end I was like, oh, actually he's. He's treating me the exact same way, but they understand it in a way that I didn't, until I read the book and I was like battle him of the tiger. Mother, if you have a Chinese research advisor, go get that book and read it. He was loving in the way that he knew, which felt very painful at the time. But now I recognize it as just tough love, to make sure that when I went out into the world that I would be prepared, that nobody could come at me harder than he was going to come at me. So I was ready for any question or any challenge.

Speaker 1: 22:06

Yeah well, I'm so glad that you had such a positive experience and that you were able to complete your degree so that you can continue to inspire others. I want to talk about, you know, towards the end of your dissertation process, towards the end of the doctoral degree, what were some of the different choices that you were weighing in terms of what your next career steps would be. Did you consider doing more research? Did you consider an academic career at all, and what were you kind of thinking at the time? And then how did that translate? Kind of walk us through your career path right after or right before you defended to the present.

Speaker 2: 22:42

Sure. So I watched a number of the African American professors who were at Hopkins and I noticed that not only do they have to do their research and be excellent, but they had to provide community service. They had to be the faculty advisor for the different African American student groups. They had to do campus outreach and local outreach and they were burning out and at the same time they had to always convince other people that I'm here because I'm qualified, not because I'm African American. And I decided for me. I was like I mean the physics, the pretty much prescribed route is you're going to do a postdoc and apply for an assistant professor and move forward. And so I was like I'm kind of halfway on that train, but also I don't want to spend the rest of my life proving to you that I'm qualified, I'm just tired. And so my advisor was like well, listen, I'm not going to let you set a defense date until you have a job. What will I say to your mother at graduation if you don't have a job? Oh right, it's very intimidating. And I was like you know what I'm going to take the first day, smoking.

Speaker 2: 23:49

And so the patent office at the time was hiring in huge numbers. They doubled the number of examiners they had over a two year period. They were hiring 100 people a month for two years and so I applied. I got in. It was eight months paid training and I said, okay, I'll do this, and then if these postdoc offers come rolling in, then I'll, you know consider. It turned out that this was the right job and the perfect job for me. I've been here for 17 years and I still love it and I still recommend it to people. But yeah, I took the job because I needed a job to get out of grad school.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Okay, but it turned out to be a job that you love. So can you talk a bit about how your doctoral training prepared or equipped you for the role that you have and that you love so much?

Speaker 2: 24:35

Yes. So what a patent examiner does is we read an application. It looks very much like a journal article. It's got an abstract, drawings, a description and all that stuff, and at the end it has a set of claims. We have to study those claims, make sure that they're written clearly and unambiguously, and then we search to see has this been done before? Is it novel and is it a non obvious improvement over what's already out there? Like so if you're just the first person to combine a camera and a telephone, that was really new. Now we have a camera phone, but now cameras have been out for a while. So if you just paint it blue, that's not really non obvious. Anybody could have done that. So my role is to search, see has it been done? If I cannot prove that it's been done before, then applicants and that is not obvious Applicant is entitled to a patent.

Speaker 2: 25:26

And so I get to look at new technology all the time. Because I was a grad student, I understand how to analyze a journal article. I understand how to look at a novel problem and break it into a substituent parts and see, you know boundary conditions, all that kind of stuff, and I'm fortunate that I'm placed in a technology that's related to the work that I did in grad school, so I do semi. I look at semiconductor devices and their methods for manufacture, and that also encompasses magnetic rim, which is kind of spintronics, which is where I did my graduate research. So I can remember. Oh, I remember it was 2013 when this guy gave a talk at the conference and everybody's like.

Speaker 2: 26:08

Oh my God. So I know when that article came out. I know right where to search for it to see if this is new or if they're just changing materials, if it's really significant, and so I love. The parts I love about my job is seeing new technology, being able to relate it back to things that are important to me from my previous research, and also knowing that the work that I do is important to somebody out there, because a single patent can spin off a whole company. So sometimes there's one guy waiting in his garage. He's like I can't wait to get my patent, and I know that the work I do is important. So that's some of the things I love about my job.

Speaker 1: 26:46

Yeah, I, it's always like so pleasant when people like really love the work that they do, and it doesn't happen that often anymore, I think, especially with millennials and Gen Z years. What do they call millennials? They call us like the job hoppers. So I always get encouraged when I hear folks who really find passion in the work that they do and also can relate that work to to their research, and so it doesn't feel as if your doctoral degree was a waste. In fact, it really has equipped you and made you an expert in your field so that you can do this role really really well and really excellently.

Speaker 2: 27:21

Out of curiosity, let me add one thing, because I work for the US federal government. They cannot give us big bags of money, so what they do instead is give us quality of life. So I have lived here in sunny Florida for the past 11 years. Every two weeks which is a pay period I need to get 80 hours in two weeks. I can get that done generally almost anytime, because I'm not a morning person, I'm an evening, though, so I can work from two to 10. That works, they're like, as long as you get it done.

Speaker 2: 27:53

If I want to take vacation, I can Smoosh my hours into the second part of the bye week. They are very flexible with that. I'm dressed up for y'all, but usually I'm in my pajamas. I'm able to volunteer at my son's school and to go to tech day or teacher what do we call it? They call it I can't think of the name teach in, where you teach the kids about where your profession is, and so I do that and I go and field trips. I'm able to spend some time with working on my nonprofit outside of my work hours. I really have a lot of flexibility and I have a reasonable salary, but it's not the big bags of money that I would get if I work in an industry.

Speaker 1: 28:34

I appreciate that context because I think that In STEM specifically, it seems as if the conversation is often in terms of career either academia or like high paying industry and so it's good to have additional options, such as a government job. That might not be eight figures, but you have a much higher quality of life. So thanks for reminding us that quality of life is just as, if not more, important than your salary when you are considering a postdoctoral career.

Speaker 2: 29:06

There's another question I just want to add one last thing, which is that, even because we're a government, we don't often recruit, but we are almost always hiring, because no engineer wakes up and says I want to be a patent exam and no lawyer is like who, I want to be patent exam, but the US Patent Office is the American Sphemesis Safety Net. We will hire you when you're fresh out of college with no experience. We will hire you when you retire from a big company, because nobody has patent experience with the only patent office. So if you're ever like, what am I going to do? Please consider Patent Office. Okay.

Speaker 1: 29:40

So actually, that was going to be well similar to a question that I had, which is you know what, what kind of fields? Perhaps? Are there any fields outside of STEM where if someone's getting a doctoral degree in that field, they would still be able to be eligible for a role at the Patent Office, or do you feel like it's, you know, specifically for folks who have specialized in STEM? So all?

Speaker 2: 30:03

examiners have to have a STEM degree, but there are roles in like HR and our outreach and education departments where the non-STEM people would be able to help.

Speaker 1: 30:12

Okay, yeah, thanks so much for clarifying that. So now I want to go back to talking about the African American Women and Physics Organization. I always also love chatting with folks who have nonprofits is a fellow nonprofit founder and executive director. Would love for you to share a couple of the initiatives that you've done to promote diversity and inclusion in STEM, and specifically in physics and astronomy.

Speaker 2: 30:39

So most of what we do is to build up a community, because most African American women who are in a physics or astronomy program they're probably the only one in their program, unless they're at an HBCU, and I think there's maybe four or five HBCU programs. So what we do is we have our small community. We have a private network where students can talk to each other and say, hey, you know, I'm in Iowa and I'm struggling my quantum class, and you can talk to somebody who's like I'm in Maine and I'm struggling my quantum class. They're using the same textbook, so they can have that relation and that feeling of like I'm not the only one which often helps people to remain in their programs rather than leaving. They don't feel like they're so isolated. So that's really part of the core of what we do. The next piece is the record keeping, because we keep track of everyone who has a PhD in physics or astronomy or planetary science. We also try to keep track of nuclear science. We're expanding the idea of what a physicist is, because some people who do physics don't have physics degrees. Some people have physics degrees, don't do physics, and so we're just trying to keep track of that. Another thing is that. Oh gosh, it was right on the tip of my tongue, it's gone.

Speaker 2: 32:04

We want to make sure that the greater physics communities are doing things that serve African American women in particular. So, for example, we noticed and read that there has been some issues with harassment at certain conferences, and when we talk to the people who run those conferences or when we read about what the people who are managing the conference are doing, our young ladies still don't feel safe, and so we have joined the society's consortium against harassment in STEM with two M's, and our board members attend their conferences and are participating to make sure that we know how best to inform our members on what they can do so that they don't become victims of harassment, and so they know what to do if they are harassed at a conference. We also want to enforce societies on what they can do to reduce likelihood of harassment. So there was an example, and this came from a training I had there was a conference and they had a post-accession for undergrad, and so they were in a narrow hallway, but then at the conference room at the end of the hallway they had some kind of like let's call it old scientist wine happy hour, and so you had all these old scientists coming out of their social hour down this narrow hallway, past all of these undergraduate students, and it just was not a great look.

Speaker 2: 33:31

So we want to make sure that conferences are planning and are aware of ways that they can reduce opportunities for harassment. Yeah, so we are. That's another one of our main focuses is reducing harassment of our students and our members and our adults, because it's not just students when they are attending various conferences and, of course, senior scientists check in and I think and yeah, retaining that history, I think that's the main thing we also have a little book club that we do, we've done for the past couple of years where. So I think our 1st 1 was Malika Grayson's book like by girl PhD. I might have to check my shelf and she was kind of guide to the PhD.

Speaker 2: 34:19

Thank you. She was kind enough to do a book author chat with our members and we get copies of the book. And then the next year we did Dr Chanda Prescott Weinstein's book and she also chat with our students. The title is why am I blanking? Oh, my gosh, I'll Google it. Chanda, don't hate me, I know the title of the book.

Speaker 1: 34:44

We'll also put it in the show notes so folks will be able to find it.

Speaker 2: 34:49

Thank you, it's called. It'll be in the show notes Disorder cosmos. That's it. And then this year another African American woman in astronomy, dr Alma Schild, published her memoir and so she was kind enough to have her publisher send copies for our members and we're going to try to do a book chat. She's on a book tour so I'm not sure if we'll be able to get her to come to speak with us this year, but we definitely going to discuss the book because there's so many good lessons in there about you know the various ways that we show up as we go through these different programs.

Speaker 1: 35:27

I am so excited we actually we also had a book talk with Dr Grayson in our first year, which is exciting that our worlds have overlapped in terms of the books who are interested in.

Speaker 1: 35:37

There's so few of us doing not only STEM work but especially, like now, writing about our experiences of going through graduate school and turning those experiences into advice for other people. So Dr Grayson's book is one that we absolutely love and recommend to our community as well. I want to kind of circle back to this intergenerational piece that you've mentioned, not only in a AWIP, but kind of circling back to the prime program that you did when you were a kid, because you kind of talked about there were faculty and graduate students and undergraduates and high schoolers and middle schoolers and kind of just thinking about how we develop the pipeline for people to be interested people like us to be interested in STEM. And then now on your organization side, you are not just cultivating and supporting graduate students and in physics and related disciplines, but, as you mentioned, senior sister, check in what was the title? Again, sorry.

Speaker 2: 36:33

Senior scientist check in.

Speaker 1: 36:35

Yes, senior scientist, check in. So I'm wondering to what is the importance to you of working intergenerally? Ooh, let me start that again. What is the importance to you of working intergenerationally in terms of supporting the diversity, inclusion and an equity for black women in physics? Why is that important to you to do that work across generations?

Speaker 2: 36:59

Well, two reasons come to mind. The first one is that our seniors still have a lot to teach us. I know that as I get older, there are lessons that I would not have told other undergrad when I was younger, but today I'm like, oh, this is important that you know this. And so I think that as our senior scientists get older and I know that they would not love me call me senior scientist even though they're over 70, but I'm going to call it when I call it I'm sorry, but they have lessons still to teach us. And so the first part is that I want them to have the opportunity to still share and teach and help us to grow. The second part is that I want to make sure that that they're doing okay.

Speaker 2: 37:47

I'm a student of Florida and I'm university and we had a famous alumni, althea give the tennis player, and at some point it came to light that she was struggling and it was like, oh my God, so alumni, you know they donated money or whatever to make sure that she had everything she needed in her later years, and so I just want to make sure that none of our senior scientists are struggling and we don't know about it, if there's a way that we can help, and a lot of times they just want to talk. They just want to talk and I'm like you know what I grew up my grandma. I have a listen to ear and I have been in for hours, so that's what I do. But they do still have a lot of good ideas and they call me when they're like I think you should do this with a WIP and I cannot ignore them because they'll just call me again. So I have to listen to what they say and they still have a lot, a lot to contribute, even if they're not physically in the lab.

Speaker 1: 38:41

Yeah, I really appreciate that. You've inspired me to think more critically about how we can ensure that cohort sisters is also working across generations, because that hasn't been kind of like at the forefront of our work and our mission, but as you've now talked about it, I'm like nodding along like that's important and that's definitely been an oversight on our part. So thanks for inspiring change on this end of the work as well. So we're going to start winding down. I have one last kind of question about your specific experiences and then we'll wrap up with some general advice questions that we ask all of our guests on the cohort sisters podcast.

Speaker 1: 39:17

So, in addition to all the work that you do, you also are a motivational STEM speaker. Can you talk about how you tailor your motivational speeches, messages, workshops to different audiences? And again, I'm kind of curious about the. You know if you do anything differently in your speeches when you're talking to people of different ages, or when you're talking to STEM folks versus non STEM folks, where you're talking to predominantly black women in the room versus not predominantly black women in the room. Do you kind of tweak the messaging or the story in any way?

Speaker 2: 39:51

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 39:52

For each talk that I give I definitely spend some time thinking about who is the audience and how can I best reach them.

Speaker 2: 39:59

So if I'm talking to my son's fifth grade class is going to be a different talk that if I'm talking to undergrad and that's when I'm giving a talk at a QWIP, which is the conference of undergraduate women in physics, is diverse conference, it's all races but it's all women and gender minorities.

Speaker 2: 40:15

That's going to be a different talk than if I'm speaking at the National Society of Black Women. And so I try to tailor each talk to the audience so that I can best relate to them and I might highlight different parts of my experiences so that you know it may hit home differently for the different audiences. One thing that I do is I definitely have different slide decks for the different age groups. But if I'm talking to a general science audience, then I'm going to pull back on a lot of the detail physics as opposed to more like generalized experience, whereas if I'm talking, when I gave a talk at the Society of Physics students they were all about you know, I'm like I'm going to bring some equations in. I can bring my geek jokes. I got an Einstein joke in there.

Speaker 2: 41:01

I'm going to do it wrong.

Speaker 1: 41:02

So, yeah, I try to tailor it Nice. Thanks for sharing that. So if you had to go back in time and redo your doctoral journey, what is something that you would do differently?

Speaker 2: 41:15

I think that the world would be different if I had taken the advice of my advisors at FAMU and gone to Vanderbilt the first time. I probably would have finished in five years, instead of the 10 total that it took me between Brown and Hopkins. I probably would have pursued an academic route and that would be different, not just for me but for all of the students, the undergrads, the other professors, the people I would have interacted with. So I can't say that it would have been better for me. I can say that it would have been very different for me, for my family, for all the people who interact with me.

Speaker 1: 41:50

Interesting. I was not expecting that response. I have so many follow-up questions, but we're almost out of time. Okay, let me ask one follow-up question have you ever considered exploring an academic career?

Speaker 2: 42:04

My life goal used to be to be president of Florida A&M University. I have considered it. However, I think that, with a traditional route that's going to be close to me, I'm going to drop a couple bombs on you right now. You ready, okay? My husband retired last year at the age of 49.

Speaker 2: 42:24

Wow, good for him Along with Lockheed Martin, and so we're considering because I choose to work financially I don't have to work, so we're considering eventually choosing to live in Tallahassee for a few years and teach classes, but outside of the tenure process, because we're retired but we still have a lot to contribute and to give. It's something we're kicking around. We don't have anything on paper, but it's an option where we can still contribute to academia, but outside of the tenure process.

Speaker 1: 42:58

Yeah. I love that. I'm excited for that process when you get there and congratulations to him for retiring. So our last question excuse me, I'm a frog in my throat. So our last question is what is one piece of advice that you would give to current Black women and non-binary doctoral students, especially those who are in physics and other STEM fields?

Speaker 2: 43:23

Well, I'm sure that your other panelists have already given lots of advice about being in the lab and finishing grad school and stuff like that. My advice is outside of the lab. It is to be very critical about the relationships that you develop outside of the lab. Unfortunately, I had a relationship with a narcissist and what I've learned through extricating myself from that relationship is that narcissists love highly qualified academic people, they love a PhD, and then they want to try to destroy you. So if you find that you're in a relationship that excludes you from all of your family and all of your friends, that alienates all the people who love you, take a moment to see if you should extricate yourself from that relationship.

Speaker 2: 44:10

If you're in a relationship that is not serving you, it is okay to step back from that relationship. Even if I got married after I knew them for three months and three months later I got divorced, it's okay to get out of a bad relationship. So be critical about the relationships and the people that you have around you. You're smart. You can apply that knowledge to many different things. Also, apply it to your relationship.

Speaker 1: 44:36

You were right. So that advice that we have heard yet on the podcast, but it is an essential advice. So thank you so much for sharing it with us. Thank you for sharing so much of your story, your journey, your ups and your downs and your inspirational career with us today on the Co-Criticist podcast. Thanks again, Dr Miller.

Speaker 2: 44:55

And thank you for the invitation.

Speaker 1: 45:07

Thank you again for listening to this week's episode of the Cohort Sisters podcast. If you are a black woman interested in joining the Cohort Sisters membership community or you're looking for more information on how to support or partner with Cohort Sisters, please visit our website at wwwcohortsistuscom. You can also find us on all social media platforms at Cohort Sisters. Don't forget to subscribe to the Cohort Sisters podcast and leave us a quick review wherever you're listening. Thank you so much for joining us this week and we'll catch you in next week's episode.