Sista, Sista! Graduate School Years - The Journey

In this episode Shekerah and Fatu continue their discussion with Ijeoma Kola, a public health historian of race and medicine. When she was younger, Ijeoma didn’t exactly have a science spark moment, but she was positively influenced by her mother’s career as a nurse. She remembers in middle school attending a summer program, Center for Talented Youth, at Johns Hopkins University, where she was first introduced to genetics and genomics. From this experience, Ijeoma was convinced that she would continue to study science and become a doctor. Things started off as she expected during her undergrad at Harvard University; however, one late night studying organic chemistry Ijeoma suddenly realized that maybe this career path wasn’t really for her. She wanted to help people, but didn’t see how memorizing amino acids was the best way to reach this goal. “Do I want to make people better by prescribing medicine, or do I want to make people better by changing the environment that we live in?—So their social health is better, so their neighborhoods are better, so that their socio-economic status is better. All of those things also shape our health and health outcomes,” explains Ijeoma. It took a little bit of quick thinking, but she was able to transition from her molecular biology major to a history and science major without losing any credits. After receiving her doctorate from Columbia University in history of public health, Ijeoma took an “eat, pray, love” style gap year to reset her thoughts on what to do next. After some brainstorming and reflecting on her own graduate school journey, she founded Cohort Sistas to support black women and non-binary individuals pursuing graduate degrees. Looking back on her journey, Ijeoma wishes she had given herself more grace and forgiveness along the way, to take care of herself not only intellectually but also mentally and physically.  The journey is hard enough as it is after all, and as long as it"s getting done, we are all doing a good job—it doesn"t need to be perfect. Tune into this episode to hear Ijeoma discuss: Mentoring and the impacts on her career journey How to shift in your career journey as you find new ways to reach your goals What skills and experiences inspired her to found Cohort Sistas Reach out to Ijeoma: info@cohortsistas.org  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ijeomakola/  And be on the lookout for her book!  More about Cohort Sistas: https://www.cohortsistas.org  To join Cohort Sistas:  https://community.cohortsistas.org  If you enjoyed hearing about Ijeoma’s journey, you might also enjoy: STEMLand Future of Science - The Journey Mentors of Incalculable Worth - Anthology Reach out to Fatu: www.linkedin.com/in/fatubm Twitter: @thee_fatu_b and LoveSciencePodcast@gmail.com Reach out to Shekerah: www.linkedin.com/in/shekerah-primus and LoveSciencePodcast@gmail.com Music from Pixabay: Future Artificial Intelligence Technology 130 by TimMoor Music from https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Holmes: Hotshot by ScottHolmesMusic