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In this episode, Dr. Akiko Iwasaki tells the story of her journey through STEMM academia and beyond as a woman from Japan. There were times she was discouraged from continuing her studies, but supportive mentors guided her through difficult situations with both emotional and technical support. Dr. Iwasaki shares about these experiences and how they shaped her approach to mentoring her own students in innovative ways.
Mentorship is essential to the development of anyone in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or medicine, but did you know mentorship is a set of skills that can be learned, practiced, and optimized?
In this 10-part series from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, you’ll hear the personal mentorship stories of leaders in academia, business, and the media, in their own words. Learn how evidence-based mentorship practices can help you develop the skills to engage in the most effective STEMM mentoring relationships possible.
If you are a mentor, a mentee, or have a role in mentorship, this podcast is for you.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to The Science of Mentorship. Research shows that effective mentorship can help students and professionals in STEMM achieve amazing careers, and that multiple mentors and mentorship styles can help to fully equip students for the success they desire. Dr. Akiko Iwasaki learned this from her earliest days as an undergraduate. Dr. Iwasaki is a professor and a researcher in immunology at the Yale School of Medicine. She has contributed significant research to the field of innate and adaptive immunity against multiple viruses and cancer. She's won numerous awards in her field, and in 2018 was elected into the National Academy of Sciences. After high-school, Akiko left her home in rural Japan to study at the University of Toronto. Being at a new school where you don't know anyone can feel pretty isolating. It's even more isolating when you're in a new country, but Akiko found the mentorship she needed all around her.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (01:18):
As an undergraduate, we didn't really have an assigned mentor. My mentor was my peer group. I had a wonderful group of friends whom I studied with and sought advice from, and just a support system. Wonderful thing about Toronto is that it's very international, and so my friends were, actually all of them were immigrants from Italy and from Korea and from various other places. So it was a really great way to become a part of a society that you're not standing out as an immigrant, but part of the same mix of other people.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
That support from her friends made a major difference in her undergraduate years. It drove her success as a student, but one of her classes changed everything.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (02:11):
Even though I was a biochem Major, I took one course in my senior year in immunology, introductory immunology course. And that's how I really fell in love with the discipline. The person who was teaching that course, Dr. Brian Barber was the person that I wanted to study with, and so I approached him and luckily he took me. That was a very lucky thing for me. My mentor was great. He was sort of at the intersection between basic science and applied science. So mentorship by him was very important to me, but I also found mentorship in peer and postdoctoral fellows in that lab who were my mentors as well.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Even though Akiko found great peer mentors and a supportive advisor, she came face to face with some of the misconceptions about science research.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (03:10):
Even though my mentor, Dr. Barber was amazing and he taught me so much, there were times when professors have told me that science isn't really for me, I'm not really cut out for science. Luckily, I didn't listen to them. So otherwise, if I really believed what they said, then I wouldn't be here either. The more senior faculty rank that you look at, the more white male it becomes, and so definitely there's that feeling that, "Oh, well, even if I pursue science, if I'm a woman, if I'm a person of color, I'm not going to reach that level of success."
Speaker 1 (04:00):
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These negative encounters opened her eyes to the challenges of being an immigrant and a woman in science, but she remembered her positive experiences in peer group mentoring and decided to seek more mentorship to guide her future.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (04:15):
I also felt I needed role models that are women and women of color, and so I did seek out mentors in other professors around me. I was fortunate to find women who would support me in ways that are just beyond committee members, but personal support and mental support. That was really critical for me during graduate school.
One of the key woman mentor and role model for me was Dr. Tanya Watt. Tanya Watt was actually a professor that was right next to Dr. Barber's lab, and so we were hanging out together, members of her lab and we were always together and having a wonderful connection. When it came time to important things like authorship dispute, which I've had during my graduate school, I was actually put on a tribunal. That's when I really felt the connection and the support from Dr. Watt being incredibly important to me. Even though the tribunal resulted in my loss, Dr. Watt consistent and continuous support of me as a scientist really spoke volumes to me, and that got me through a very difficult time.
I felt extremely supported even though she wasn't my direct mentor, to have someone like that leading the way and showing me that we as women can also do science and can stand together and to support each other. To this day, I look up to her and I think without her support I don't think I would have quit graduate school, but I would have been crushed and may not be able to continue the way I was doing. I will never forget that.
I also want to mention one more person, Dr. Pamela Ohashi. She is also a member of the immunology community in Toronto. When I approached her about a particular technique that my own laboratory didn't have, she very warmly welcomed me into her group and had one of her post-docs show me how to do this procedure, and that was critical for me to move from where I was to where I could be next. She also showed me that women in science can be really awesome and she herself as a leader in the field, and I look up to her and that was also incredibly important to me that another woman role model, particularly of Japanese descent, was out there and doing great science. So those two women really held me through graduate school and really helped me in my career.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Dr. Watt gave the emotional support, while Dr. Ohashi offered invaluable technical support in the lab. Without their support, her graduate school experiences would have been far more difficult and she may have taken a different path. As she progressed through her career however, Akiko noticed other women scientists were dropping out of the field, specifically women who wanted to be mothers.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (08:07):
So women, especially during childbearing age, tend to be dropping out of science, not because they want to, but because they have very little support. Some women are being told not to get pregnant in order to succeed, and so I just want to make a culture, at least within my own lab, that pregnancy and child care and all that is available to them. The support at least for that is available to them. And that I want to make my lab a place where women and men find parenting fun things to do in addition to science. Because I find that having had two children myself, that being a mother is one of the most wonderful thing that I've experienced, and it actually helps me to do science because it provides me this
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happiness at home that is a fuel that I use. Sometimes science can be very tough, and having this sort of warmth and being able to be a mother to children at home is really a driving force for my science.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Just like motherhood, Akiko Iwasaki wants to ensure that the scientists see supports, have opportunities to make their own decisions about their careers.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (09:34):
That's one of my goals in life, is to mentor people and to help the next generation of scientists succeed, particularly diverse set of scientists. I feel that science is obviously a very worthy endeavor and I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. But at the same time, academia can be isolating and somewhat toxic place, especially for women and underrepresented minorities.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
The fact is, women and other marginalized students better integrate into academic communities when they have positive mentoring experiences. Professor Iwasaki experienced this herself. So today she provides a safe haven for underrepresented students to seek support in overcoming isolating situations.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (10:28):
And so I thought that the least I can do is to provide a home for people who either had a bad experience in other places, or it was just doubting about themselves that they might not be good enough for science, just to show them that there's a safe place to do science and that we can be kind and excellent at the same time.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Dr. Iwasaki's experience laid the foundation for her mentorship philosophy, yet she also invested time in learning how to specifically support diverse mentees.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (11:11):
I have taken a course in how to mentor diverse set of trainees, trainees of color and trainees from different backgrounds. They need specific consideration and that not all trainees should be treated with the same exact strategy of mentorship. So that was very useful to me.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Now, students and Yale often ask Dr. Iwasaki to mentor them, but she's also extended help to people all over the world.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (11:40):
I feel privileged to be asked to mentor people. And I've also expanded my mentorship to not just Yale, but globally through Twitter, as a platform, and I've been posting tweets about academia and toxic environment, and that if people need my help, they can directly message me. And I've gotten hundreds of messages from people all over the world who are suffering, and I feel frustrated that I can't always help them because I don't know the exact systems that they're in, but at least I can provide some emotional support.
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Speaker 1 (12:18):
Whether through formal mentorship or on Twitter, Dr. Iwasaki continues to establish and expand her global network of mentees.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (12:27):
I'm creating a network of all the former mentees who are now all over the world running their own labs or doing whatever else that they're doing and I try to keep in touch with them. We just had a 20th year anniversary for the lab celebration, and I got to actually see them on Zoom. Many of them faces and hear about what they're doing. That's like the most exciting and rewarding thing about this career is, of course scientific discovery and all that is really cool and that's what keeps me going, but seeing my former trainees succeeding in whatever area of their choice, it is the most rewarding thing.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Her former trainees are expanding scientific knowledge by following their own paths, and that's just what she wants.
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki (13:23):
I believe that science has to be diverse in order to maximally be creative and successful and innovative. Many studies have shown that diverse teams make a much more creative output. And so just from that standpoint alone, I think sort of selfishly, I'd like to have my lab as diverse as possible just to reach that level of scientific creativity.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Dr. Iwasaki's experiences show how important, effective, supportive, and different mentoring relationships are. Students need people to help them persevere through graduate school and beyond. And it doesn't take just one mentorship, but many relationships among both faculty and peers. As the positive results of these relationships continue to show, when diverse students have more access to successful careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, these fields advance by leaps and bounds. To learn more about The Science of Effective Mentorship and to find recommendations for your institution to implement best practices, visit nas.edu/mentoring.
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