Cristen Willer
BIO
Tenured Professor studying cardiovascular disease genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School (US). Mother of five children (ages 6, 9, 11, 13 and 15)
Twitter: @cristenw
Cristen Willer
“I learned to outsource the things I didn’t enjoy and show up to the things that really mattered to me.”
Here’s my story in a nutshell: I saw DNA in a test tube in high school, fell in love with DNA, got a Bachelor’s in Molecular Biology in Canada, completed a PhD at Oxford England, got married, moved to the US, started what would become a 6-year postdoc, had two babies, interviewed for faculty jobs, contemplated a dual-career move (while pregnant with my third), ended up staying at same institution to start a faculty job in computational genetics, had two more babies, kept making discoveries, making deadlines, writing fundable grants, and being a mom. I’m now a full prof with five kids ages ranging from 6 to 15.
The biggest struggle I faced in being a scientist mom was feeling torn between my desire to be a productive scientist (my dream job!) - which meant to responsibly do the best science I could to improve people’s health, look after my projects, research team and grad students - and the grief I felt being apart from my little babies.
My head desperately wanted to generate science with smart adults and get our findings published, and my heart wanted to stay home and cuddle with my warm baby. The rational part of my mind had the long-term picture in view. I wanted to contribute to society with the skills I had, the training I’d invested so much into, and put my energy and work towards making the world a better place.
I wanted to be, and have my sons and daughters to see me as, a leader- a thoughtful scientist doing something important.
Looking back, my children absolutely benefited from some amazing women who loved my children from the role of sitters, nannies and preschool teachers. Some of these women became members of our family and confidantes as the kids grew up.
In my observation, women in (American) society typically take on the lion’s share of child and household-related duties. The mental and physical load of organising the little people’s schedules, activities, health and dental care, educational needs, friendships, special occasions, social and emotional health etc. can be really tiring and daunting. During the super busy years when the kids were all little and I was an Assistant Professor, feeling insecure and like an imposter at work, and fried and exhausted at home, I felt like I never sat down and I couldn’t do anything right. It was crazy busy, not gonna lie.
A mentor suggested I hire out whatever I could. I learned to outsource the things I didn’t enjoy to improve my efficiency at work and at home and show up to the things that really mattered to me.
For example, I didn’t drive my kids to ballet class because the windows were blacked out anyway. But I coached Science Olympiad and taught them about genetics and dog coat colours. I learned to focus on my family first, and then do the best science I could in the time I had left. I worked when my kids were practicing sports, and I left work early other days to take them on mom dates or watch them practice violin.
Traveling to conferences was difficult, whether the kids came with me or stayed home. My parents helped out (often scheduling them months in advance to fly in), sitters helped out, but reducing the requirements for scientist mothers to travel, while still having opportunities to collaborate and learn the latest science, would be an important step towards equality.
I learned to build collaborations through email and phone calls, sometimes even cold emails to people I admired and wanted to work with. Although meeting face-to-face typically made new collaborations start easier, I also developed skills networking-sans-travel that turned out to be useful skills during pandemic years.
I saw really busy senior professors travel all the time, and still produce great science. I learned to step away from writing my own code because the people on my team were better programmers than me, and I was the one who needed to write grants. I saw myself as a baseball coach, identifying the skills amongst my team and playing to their strengths. Maybe one person loved mentoring junior students, one loved making figures, one was a great proofreader, and we worked together as a team. Everyone had their own projects but we learned from each other. With time, we built a reputation as a group who worked on important problems, a fair and honest team, who played well with others, recognised others contributions and gradually became more adept at using and building new research tools to answer the questions.
One of the ways I kept my life manageable was to avoid travel, keep my lab not-too-big (6-8 people works for me), try to develop the talents amongst my team, collaborate with people with complementary skills and techniques (i.e. human geneticist collaborating with a mouse molecular biology lab). I focused on my kids first, my team, then papers and grants, and everything else if and only if I had time.
I have to be brutally efficient and ruthless at protecting my time, and I get to be the kind of mother I want to be. Now that my time is freeing up a little bit (no toddlers!), I’m trying to go back to being more hands-on with the science that I really enjoy.