GRAZIA SPIGA
BIO
Analytical Scientist at Biogen (USA) with a PhD in biochemistry. Solo mom of two.
Grazia Spiga
“Choose your mentor wisely, because you might need unexpected help and support along the way.”
My journey has been rather challenging as you will read below, but it made me who I am now, a resilient single parent of two wonderful young adults. I could not have survived this difficult journey if not for the support received.
My advice to any woman embarking in a science career is to choose your mentor or your manager wisely, because you might need unexpected help and support along the way beside your family and friends. Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help!
Science has been a passion for me since middle school. I had an amazing teacher who made me very curious about all the phenomena around us with a particular interest in genetics. Sport was my second passion. My dad owned a popular sport shop in the city center so all of us siblings were very active from an early age. I started playing basketball in the 6th grade and developed into a four sports athlete in High School.
During my senior year of high school, these two passions collided so I debated whether to choose the easy route, become a physical education teacher and stay in my homeland, Sardinia (Italy), or fully embark into a scientific journey that could bring me to do research abroad. I chose the second option and followed my strongest passion.
I studied Biology and Genetics at the University of Cagliari, my hometown, and after graduation, I left Italy, landing in Alabama at age 23 with a research scholarship at the University of Alabama for 3 years. Birmingham is where I met Dan, the man I married four years later in Sardinia, just 3 months before starting graduate school at the University of Miami.
The moment you leave your homeland, building a family becomes more complicated because you don’t have the family support you need, so it’s really hard to decide the right time to have kids especially as a woman in science.
We were always having discussions about this topic with other female students, postdocs, and my mentor’s wife, who was a brand-new assistant professor in the lab next door. When she and my mentor were expecting their first child and spending 10 hours a day in the lab until the day before delivery, this was a turning point for my husband and me. If they can do it, we can do it!
Having a supporting mentor is all that you need if you want to start your family as a graduate student.
So it went! We used the same stroller alternating between my mentor’s two kids and our two kids for the next 5 years! Grad school was tough, a lot of sleepless nights, daycare guilt, countless experiments, but I am always proud to tell people it was a productive time with two published papers and two kids while pursuing a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
I almost quit and could not have done it without my mentor’s and my husband’s support, and of course my mom who spent 3 months in the US to help us with each birth.
After two postdocs, and a scientist position in academia, I finally landed my first job in the Biotechnology Industry. These years were also filled with a lot of hard work even on weekends, lots of strong coffee, and many nights reading papers after the kids were put to sleep, usually by my husband, who had more regular hours and continued to be very supportive of my career.
Eventually I reached a life-work balance where I knew I could be both a scientist and a mom at all costs and the sky was my limit.
If I thought having kids in grad school was tough, I didn’t know things would get much tougher exactly 10 years after graduation in 2014. The perfect storm hit. My husband was diagnosed with colon cancer.
The next 4 years were a blur. Juggling motherhood (Erik and Sara were then 11 and 14, just starting middle and high school), working for high pace companies which thankfully allowed a flexible schedule for taking my husband to chemotherapy every 3 weeks or to surgery when the cancer became metastatic 16 months later.
Trying to find a work-life balance was almost impossible. My husband slowly delegated parenting to me because he was losing his battle.
I became a caregiver, a struggling mom with the whole weight of the family on my shoulders, and lastly a scientist whose career was pushed backstage.
My wonderful husband passed away in the summer of 2018 just after Sara’s HS graduation and during the first week of HS sophomore year for Erik.