Kai

Pardis Sabeti

Iranian-American Computational geneticist, Harvard Professor, Ebola Fighter, and Lead Singer of Thousand Days

When was the first time in your career you thought, “I could actually do this” or "I need to do this"? 

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I remember being in high school watching the movie Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo, which was a pretty wild depiction of outbreaks. The movie revolved around a fictional virus much like Ebola circumnavigating the globe. There's a moment in the film where Dustin Hoffman places a microscopic image of the virus on a lightbox and looking at the structure, says “ it's gone airborne”. And I remember at that moment thinking ‘that is so cool. I want to do that’. The seed was planted at that moment. 

I went on to medical school and just found myself always being really interested in infectious diseases, and finding more of my work gravitating to it. And as I worked in Africa later in my career, I began to realize that the problem was much bigger than we think, and that many viruses were circulating much more widely than we perceive . It led me to write a perspective piece in science that was titled “Emerging disease or Diagnosis?”, where I questioned whether all of these viruses that we think are popping up out of nowhere, were actually circulating under our noses. If we looked from the right perspective, they would be right here.Any one of them at any point can have a spark where they take off and become pandemics. 

It’s not really like that where there is a certain moment where you say, ‘Oh, I can do this’. It's more slow where bit by bit, things that seem impossible, seem more and more possible. The more you go forward, the more you realize that even rocket science is not rocket science. It's just something you learn and do. And careers are long. Marc Benioff has a quote that I love that says “people overestimate what you can do in a year and underestimate what you can do in a decade.” I think that's true, you're not going to be able to do anything advanced in a year perhaps. But, if you just keep at it bit by bit, you become an expert, and at some point, even a world expert. So finding that thing that you want to spend all the time to become an expert in is the most important thing.

How did you counteract imposter syndrome, as in, when did you or others doubt your abilities and how did you overcome that doubt? 

I'm fortunate that I'm a person who generally does not have imposter syndrome. It is not that I think highly of myself, but actually more that I don’t. I also don’t really care what others think of me, so I don't really worry.  I try to be guided by my own compass of what is good citizenship and effort, and hope the rest falls into place. So I guess I am fortunate to be oblivious. I can understand though that for many imposter syndrome is a real feeling, and it can be debilitating.

One thing I do like to say on imposters syndrome, is that sometimes it is not in your head, but can be the outside world telling you that you're the imposter. As a woman in science, I feel all the time that I'm in rooms where I'm not supposed to be, and I'm not expected or wanted, and I'm put down and made to feel like an imposter. This happened during much of my graduate career. Frankly, even today on a regular basis I'm reminded implicitly and even explicitly that I am a nobody whose contribution is not needed. It doesn't matter that I'm tenured or in the National Academy of Medicine to people who continue to try to remind me that I'm worthless. So sometimes it is external. I think it's important to try to figure out what is external and what is internal, and what part I can play to make myself feel strong. Once you recognize what those outside forces  are, it makes it a lot easier to ignore or use it as a challenge to overcome, and to keep building your sense of self.  

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Further Reading On Her Website

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