Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the very first episode of the Bench to Boardroom podcast. I am so excited to have you here. My name is Cynthia Steele, and I started this podcast because I wanted to create a resource for young faculty, graduate students, postdocs, anyone who is interested making the transition from academics to industry. In my time as a medical affairs professional in industry, one of the biggest questions that I get asked is, how did you do it? How do I do it? And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to again, provide this resource to people who might want to either explore their options or if you know that a career in industry is for you to provide, you with some tangible resources and maybe some inspiration along the way that can encourage you to pursue the life and the career that you want. I am very excited to announce that my guest today is Dr. Alicia Case, who is a very dear friend of mine. We've known each other since our grad school days.
These days, Alicia has spent over ten years of her life in the field of diagnostics, and she's currently a principal scientist at Zoidis. So without further ado, it's my conversation with Dr. Alicia Case.
Alicia.
Alicia Case. Welcome to the adventure boardroom, podcast.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Thank you, Cynthia. Thanks for asking me to come. Of course. I saw you reaching out about this. Of course I have to do this. I can't wait. So, anyway, happy to be here.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Thank you. So this is our very first episode. You are helping me launch the Venture Boardroom podcast, and I'm just so excited to have you here. We've known each other for a long time.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: True. This is true.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: So for those of us so I guess our listeners who don't know you obviously introduce yourself.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Okay, so my name is Alicia Case. I am principal scientist at Zoetis.
I have been in the diagnostics industry, so I'm in the diagnostics department there. This is the world's largest animal health company. I've been in diagnostics for a little.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Over ten years now.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: And before that, I had a postdoc position in an RNA lab that happened to be studying neuroscience therapeutics. And before that, I was in grad school studying neuroscience in an office shared with you, Cynthia.
And before that, also, I worked in quality assurance. I was a contract employee for a few years, and I knew within about a month, I was like, I got to go to grad school.
That very much solidified that decision for me.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: So for you, you always knew you wanted to go to industry. Grad school was just a path to get there.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: I did not always know I wanted to go to industry. Again, it was a little bit into my postdoc where, I don't know, I kind of started to feel like there are some people who are better at answering questions and some people who are better at asking questions and I think I'm more of one of those people who's better at answering questions. And I was always drawn to the lab, always drawn to experiments where I could get a result relatively quickly.
So industry has been a great fit in that sense that instead of developing something that's proof of concept and waiting for trials to go through so in diagnostics, you know the ins and outs of an assay, and you get it right, and then you test it and you launch it.
And so I've had a few different roles in industry quality assurance. I mentioned R and D systems integration, and then I've had a few roles in on market support, where something is launched and your job is to troubleshoot, keep it on market change, any changes to supply, evaluate them.
So I've had a few different roles, and I'm pretty happy here.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: You were very good. I remember, at diagnosing all of my PCR problems in the lab.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Oh, that's kind of you.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Good.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: I did like that space, that tinkering, troubleshooting, instrument based. Go in the lab with an open mind and figure out what it is. And so that is a skill that's been transferable as I was on market support. It's root cause investigation, but then also in R and D, even though, of course, the goal of R and D is not to do nothing but root cause investigations, it's to get the product out.
It has helped in both, though. So thanks.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: That's awesome. So I love how you say that there are people who are better at asking questions than there are people who are better at answering questions. I think that's a really lovely way of thinking of it. So as a postdoc, a newly minted Dr. Alicia case, and you start to realize this about yourself, what steps did you take then to start applying? Because I think one of the things that I think our listeners, at least the question that I get asked most often, and you probably do too, is how did you do it? How did you stop toiling away at the bench and then move over to industry, especially in a position like yours? Because I think a lot of students are interested in they like what they're doing at the bench, but maybe they just don't want to write grants and they don't want to have students, but they like the tinkering, like you're saying. So how did you go about making that transition?
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Oh, goodness. Well, I used every resource available.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: And when it wasn't available, I tried to make it available.
So I was very fortunate, actually, in that I had a discussion with my postdoc mentor, Michelle Hastings, who is now director of RNA Therapeutics at University of Michigan. We had the conversation where we agreed that I would be looking for a job. It was a mutual mutual it was a discussion that we were both agreed upon very quickly. In that discussion, and so that was right about the time that Science Careers developed the myIDP tool. You're familiar with this? No.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: What is that?
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Oh, it's great. It's a website, web based application that has an aptitude test. What do you like about science?
So some people will like protocol writing, some people like scientific writing. Some people like different kinds of Applied Sciences.
Some people will. It considers all of the possible science careers that are available to PhDs and my postdoc mentor. Or the day after it launched, she put everyone on her team in touch with this application because she's always up to speed.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: That's great. Yeah.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: So it has an aptitude test, and then it has resources available, and then it has the ability to make a monthly individual development plan. That's the ID.
And then it sends you reminders whether you do stuff or not every month. Do stuff for your career. Don't put this on the back burner. And so the aptitude test actually identified industry and identified Applied Sciences. For me, it looks at other things too, like how strong your publication history is to you, other aspects other than just what you enjoy.
And so right around the time that launched, the dean of our postdoc school wanted to launch a postdoctoral career development group. And so I became president of that group, and I kind of used it as a way to funnel speakers books. We made a little library of resources so that I could research options.
I rented books from my library when possible, when they were things like, I don't know, knock them dead resumes, knock them dead cover letters. Some of these things you can just get from any library, or they'll be able to get it from the nearest library. When I was in a career search, but first, to identify what kinds of things I wanted, I used resources like that. Okay.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Is IDP still available?
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Yeah, my IDP is still available. And then there's other tools available to career plan and to try to identify where you are, where you want to go, and then what's in the way so that you can develop ways to address those hurdles, to grow yourself and to put the focus in your hands, as opposed to, hey, I'm here. I've been here five years. Promote me.
The discussions are a little more.
You find ways to grow and also serve the company that you're in.
The company that I'm in right now, it's driven by the people who are doing the IDPs, but they have IDP development discussions that are structured into the work year.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: That sounds like something that somebody at any career level could benefit from, not just someone who's working to make their first entry point into industry.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Wow. Definitely. Yeah. It's something so this was over ten years ago. Now it's something that I'm still working on actively. I have little Outlook reminders, and my Outlook Calendar is public, but I'll have little Outlook reminders, like, finish this action, and I'll write it in such a way that it's not immediately obvious if somebody's looking at my calendar.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: This was over ten years ago. Some of our listeners might be like, Library. She checked out books. Library.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Sure. What?
[00:11:04] Speaker A: Find them on Amazon too?
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Free resources online now. Definitely. We'll put some of those resources in the show notes for any of our listeners who might be interested in checking that out. That's a great tactical piece of advice.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Thank you. Thanks.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: So I guess okay, so I guess my next question would be you had to move, right, for this new position, and you went back to your home state of Michigan. Is that right?
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Did yes.
What was that?
Go ahead.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Now, what was that decision like for you and for your family?
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Emotional.
That was great. This has been the best decision.
However, it wasn't immediately obvious.
I wasn't actively looking. I was at my last company.
I had my network there. I had actual friends. And I can say that now because we've kept in touch in the time since I've left the company.
And they visited me, and I visited them.
I had reasons to not leave. They were giving me promotions. They were making opportunities available for me to grow that aren't even salary based. So I wasn't looking. But I was contacted by a recruiter, and they had a few openings.
One was in the area that I lived before, which was in Chicago, which is where we met, of course.
Another was out where and the third was just 30 miles away from my hometown in southwest Michigan. And so I contacted them back. I was just curious, just wanting to know more, because I hadn't considered it. But I still have family here. My wife still has family here in the area, in Michigan. And so the first couple of conversations were just with a recruiter who was just giving me the details and figuring out if it could be feasible at this point is when I started to talk to my spouse about moving. And the initial response was, Hell, no.
But we started to write our pro con list, our four way pro con list, of course, because it's with two different companies. Each has their pros and cons. Sure.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: And I started to interview, and we had a lot of interviews for this position.
I think I spoke with ten or twelve people in the company, and by the time I was done speaking to ten or twelve people, I felt like I was already part of this team.
And so right around interview seven or eight is when I started to I always knew it was possible.
The hook was this idea that we could leave the city, leave Chicago, and live in a forest. And that's what got my wife listening. She's like, I'm listening.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Tell me more.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Yeah, because I wouldn't want to interview with a hiring manager and waste his time or her time. So that was the possibility that, let me finally start to interview with them, and then finally around interview six or seven, I said, We've got to go check out this city. I haven't lived in that area for decades, and I haven't really spent time in this city. And so we came here for a weekend. We really liked it, and anyhow, things just worked out. So it was a process. It was something that we did together. The procon list was written together. We sussed out different things together.
Anyhow, it came together at the end. That's good. Now it's a year and a half later. We're very happy with the decision.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, that's good. And you are married to one of the most wonderful people I've ever met.
She's an incredible human being, and it probably helped that she works remotely, correct?
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that helped immensely.
Yes. And I just want to add for for the people listening that you should know that Cynthia played viola at our wedding, and we walked down the aisle to Cynthia playing viola, and it was one of the most wonderful things back in 2015. So that was the year that it was legalized, and a lot of people got married that year. Oh, yes. And so that was great. Or the following spring, after the month.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Before, I ended up meeting my husband. So these things kind of all ended up working together, because I think the next time we got together after your wedding and then I was asking you about married life, I think I was.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: So?
[00:16:22] Speaker A: So I met somebody.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: I remember. Yes.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: It's funny. And I do actually want to emphasize that Alicia and I are talking right now as two friends who would go to discount symphony concerts together, because we could get $10 tickets to the Lyric Opera and the Chicago Symphony on certain nights, and we try to find whatever free food we could possibly get our hands on. And we went through the struggle. We went through the struggle together. And I want to tell our listeners in a way that I guess you never know what kind of connections you're making with the people that you're friends with in graduate school as well. I mean, these are connections of friends that you'll have for life. And for her part, Alicia and her wife signed my marriage license for me and my husband.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yes, that kind of had a nice poetic there, his little bow tie.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: But in that sense, also, we've been here for each other, to encourage each other and tell each other to go for it with these new so, you know, I remember when you were applying for this job and you were a little nervous, and I told them, you're Alicia freaking Case. They would be so lucky to have everyone. All of you need a hype man or woman out there when you're applying for a job, because if you're nervous, if you're feeling a little bit of that imposter syndrome, call a friend and just have them hype you up. It does help. It really does.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: It has helped on so many levels. I remember so many times I've called you up throughout the years just to get your input on things, or even when it came to my wife working remotely. How does this work for you? Because neither of us had gone through that experience in the pandemic for various reasons. So I remember even you gave advice on that, but it's sustained me. Our friendship has sustained me. But it's also you have done some PCR technical troubleshooting for me throughout the years. When I was first getting started, when I was first getting momentum.
How does this baseline work? What is this black box of this algorithm here?
What knobs do you not want to change to get the best quality results?
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Well, and we used to dream about opening a cupcake bakery together in grad school, remember?
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Yes. That was the plan B.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: This whole PhD thing didn't work out. We were just going to start making cupcakes.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: It's true.
I think it'll be just about every science themed cake that you could have made. I don't remember seeing one that wasn't a design that I had done some variation of anyhow I mean, science really.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Is baking, and baking is science at its most fundamental level. You put things together at the right ratios, you incubate it at the right temperature for the right time, and something beautiful comes.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yes.
You can optimize around your baking and you can optimize around your science.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Yes.
So now that you and Teresa are living so close to home and you have this career that you're building, do you have time for fun now that you're in industry?
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Yes, definitely.
I think one of the best pieces of advice I had was in grad school, that you get out of it what you put into it that's held true for so many things. So, yeah, I think it depends on the company that you end up joining. Some companies have different focus on work life balance, and you can get a sense of cultures just by talking to people who work there, just by.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Reading.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: The reviews on glassdoor, just by having the interview and trusting your instincts and asking good questions when you interview at a company.
I'm very fortunate to work at a great company that has a great culture that values work life balance. But even if I didn't, I would be making that work somehow very quietly.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: So, yeah, I have a couple of questions about that. I guess my first would be what are those right questions?
Because obviously you've done plenty of interviews, but you've also interviewed applicants, right?
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Right. Okay.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: I guess let's start from the interviewee perspective. So what kind of questions do you ask to get a sense of what corporate culture is like.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: For a company, not for a candidate?
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Yes. Sorry. So if you were applying for a job and you want to know what's the corporate culture like? Is it inclusive?
Is this a place where I'm going to be answering emails at 11:00 on a Friday night? I guess.
How do you come up with, first.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Off, if you want to answer emails at 11:00 on a Friday night, no one's going to stop you anywhere from answering emails at 11:00 on a Friday night if you want that.
I don't know anywhere where you couldn't have that if that's what you wanted.
But.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: I think.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: That you ask people what success looks like and you can get a sense of what kind of metrics they're using for success.
Market share, behaviors, products, how they fare in the number of issues that they have after launch. Like, you can ask these very open ended questions and that can tell you volumes.
Asking them what a successful candidate looks like for this position tells you volumes.
It doesn't have to be very pointed. It doesn't have to be, do you sleep at night?
Although I think that's something else, actually, that's something other than what you asked about. But it doesn't have to be these very pointed questions. You can tell a lot just by.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: I think that's a really beautiful way of putting it, because as scientists, that's something that we always have to think about.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: What does success look like? How will we define a successful conclusion to this experiment or a successful end to this project? And so I love taking that and applying it to a company as you're interviewing, because I think if you make the mistake, or not necessarily the mistake, but I think that if you ask how's the culture, the people who are there are going to say it's great.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: They kind of have to. Yeah, unless it's really bad. Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: So, no, I love this idea of asking what does a successful candidate look like? Or what does success look like to you? And if they say, we do whatever it takes or something, whatever that might be a little bit triggering to you, I think that's a really good metric to have.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Right. So there's also that aspect of fit that something that might be the best possible job for person A is just not going to work out the same for person B. Right, absolutely. Yeah. There's a couple of translatable skills that we've talked about here between research and finding your path for yourself. So we talked about researching career options or your career growth as a project in and of itself. And then there's also that tie in too.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah, true.
So now when you're interviewing candidates, what do you look for?
I'm thinking of this in a way. If this is a person who is applying for their first industry job, what could they do to help themselves stand out?
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Well, it's going to be different for every hiring manager, but in your industry.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: So say somebody is applying, someone finds out that they love bench research and they're interested in solving problems, then what can they do? What would be some suggestions that you would have for them? How could they get started?
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Well, I think the best piece of advice is to know yourself and to know what is going to keep you going through thick and thin.
So if you're applying for a job just because you want a job, it's going to come through and you should find something that really is a genuine fit for you, something that actually really sparks what you're interested in, as opposed to, I want this salary and I want to work in this location.
It's going to show.
So sorry, what was the question again?
[00:26:26] Speaker A: This is beautiful. This is Deep Thoughts with Alicia case.
No, this is great. Okay, so basically show up as your authentic self is what I'm hearing to your interview.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Even when you're applying and looking at jobs and looking at their reviews on glassdoor, be honest with yourself. So you have to read a certain number of samples of reviews to really give a company a fair shake. But as you're reading reviews and you're just like that would listen to that.
Or if you are looking at a job posting and you're thinking like, oh, this might fit for a certain salary range, but the job itself doesn't really excite you. Keep going until you find one that actually does really excite you. Okay.
Yeah.
As a hiring manager, I'm looking for that spark. Okay. But also there's experience perseverance through struggle points that are both technical and social and tricky on both of those levels. So the ability to pursue it, overcome it, and learn something and maintain your relationships on the other end so that you're not steamrolling people.
So I don't know. I think fun is underestimated, for sure. So the importance of fun. So I'm looking for that a little bit. Somebody that I could enjoy working with, somebody that I'd enjoy the thick and thin with.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
I think that's really beautiful. And I guess my question then, one question that I've been asked. So you just very eloquently talked about if you're reading a job description and it sparks something within you, but what if you don't fit all those qualifications? Do you apply?
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think some people just go for it, and some people are like, well, I am only 95% qualified, and then they're second guessing themselves.
Yeah. There are certain traits that are associated with each of those patterns anyway.
I don't know, I'm of the mindset that it doesn't hurt to apply. It does take you time and to be successful, there are certain ways that you can tailor your resume to increase your ODS of success. So that takes time, too, but yeah, I agree with the question. Was what was that? Did I answer it?
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: I agree with you because I've been asked whether or not a person should apply if they don't fit all of those criteria. And I think for me one of the criteria that I always look at is how many years of experience in this or in this or previous experience in this disease state. So when I'm looking at job postings, I usually get hung up on that because a lot of the other ones are ability with Microsoft Word or some of these other know or ability to communicate with in my field, medical know. Can you communicate with key opinion leaders? Can you establish a network, can you create a strategy for medical launch of a product or something like that? But usually when they hammer out specifics, they want x number of years of experience and they want, again knowledge of a particular disease state. Oftentimes that kind of makes me shy away a little bit from a position. But I have told people in the past the worst thing that they can do is just not respond to you. And you're right. Then you're just losing a little bit of your own time working on your cover letter, tailoring your resume to put some of those qualities first and foremost. But otherwise why not? Why not apply? Why not call that hype man or that hype woman to get you psyched up and apply for that job anyway, right?
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
There's a book called the Highly Effective Job Search. Okay. And it starts out just by defining the job search. It's by nature rejection.
Once you're not rejected, your search is over. It is rejection by definition.
And so I think you just got to steal yourself to that.
I agree with you that the worst I can do is just say nothing.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Sounds a lot like science, doesn't it? Sounds a lot like the grant application process, doesn't it?
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: Failure is the norm. I think I put that in a slide deck at one point with a whole list of some of my favorite comments from different grant applications that I had sent out for over the course of the previous two years.
It's really depressing when you look at it all together. But you're absolutely right. I mean, if you're continuing to it's the case with anything, right? If you continue to put yourself out there to look for whatever it is that's right for you in terms of career path or relationships or anything in general. I mean, even starting a new fitness routine or anything like that, the more things you try, the more there's a chance that you're going to either really like it or not like it or something's potentially going to go horribly wrong. But if you don't try it, I guess you never really find out.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah. On that note of depression though, if someone's making it look easy, you're not spending enough time with them.
It takes that grit to keep going, as you said, as does the field of science.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Yes, and it's interesting. I recently was at a meeting and I was hosting a roundtable discussion for students who are interested in making the transition to industry. And one of the questions that I was asked I thought was really good was how can somebody translate some of their more soft skills that they've acquired in grad school or their postdoc to industry? And so this is actually perfect. How do you translate years of chasing down the wrong hypothesis into something that you put in your resume that's going to catch a hiring manager's attention?
[00:33:37] Speaker B: Now, that one actually is easy.
Just read the description and find nuggets that relate to what you're doing. Obviously, if you're a completely bad fit, it's not going to work. But you can tell a story a little bit more with a cover letter, but you can find ways. So the goal of your resume, of your cover letter is to get an interview. Once you're in an interview, it's very easy to tell these transferable skill stories.
The goal is just to read the job description, look up this position. If you don't know what the position is, you can research more about this position through my IDP. We talked about that. There's just a lot of information available on the internet now to understand what's behind it, what they haven't written, what they've written down are just the most important things that the hiring manager is focusing on for this hire. But there will be other things that aren't written. And so just look for them and find the kernels that relate to your experiences.
For example, if you have experience as a corresponding author on a publication and that involved a lot of buy in from the other authors, that can be translated into a cross functional team. Sometimes as a corresponding author, there's not a lot of interactions and they're all kind of like, yes, looks good. But there can be discussions that you need to have to make sure that you're doing everything in a way that people are aligned with that relates to project management in a way that might not be immediately obvious.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: I think that's very true. I think anyone who's tried to coordinate their advisor and four different committee members, plus maybe a couple of outsiders to try to either find a time to meet or try to find a consensus.
Trying to find the consensus on a manuscript can be an absolutely herculean effort.
And I've seen it personally in one of my current colleagues trying to be scientifically accurate, but also delicate enough that you're not stepping on anyone's toes and you're not getting anyone into trouble with maybe a different company that they also work with.
It can be a tightrope walk. So I think that's a great point to say, yes, I have managed cross functional teams, or I have managed to.
Get a consensus from a variety of different opinions. And so that's an excellent soft skill to have if anyone manages to get it in grad school or in postdoc. That's fantastic.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: So what else would you like the listeners to know about in terms of your personal experience?
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Do I have a story that's like no, I think we've hit on a lot of it.
Know yourself, follow what is interesting to you. And I think probably one of the better nuggets that I've learned is just that I've never been one to focus on promotions.
There was one promotion where it was like a little bit, like it was rubbing a little bit that I hadn't gotten a promotion just mostly because of the environment that I was in, where everybody else was like, why haven't you gotten a promotion? And that was rough. There was one time where I was focused on promotions, but for the most part, I've not been focused on promotions. I've been focused on just doing well and doing the best job that I could and growing my body of experiences so that I could just know more about different kinds of projects. And I feel like that's been a good strategy. I've been grateful that the focus was on making a good this sounds so basic, making a good product as opposed to, I want this promotion because I want to grow for myself.
So I don't know, I feel like my focus has always been learning. It's going to sound cheesy, but that's true. That's been true for me. That's great.
As opposed to getting a raise, getting the next step. I actually took a demotion entitle to be at my current job, and I'm so glad I did, because it's been an experience that I didn't have before.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: So you're adding more tools to your tool belt, so to speak.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's been the focus.
More tools to the tool belt. Thanks for naming that, son.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: No, because I remember when we would talk about getting a postdoc, the question was always, you want to maybe stay in an area that you know a lot about, but you also need to add more tools to your tool bell. So you choose a lab that has a focus that maybe you hadn't considered before, or you apply your knowledge to a different disease state, for example. And so I remember people always use that analogy. You just always want to add more tools to your tool belt, I guess.
As you're building this tool belt, where do you see this culminating to? Have you thought about that?
Where will you be in 30 years besides on a gorgeous lakefront home with Therese and a lot of books and all your cat.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: And I will be.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: There too, because that sounds idyllic.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: Okay, it might be forest at home. So we have forest right now. Okay. I kind of like having forest as a bee.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: You know, since if you.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Had asked me ten years ago what my dream job would be, I would tell you this this job that I'm in right now.
But looking ahead ten years I don't know about 30, but looking ahead ten years, looking ahead 20 years and beyond, it really is more about the kind of things that I'm doing.
So right now, I'm still a relatively new manager, and so I'm still close to the doing space where I get excited about analysis and being the first person to know something. And I'm starting to train my team to do the analysis so that I'm the second person to know something.
So the things that excite me now are still close to that space of the person who's executing the experiment and executing the analysis.
I really just want to be the best leader that I can be.
I really just want to make the best product that I can make. I really just want to have that pride in my work again. It's coming back to success as behaviors or successes, less job titles for me and more, well, what's your day look like? What's your week look like? Are you doing the things that really excite you to get out of bed in the morning? And I don't ever want to get away from that long way to say I don't know.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: No, I think that's absolutely beautiful and I think that's a good place to close out. So we will put a lot of these wonderful resources that you've talked about. We'll put them in the show notes so that our listeners can find them. But really, Dr. Lisa Case, thank you so much. That was absolutely beautiful.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: Thanks, Cynthia. This was fun.
Thanks for asking and thanks for doing thanks for listening. Is there anything that you want to add? Because you've seen so much of my career, you're leaving out this story. Is there anything else that you I think you're good.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: No, I think we have I mean, we can keep talking. I'm just going to turn off the recording so that way we can kind of relax a little bit.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Thank you, Cynthia. This has been great.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: This was wonderful. Thank you so much for being on my first episode and sharing your story and all that wonderful advice. We really appreciate it.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: Thank you. Awesome. That's great. You're welcome. Thank you.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: Thank you to Alicia Case for joining me today on my very first episode of Bench to Boardroom. Thank you, dear listeners, so much for tuning in. I will make sure to put in the show notes all of the resources that Alicia did in that fantastic interview and hope it was helpful. Please reach out to us if you have questions or suggestions of guests. We would love to hear from you. And thanks for listening. See you next time. Bye.
