Will Eagan, Shelley H. Liu, Reneé Moore, Jeri Mulrow, Glenn White, and Abie Ekangaki

Abie Ekangaki, Jeri Mulrow, Reneé Moore, Shelley Liu, Glenn White, and Will Eagan participate in a panel titled “E Pluribus Unum: Achieving Your Potential in Statistics Through Different Organizations.”

On August 6, 2020, we presented a virtual panel for the Joint Statistical Meetings that focused on professional development in external professional societies and community groups. Our session was titled “E Pluribus Unum: Achieving Your Potential in Statistics Through Different Organizations.” Here, we provide some highlights from the session and online chat discussion and share our experiences and challenges in adapting the panel discussion for the virtual setting.

The Panelists

• Will Eagan, PhD Candidate, Purdue University
• Abie Ekangaki, Vice President, Premier Research
• Shelley H. Liu, Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• Reneé H. Moore, Associate Professor and Director, Biostatistics Collaboration Core, Emory University
• Jeri Mulrow, Vice President and Director, Statistical and Evaluation Sciences, Westat
• Glenn White, Panel Chair and Chair, ASA Committee on Membership Retention and Recruitment

When joining a new organization, how do you engage and build a network?

Shelley Liu: As a faculty member in academic medicine, my work environment is very collaborative, so when I joined Mount Sinai, I set up meetings with people I potentially wanted to collaborate with. I identified these people by speaking to supervisors and mentors, or found them while browsing the faculty profiles. While it can be helpful to have someone connect you, you can also write a cold email to someone. You can introduce yourself as a new biostatistician who joined, mention you have similar research interests, and ask if they might have time to grab coffee and chat. People generally are quite happy to meet you, but particularly in a large organization, it’s hard for them to keep track of who the new employees are. So, it’s helpful to be proactive and reach out to others. This is still possible in the current virtual world via email and video meetings.

Jeri Mulrow: I tried to also meet people outside of my organization but with similar career interests in statistics. I joined my local ASA chapter, which was my first foray outside of my professional work setting to start meeting people in a non-work but professional setting. I also joined internal working groups to work with people outside of my division, and that was another great way to meet people.

Reneé Moore: It’s helpful to have advocates and mentors who can help guide you when you join an organization. When we talk about mentors, I like to think about “advocate.” Sometimes, this may not be your supervisor because there’s a conflict of interest with funding, but someone who can positively speak up for you and about your work when you are not in the room. As you network, be strategic in identifying potential mentors.

What tips do you have for further developing nontechnical skills (e.g., communication, leadership, influence, and negotiation)?

Abie Ekangaki: I tend to think of these very important nontechnical skills as drilling down into two key skill sets—building relationships with co-workers and building trust. In building relationships, you build a relatedness with another person, learn their interests. And in building trust, you deliver on the things you promise.

Shelley Liu: These skills are very important, but they also improve a lot with practice, and you can begin anytime to work on them. You can start to hone them during graduate school; some schools have a student-run biostatistics consulting service that is targeted toward students in other departments where you could practice communication skills. Graduate schools may also have negotiation classes or workshops, where you can role-play and practice negotiations with classmates through case studies. Similarly, you can practice public speaking through a graduate school class, or when you join a new organization, look for a Toastmasters chapter, which is a national club focused on public speaking.

Jeri Mulrow: I think of the four Cs: be clear, concise, correct, and complete in what we’re writing and saying. As statisticians, we need to be multilingual. We think in a slightly different language than a lot of other people think, and we have to be able to translate what our collaborators are talking about into our language so we can actually help solve the problem. And then we have to be able to translate back into a language they understand so they can actually implement or put into practice the good statistical methods we’ve been developing to work with them. Getting involved in your local professional associations or other community volunteer organizations can give you an opportunity to practice these skills.

For career development, should one stay within an organization or switch organizations in order to further develop their career?

Reneé Moore: I believe you should follow your passion. I was passionate about teaching, mentoring, and collaborating, rather than emphasizing developing statistical methodology, and was concerned I could not become a professor. I found a faculty track called “clinical educator” at the University of Pennsylvania that enabled me to emphasize collaborative research. I wanted to hone my skill as teacher/professor at NC State and learned to teach large classes and teach online as a teaching track professor. Now at Emory, I found a position where I have a more equal allocation of teaching, mentoring, and being a collaborative researcher on research track. At the beginning of my career, I did not plan to stay or switch organizations; my moves allowed me to follow my passions and find the right balance.

Abie Ekangaki: One way to grow is move from company to company. This is a myth. Growth does not come from jumping from one company to another company, nor does it come from staying at one company. You need to consider two factors: (1) passion and (2) opportunities for growth: lateral growth versus vertical growth. Look at growth as two dimensions to enhance your experience. You want both. Try to gain access to leadership and training; moves can be lateral or vertical. Try to determine your passions and what is important to you. Ultimately, you will be judged by your reputation/capital. Always consider opportunities for networking.

Jeri Mulrow: When the position became less “fun” is when I tended to move. By “fun,” I mean new and challenging activities. In one of my earlier positions, I made a lateral move. I learned that communicating statistics to the public and policymakers was very important to me. My growth has not been linear. My passion is in official government statistics.

Can you describe your involvement with statistical and/or community organizations and why you chose to join? How could someone get started?

Jeri Mulrow: The ASA is really us; it’s really the members who make up the organization. Therefore, you can give back by becoming an actively involved member.

Reneé Moore: I grew up with the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) of the International Biometric Society. I first attended the Fostering Diversity in Biostatistics Workshop as an undergraduate. ENAR is one of the largest biostatistics organizations, and I have had experiences in different roles at ENAR. I am currently treasurer. I am also passionate about StatFest, a one-day statistics conference led by the ASA Committee on Minorities in Statistics (CoMiS) that is designed for undergraduates who are under-represented minorities.

Shelley Liu: Right after graduate school, I got involved with ENAR’s Council of Emerging and New Statisticians (CENS). CENS is comprised of 10 members who are graduate students, postdocs, and other early-career statisticians. Key initiatives include organizing an invited session and networking sessions during the ENAR annual meeting. To get involved, look for an application during the ENAR Spring Meeting. I also serve as vice president of the Harvard School of Public Health NYC Alumni Chapter, where I help organize networking and volunteering events. I would suggest that if you move to a new city for a job, you get involved with your graduate school’s alumni chapter to meet like-minded people in biostatistics and related fields.

Will Eagan: My advice for students is to start simple. I started off as the treasurer of the Statistics Graduate Student Organization, and then went on to found the ASA Student Chapter at Purdue. After two years, I wanted to step back from the organization and create an organization that did not require me to sustain it. Then I could mentor future presidents. After founding the chapter, I wanted to find something that was more focused on my research and on the role of young professionals. This led me to join ENAR’s CENS. After my CENS term wrapped up, I wanted to find something new. I was fortunate to be asked to serve on the ASA Committee on Membership Retention and Recruitment.

How can we further promote JSM 2020’s theme, “Data and Statistics for the Public Good”?

Will Eagan: One thing student chapters can do is StatCom. StatCom is student pro-bono consulting for local charities and nonprofits. It is a great way to develop your technical skills and nontechnical skills with actual consulting in a manner that is for the public good.

Jeri Mulrow: Please fill out the 2020 Census! The data put out by the federal statistical system is so critical for the whole country. We need to make policies based on evidence. These data are infrastructure for our nation. As Dennis Lin, this year’s Deming lecturer, said, “Without good data and thinking about how it is collected, you are just another person with an opinion.”

How did the panel prepare for a virtual session?

Three months prior to the virtual meeting, our panel began to meet via Zoom to plan an outline. Through a series of five meetings, initially monthly and then weekly right before the panel session, we developed an agenda and timeline. Finally, we met two days prior to the talk to test out the panel features on the virtual app. Based on these discussions, we narrowed the focus to several topics (building networks, developing nontechnical skills, career development in one organization vs. switching organizations, how to get started in being part of statistical and community organizations, and data for the public good). As we had 110 minutes for the panel discussion, we allocated roughly the same amount of time (20 minutes) to each topic. Further, for each topic, we identified a lead speaker and secondary speakers, so the exact order of the responses was known beforehand while still providing panelists with the flexibility to chime in spontaneously.

How did you advertise the panel session?
We used several routes for advertising the event: through emailing graduate statistics and biostatistics department listservs, emailing listservs from CENS and the ASA, and promotion within our LinkedIn networks.

Do you have any tips for future panelists/organizers?
If the conference software you are using does not allow the panelists to see the audience, you can develop a poll to interact with the audience. We developed a poll asking the audience to indicate their career stage at the beginning of the panel. This also helped us know how many audience members were listening to the presentation.

You can also encourage the audience to make use of the chat feature to introduce themselves and type questions/comments throughout the session. Throughout the entire panel discussion, there was a simultaneous active chat conversation.