Special Feature: 100th Episode
Written by Caitlin Ashcroft
This week, the Stories of Women in Neuroscience team is celebrating the release of our 100th episode. In honor of this, some of the founding members of the podcast - Dr. Nancy Padilla-Coreano, Dr. Catie Profaci, Dr. Megan Kirchgessner, and Daniela Cassataro - recorded a special episode delving into the origins of the podcast and reflecting on what they’ve learned from Episode 1 to now. Join us as we explore ‘the story behind the Stories’, and consider some of the invaluable insights our wonderful interviewees have shared about what it means to be a woman in neuroscience today. Listen to the episode here.
Every good idea starts with a spark. In the case of the Stories of WiN podcast, that spark began with Dr. Nancy Padilla-Coreano. Currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida, Nancy founded the podcast while working as a postdoc at MIT in 2018. The idea came to her while she was reviewing a list of potential speakers for an MIT seminar series. A friend pointed out, to Nancy’s horror, that the list of around 50 names didn’t contain a single woman. “We’re supposed to be the next generation…but none of the postdocs submitted names [of women], including myself and my friend!” she recalls. The evident bias laid bare by this list was sobering. Nancy found herself musing on the lack of visibility of women in neuroscience, and what could be done to “educate [herself] and educate [her] peers” about this imbalance. An avid podcast listener and natural extrovert, it occurred to Nancy that a podcast could be the perfect medium through which to amplify womens’ voices by interviewing them about their research and experiences as neuroscientists. She realized, however, that she didn’t have the technical skillset, funding connections, or experience in science communication to embark on this project alone. As her postdoc lab was about to move to the Salk Institute in San Diego, Nancy set her sights on starting to build a team there.
The first to join the team was Dr. Catie Profaci, then a graduate student at UC San Diego who knew Nancy from a number of years before. As a regular contributor to the neuroscience blog NeuWriteSD and organizer of the local conference ComSciConSD, Catie was already a passionate and active science communicator. When Nancy emailed asking if Catie wanted to be involved with the podcast, she wrote back with an immediate and enthusiastic “YES!”. She recruited her friend, fellow neurosciences grad student, NeuWrite contributor, and sci-comm enthusiast Dr. Megan Kirchgessner. Despite never having met Nancy before, Megan was so inspired by the core goal of the project that joining the team felt like a “no-brainer”. Rounding out the founding team was Dr. Marley Rossa, another UCSD Neurosciences graduate student who was particularly creative and skilled at web design; Dakota Blackman, a graduate student at Princeton who had previously worked with Nancy; and Daniela Cassataro, another UCSD Neurosciences student who was rotating in Nancy’s postdoc lab at the time. Having dabbled in audio editing in the past, Daniela asked if Nancy needed someone to help with the audio for the podcast. Nancy realized it hadn’t occurred to her to recruit an audio engineer, and now readily admits that Stories of WiN may never have reached Episode 100 if Daniela hadn’t offered her expertise. With the founding team complete, the podcast launched the first of its now fortnightly episodes in 2019, marked by a celebratory bottle of champagne.
Looking back on those early days, the team agrees that their enthusiasm for the project stemmed from Nancy’s clear and compelling vision. A podcast showcasing the work of women in neuroscience felt like a powerful way of both boosting the visibility of women in the field and inspiring the next generation of scientists. What the team didn’t realize at the time was the extent to which the podcast would affect the way they viewed their own academic journeys. In the earliest episodes, the interviews tended to focus on the research interests and discoveries of the women they were speaking to. Gradually, the focus shifted towards more personal and candid discussions about the realities of academic careers, the diverse paths interviewees had taken to get to where they are today, and the obstacles they faced along the way. As a group of women just starting to forge their own careers in neuroscience, the WiN team found hearing interviewees’ honest accounts of the highs and lows of their careers, and everything that goes on behind the scenes to produce exciting research, both inspiring and comforting. The interviewees’ stories highlighted that there is no ‘right’ way to be a neuroscientist, and that such a career path can often be as winding and unpredictable as it is fulfilling. These interviews also underscored the importance of having positive and relatable role models at every stage of one’s career. While inspiring the next generation of scientists has always been a key goal of the podcast, the team discovered – almost incidentally – that reminding the current generation of scientists that they’re not alone is important too.
A key moment in the podcast’s evolution came from the sudden and disruptive arrival of COVID-19. Prior to the pandemic, all interviews had been conducted in person with guests the co-founders had met, for the most part, through conferences or internal seminars. The pandemic forced the team, along with the rest of the world, to adapt to a wholly virtual way of working. Despite the initial challenge, this shift to online interviews represented a valuable opportunity to diversify the pool of women invited onto the podcast. No longer geographically restricted, the team became more proactive in connecting with women from a much broader range of institutions, countries, backgrounds, and identities. Working virtually also offered an exciting opportunity to expand and diversify the team behind the podcast. The Stories of WIN team has grown so much that it now spans many time zones and countries: from France to Puerto Rico to the Pacific Coast. While it certainly makes scheduling team meetings a lot more challenging, this dedicated group of interviewers, writers, editors, and translators enable Stories of WiN to showcase a far more diverse and representative cross-section of the global neuroscience community than was possible before.
As the podcast listenership grew, the WiN team began to feel an increasing responsibility to ensure women from all backgrounds felt represented in the people they interviewed. “It’s not perfect but we’re always trying to be better with it”, notes Nancy. They wrote a mission statement to hold themselves accountable on this front, codifying their intention to use the podcast to highlight a truly diverse and intersectional cohort of women. Just last year, for example, the Stories of WiN team started translating profiles into Spanish to start connecting with a broader audience in Latin America. Looking to the future, the co-founders intend to keep working towards the goals laid out in this mission statement. As their listener base and team continues to grow, they’re keen to further expand the reach of the podcast, perhaps through in-person events to connect listeners, or by facilitating research opportunities for aspiring neuroscientists. While many of these ideas are still in their infancy, the team is excited by the prospect of continuing to use the podcast as a platform to connect women across the field of neuroscience and across the world.
Almost five years since Nancy’s first encounter with that male-dominated list of speakers, she and the whole founding team are delighted to see how far the project has come. One hundred episodes, one hundred conversations with exceptional researchers and fascinating women, and one dedicated team working together to foster a diverse and global community of women in neuroscience. The success of the podcast is a testament to the power of storytelling, and the importance of visibility, inclusive representation, and positive role models to empower women in science. While highlighting the incredible scientific contributions of women in neuroscience is an essential part of the podcast, it appears to be the authentic narratives, candid discussions of challenges, and advice for the next generation of scientists that keep people coming back for more. With our sights firmly set on the next 100 episodes, we at Stories of WiN eagerly anticipate the stories yet to be shared. They will surely inspire not only our audience, but also each of us!
Listen to our roundtable discussion featuring Stories of WiN members Dr. Nancy Padilla-Coreano, Dr. Catie Profaci, Dr. Megan Kirchgessner, and Daniela Cassataro below!
