People of Science with Jon Choy

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Synopsis: In this episode, we hear from Naa Asheley Afua Adowaa Ashitey who is an incoming MD-PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her parents immigrated from Ghana and worked 9-5s to support Naa throughout her academic and professional career. She is a first-generation college graduate and will begin her journey to becoming a double doctor after the completion of her post-baccalaureate program at UCSF this fall. Although her journey here is marked by several racist experiences in academia, they’ve motivated her to become a strong and proud proponent of diversity equity inclusion initiatives. Tune in as she discusses her experiences being an underrepresented individual navigating academia, and how she’s been able to combat the struggles that come along with being URM.

Hobbies: Here at People of Science, we believe that is important to foster non-research aspects of one’s identity to minimize burnout and maximize progress. In Naa’s free time, she enjoys walking, Brazilian Jiu jitsu, bouldering and creative writing.

Journey to Dr^2: Naa’s journey to becoming a Physician-Scientist is marked by formative experiences with her family and friends. As the daughter of Ghanian immigrants, who worked full time as a taxi driver and as cleaning personnel, Naa had limited exposure to academia and medicine. Her exposure to medicine mainly stemmed from assisting her mom with navigating the medical system and the medical trauma she experienced. These moments have inspired Naa to pursue a career in medicine and combat similar racial prejudices to those committed against her mom. Naa’s interest in research was a later development, where she became in awe of research’s role in the medicine that helped her friend recover from a rare autoimmune disease. This experience helped bridge her interests in medicine and research, and motivated her to pursue a post-baccalaureate program at UCSF. After her completion of the program in spring 2024, she will be a MD-PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

PROPEL? This is a post-baccalaureate program (established in 2020) affiliated with UCSF, which aims to make research more accessible to students from underrepresented minority (URM)  groups. Typically, students dedicate 2-3 years of research with a principal investigator (PI) who is either a pre-matched or chosen by the student. Naa is grateful for this opportunity, reflecting on the many obstacles her and other URM student populations have faced that has made becoming involved in research difficult (e.g. racism from PIs, unofficial GPA standards, inability to conduct unpaid internships and to support herself and family financially). In addition to valuable a research experience, PROPEL also offers useful resources that assist students in navigating the research environment (networking, mentorship, reading literature etc.)

Irony of inclusion: Naa highlights an important issue surrounding representation of underrepresented identities in science. That is, despite several initiatives to bring underrepresented individuals into science, a welcoming and inclusive environment does not await them. Naa’s undergraduate experiences is a testament to this. As a former undergraduate at University of Chicago on a full ride and participant in Questbridge, she experienced racism firsthand from professors. She makes a point that this is common practice for many prestigious universities, where scholarships and programs help underrepresented students transition into university but there are still professors “who believe people like me don’t belong in science, don’t belong in academia, fundamentally don’t exist as a person”. Realizing that the environment needed to change for DEI to work at U. Chicago, Naa convinced the biological and physical science division to implement her suggestions to improve awareness. Since then, Naa has carried out her passion for DEI during her post-baccalaureate, as she was actively involved in ImmunoDiverse—an organization aimed at creating anti-racist environment in the immunology community at UCSF. She looks forward to becoming involved in DEI initiatives at UW-Madison during her MD-PhD.

Stronger together: A needle that strings every successful journey together is the people involved in getting that person there. For Naa, those people were her family, mentors and fellow students in her post-baccalaureate cohort. Naa’s family has been a constant throughout her life and remains one of her biggest support systems when the going gets tough. Similarly, Naa’s mentors in the immunology department at UCSF have believed in her since day 1 and share a passion for DEI initiatives, which have fostered a supportive environment that have allowed her and others to thrive. Furthermore, having a community of people with similar backgrounds has allowed Naa to feel a greater sense of belonging and foster a more inclusive environment that is conducive to success.

SciWri mixer: While science and writing may seem disparate from one another, Naa highlights their mutual inclusivity. As a former creative writing major, much of the writing skills and techniques she’s gained have positively influenced her scientific writing. Naa draws from the intentionality in creative writing to scientific writing, asking questions such as is my writing clear? does it makes sense? Is it accessible? Answers to these questions enable her to effectively communicate complex science topics to an audience. Naa is passionate about scientific communication and believes that the sciences need to be more accessible, citing missed opportunities to use simple and straightforward immunology concepts to explain the COVID 19 pandemic.

Home is where the people are: Thepeople she would be close to in distance was one of the biggest factors for Naa in choosing which MSTP program to attend. Being in San Francisco for the past three years for her post-baccalaureate has been fruitful and formative in many ways, but Naa mentions how it can be lonely at times. She misses her friends and partner who are both in Chicago and feels like being back in the Midwest will feel like home again and be a place where she can be happy for the next seven to eight years. For those looking to complete higher education, Naa encourages others to consider location as a factor on where to apply and attend, cautioning others about the appeal of major cities and aura surrounding some schools—the best place for you may just be the place that feels rights and what feels like home!

Looking ahead: In one year, Naa will be in her first year of her MD-PhD program. She hopes to be involved in programs and initiatives that help ensure that first generation medical students have the proper financial resources to succeed. In five years, Naa will be over halfway through with her PhD and potentially be involved in a biotechnology startup aimed at producing therapies/treatments that will help people. In 10 years, Naa will have completed her MD-PhD and may be at an internal medicine residency. Although the future is unpredictable and difficult to plan, she hopes that in every stage of her future she is doing everything she can to help others. In her words, “that’s the biggest thing that I hope never changes and I’ll always do”.