Sara Florey
Interview Posted By: Ashley Smith
1. Can you tell us a little about your background? i.e. Where you grew up, what education do you have, a summary of your resume, did you always want to do what you are doing now, when did you start to become interested in STEM, what internships/ volunteering
I grew up in Livermore, CA. Both my parents had PhDs in physics, and both worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) at one time or another, so I grew up in a science-heavy household. We joke that I rebelled from my physicist parents by going into biology rather than physics. I knew I wanted to go into biology fairly early, at least by freshman year of high school. Initially, I thought I wanted to go into environmental biology or perhaps marine biology. As much as I still love both of those fields, I realized fairly quickly that there were very few jobs in them. I took a course in college in microbiology and just loved it. Amusingly enough, my least favorite class in grad school, immunology, is actually the closest to what I ended up doing. I volunteered in high school with some outdoor education programs, and in college completed an REU internship (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) in cancer biology at Carnegie Mellon. I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry at Willamette University in Salem, OR, then went on to get my Master’s in Pathobiology (“the study of the molecular biology of diseases of public health importance”, a combined molecular biology/public health program) at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Upon graduating, I worked as a consultant in my graduate lab getting my project squared away to move on to the next step: for my thesis, I did preliminary development of a point of care diagnostic assay for tuberculosis that would be workable in 3rd world countries. The assay and device were sent on to the next lab for further development. After that, I moved back home to the San Francisco Bay Area and began working at Singulex in the RnD department, working on many novel diagnostic tests for a range of conditions from heart attacks to inflammation to cancer. A few years later, I transferred departments within Singulex to the Diagnostic Product Development group, and began working to fully develop a single assay for heart attacks to the levels necessary for FDA submission and approval, and have been there ever since.
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
I work now in Diagnostic Product Development at Singulex (www.singulex.com). My team works on the biology side of developing the new SGX ClarityTM System (http://www.singulex.com/clinical-diagnostics-platform). I work with a multi-disciplinary team of mechanical engineers, software engineers and biologists. My work changes frequently, but a ‘normal’ day will often include 4-6 hours (sometimes much more!!) in lab running the actual assay – either to produce data to submit to the FDA submission or to do stress testing or troubleshooting of the assay. I spend the rest of my time in data analysis, writing reports, going to meetings, or running our department’s QA training program. Since we are working on a machine to go into a hospital setting, the FDA is very strict about our training and Quality Assurance protocols, so I spend a lot of time making sure my group is fully trained and up to date. I also sometimes take classes or workshops to continue my own education. While nowadays I work on the long-term development of a single assay, when I was in the RnD department I would work on the short term feasibility development of up to 5 or 6 different assays at a time (once I was working on 8 assays at once, that was exciting!). The overall format was the same, with lab time and data analysis, but in that job I would spend about 1-3 months working on a particular assay (overlapped with several others), getting it to the point of working and then sending it on to DPD or another group for further development, whereas in DPD I’ve worked more than 2 years on a single assay. RnD has its own particular challenges – sometimes the antibodies wouldn’t work at all or the buffer formulation had to be completely reformatted from scratch. RnD is the first stage of development, something of a wild west with a rollercoaster of highs and lows. DPD is much more regulated and steady, with the biggest challenges coming from nailing down the smallest and trickiest details of the assay in order to make it reliable and consistent. They are very different, but I have enjoyed working in each and feel that I have learned important lessons in each.
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
I work in a field almost identical to my degree. I use pretty much everything I learned in my college and graduate school days. I run ELISA-based assays in lab, use excel and other statistical analysis programs, have to know some basic computer programming, and have to be able to write reports on what I have done.
4. Have you faced any discrimination/ challenges being a woman in a stem field? If so, how did you deal with it? Do you have any advice for up and coming women in STEM?
I think I have been fairly lucky in this regard. My graduate class was 80% female and my department now is nearly 90% female. I have never encountered any direct discrimination. However, more generally speaking, one thing I have noticed is that the higher you go in seniority and rank the higher the percentage of men becomes. I think that women are not as well trained to negotiate for promotions and pay raises, and I think they can be perceived less favorably by their employers when they try. I also think that women are often held back in the workplace (more so than men) if they decide to have a family. This is a problem of our society, and I think that action is needed on a large scale, with better maternity (and paternity!) leave policies and attention paid to hiring practices across the industry.
5. What is the best and worst part of your job? What do you look forward to in your job on a day to day basis? What do you wish you could change?
I have some really wonderful coworkers! I love working in the lab, getting my hands metaphorically dirty (there is no dirt allowed in these labs!). Working on a tough troubleshooting problem and finally figuring it out is one of the best feelings ever. Of course, it can be very frustrating when an experiment fails, but that is the nature of science and even when it succeeds you won’t always get the results you were looking for. Even if I could change that, I wouldn’t, because the nature of experiments is to tell you what is there, rather than what it is you want to be there.
6. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
Work-life balance is the dream we all chase. Working at a startup can mean long hours and stressful deadlines. I don’t always manage to balance my work and personal life successfully. My husband is my biggest supporter, I couldn’t do it without him J. We both work long hours, and we both split the household chores about evenly (honestly, he does more than I do). We both pursue artistic hobbies in our spare time, and go out on hikes together and cook gourmet food, but sometimes we just collapse on the couch and eat take out. I don’t know if there is any secret or trick to it, I think it is just keeping going and doing your best.
7. What do you define success as?
That’s a hard question. On one level, having a steady job and paycheck is a pretty good indicator ;). Getting our project launched will be a major success for my team! On a more philosophical level, I think finding happiness and contentment with yourself and where you stand is maybe the best way to define success.
8. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
Persistence. There are always going to be challenges, and sometimes they will knock you down. How you recover from those challenges is very important.
9. Who was a mentor to you throughout your career? (can be more than one!) What did they teach you? How did they impact your life?
My parents, definitely. My mother pursued a scientific career when it was much more difficult for a young woman to do so, and faced some strong opposition. My father has such a brilliant curiosity about everything, we were always exploring new concepts and learning about new things. I remember learning about optics with my mother and calculus with my father – I was maybe about 6 or 7 for both – and they made it fun and not at all intimidating. I always knew that science and math were things that I could do and do well. These days they still give me good advice and encouragement in my career. I love them very much and have been very lucky to have them.
10. What do you think is the best advice you've ever received ? What advice would you give your younger self if you had the chance? What’s one piece of advice you can pass on to us?
That it’s going to be hard. That you have to work for what you want, even if the going gets tough. I would tell my younger self, and all of you, to get as much hands on experience as soon as possible. Apply for internships at a variety of companies. No one is going to hand you the perfect job, or give you the promotion or raise you want without you asking for it AND showing that you deserve it.
I grew up in Livermore, CA. Both my parents had PhDs in physics, and both worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) at one time or another, so I grew up in a science-heavy household. We joke that I rebelled from my physicist parents by going into biology rather than physics. I knew I wanted to go into biology fairly early, at least by freshman year of high school. Initially, I thought I wanted to go into environmental biology or perhaps marine biology. As much as I still love both of those fields, I realized fairly quickly that there were very few jobs in them. I took a course in college in microbiology and just loved it. Amusingly enough, my least favorite class in grad school, immunology, is actually the closest to what I ended up doing. I volunteered in high school with some outdoor education programs, and in college completed an REU internship (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) in cancer biology at Carnegie Mellon. I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry at Willamette University in Salem, OR, then went on to get my Master’s in Pathobiology (“the study of the molecular biology of diseases of public health importance”, a combined molecular biology/public health program) at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Upon graduating, I worked as a consultant in my graduate lab getting my project squared away to move on to the next step: for my thesis, I did preliminary development of a point of care diagnostic assay for tuberculosis that would be workable in 3rd world countries. The assay and device were sent on to the next lab for further development. After that, I moved back home to the San Francisco Bay Area and began working at Singulex in the RnD department, working on many novel diagnostic tests for a range of conditions from heart attacks to inflammation to cancer. A few years later, I transferred departments within Singulex to the Diagnostic Product Development group, and began working to fully develop a single assay for heart attacks to the levels necessary for FDA submission and approval, and have been there ever since.
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
I work now in Diagnostic Product Development at Singulex (www.singulex.com). My team works on the biology side of developing the new SGX ClarityTM System (http://www.singulex.com/clinical-diagnostics-platform). I work with a multi-disciplinary team of mechanical engineers, software engineers and biologists. My work changes frequently, but a ‘normal’ day will often include 4-6 hours (sometimes much more!!) in lab running the actual assay – either to produce data to submit to the FDA submission or to do stress testing or troubleshooting of the assay. I spend the rest of my time in data analysis, writing reports, going to meetings, or running our department’s QA training program. Since we are working on a machine to go into a hospital setting, the FDA is very strict about our training and Quality Assurance protocols, so I spend a lot of time making sure my group is fully trained and up to date. I also sometimes take classes or workshops to continue my own education. While nowadays I work on the long-term development of a single assay, when I was in the RnD department I would work on the short term feasibility development of up to 5 or 6 different assays at a time (once I was working on 8 assays at once, that was exciting!). The overall format was the same, with lab time and data analysis, but in that job I would spend about 1-3 months working on a particular assay (overlapped with several others), getting it to the point of working and then sending it on to DPD or another group for further development, whereas in DPD I’ve worked more than 2 years on a single assay. RnD has its own particular challenges – sometimes the antibodies wouldn’t work at all or the buffer formulation had to be completely reformatted from scratch. RnD is the first stage of development, something of a wild west with a rollercoaster of highs and lows. DPD is much more regulated and steady, with the biggest challenges coming from nailing down the smallest and trickiest details of the assay in order to make it reliable and consistent. They are very different, but I have enjoyed working in each and feel that I have learned important lessons in each.
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
I work in a field almost identical to my degree. I use pretty much everything I learned in my college and graduate school days. I run ELISA-based assays in lab, use excel and other statistical analysis programs, have to know some basic computer programming, and have to be able to write reports on what I have done.
4. Have you faced any discrimination/ challenges being a woman in a stem field? If so, how did you deal with it? Do you have any advice for up and coming women in STEM?
I think I have been fairly lucky in this regard. My graduate class was 80% female and my department now is nearly 90% female. I have never encountered any direct discrimination. However, more generally speaking, one thing I have noticed is that the higher you go in seniority and rank the higher the percentage of men becomes. I think that women are not as well trained to negotiate for promotions and pay raises, and I think they can be perceived less favorably by their employers when they try. I also think that women are often held back in the workplace (more so than men) if they decide to have a family. This is a problem of our society, and I think that action is needed on a large scale, with better maternity (and paternity!) leave policies and attention paid to hiring practices across the industry.
5. What is the best and worst part of your job? What do you look forward to in your job on a day to day basis? What do you wish you could change?
I have some really wonderful coworkers! I love working in the lab, getting my hands metaphorically dirty (there is no dirt allowed in these labs!). Working on a tough troubleshooting problem and finally figuring it out is one of the best feelings ever. Of course, it can be very frustrating when an experiment fails, but that is the nature of science and even when it succeeds you won’t always get the results you were looking for. Even if I could change that, I wouldn’t, because the nature of experiments is to tell you what is there, rather than what it is you want to be there.
6. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
Work-life balance is the dream we all chase. Working at a startup can mean long hours and stressful deadlines. I don’t always manage to balance my work and personal life successfully. My husband is my biggest supporter, I couldn’t do it without him J. We both work long hours, and we both split the household chores about evenly (honestly, he does more than I do). We both pursue artistic hobbies in our spare time, and go out on hikes together and cook gourmet food, but sometimes we just collapse on the couch and eat take out. I don’t know if there is any secret or trick to it, I think it is just keeping going and doing your best.
7. What do you define success as?
That’s a hard question. On one level, having a steady job and paycheck is a pretty good indicator ;). Getting our project launched will be a major success for my team! On a more philosophical level, I think finding happiness and contentment with yourself and where you stand is maybe the best way to define success.
8. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
Persistence. There are always going to be challenges, and sometimes they will knock you down. How you recover from those challenges is very important.
9. Who was a mentor to you throughout your career? (can be more than one!) What did they teach you? How did they impact your life?
My parents, definitely. My mother pursued a scientific career when it was much more difficult for a young woman to do so, and faced some strong opposition. My father has such a brilliant curiosity about everything, we were always exploring new concepts and learning about new things. I remember learning about optics with my mother and calculus with my father – I was maybe about 6 or 7 for both – and they made it fun and not at all intimidating. I always knew that science and math were things that I could do and do well. These days they still give me good advice and encouragement in my career. I love them very much and have been very lucky to have them.
10. What do you think is the best advice you've ever received ? What advice would you give your younger self if you had the chance? What’s one piece of advice you can pass on to us?
That it’s going to be hard. That you have to work for what you want, even if the going gets tough. I would tell my younger self, and all of you, to get as much hands on experience as soon as possible. Apply for internships at a variety of companies. No one is going to hand you the perfect job, or give you the promotion or raise you want without you asking for it AND showing that you deserve it.