FeMS ‘Out of the Shadows’ Cohort 5. Melbourne, Australia
On Friday, 16th August, 2024, the community-led initiative FeMS (Females in Mass Spectrometry) held their 5th “Out Of The Shadows” workshop at the Mass Dynamics offices in Melbourne. This cohort’s theme was about “honing negotiation skills in the workspace”. The event signalled the kick off of the International Mass Spectrometry Conference (IMSC) 2024 conference, held for the first time in a country down-under!
FeMs was founded in 2019 with the aim of empowering and bringing together underrepresented communities in the field of Mass Spectrometry and “Out Of The Shadows” is their leadership development program aimed at fostering and empowering female leaders in taking on more and more leadership roles.
My connection with FeMS
I have a special connection with FeMS and this brilliant day was really special to me!
I started working in the Mass Spectrometry (MS) field in mid-2021 when I joined Mass Dynamics as a Data Scientist and right when Melbourne was entering yet another lockdown. Back then, FeMS was key to giving me some resemblance of connections with the overseas scientific community. At the start of 2022, I joined their online mentorship program where I had the chance to meet fellow colleagues working in MS from all around the world, feeling more connected by discussing a broad range of topics that we decided as a group, including, for example “professional development” and “what it means to be a scientist in industry”. I made online connections back then, who are now peers I regularly meet at conferences. One of our mentors was Dr. Anne Bendt, Deputy Director and Principal Investigator at Singapore Lipidomics Incubator and co-founders of FeMS, who I distinctly remember giving us great advice about prioritization strategies and who suggested reading the “Dare to Lead” book by Brené Brown, which I read and which had a great impact in both my approach to work and life.
How the day unfolded
When I arrived in the office last Friday, I could feel the buzzing energy in the air straight away. Female colleagues that I usually see online or meet sporadically at conferences overseas, were arriving into our office for a full day of discussions around the same table. To my great surprise, I realized then that Dr. Anne Bendt was also one of the participants and I finally had the pleasure to meet her in person and could tell her how her advice had influenced me. In addition, when I saw the day’s agenda I realized that the coach Melissa Rosenthal, who I had the pleasure to meet years ago during my PhD at WEHI, was going to deliver a workshop in the afternoon. I already knew I was in for a treat of a day!
Once coffee orders were in, Dr. Nicola Gray, Senior Lecturer in Phenomics at Murdoch University, kicked off the day's agenda with a round-the-table introduction. This is how we got to know a bit about the lives, careers, and fun facts of the women taking part in the workshop. The group comprised people from a variety of roles: from early-mid careers students and technicians to women in senior roles like CEO, Principal Investigators, and Professors.
Next up: the panel discussions
From left to right: Paula Burton, Nicole Pendini, Ute Roessner, Yu Xia, Vera Ignjatovic
The round of introductions was followed by a panel discussion starring five incredible women covering different leadership roles. They first introduced themselves by telling us their career journeys through successes, struggles, and above all, learnings along the way.
The panelists were:
- Prof. Yu Xia, Professor of Chemistry, from Tsinghua University
- Prof. Ute Roessner (AM, FAA), Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Initiatives and Infrastructure) at Australian National University
- Nicole Pendini, General Manager at Peak Scientific
- Prof. Vera Ignjatovic, Principal Consultant (Translational Research) at the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Research , and Honorary Professorial Fellow, Department of Paediatrics; and
- Paula Burton, CEO at Mass Dynamics.
The stories and the panel discussion afterwards were absolutely eye-opening for me. It would take me a full 10-page article to elaborate on everything that was discussed, so I’m going to share here a summary of what stayed with me. For simplicity, I will refer to these women by their first name in what follows.
- The importance of advocacy
The key role of advocacy came out strong from the whole panel. This includes both the importance of having people advocating for yourself as well as advocating for others, especially other women. Paula commented that her approach to leadership is to put the team first and always acknowledge when someone did something great for the team. A useful reminder that bringing someone else’s profile up won’t bring your own down.
- Asking for support is ok
Ju stressed in her introduction about the importance of recognising the need for support and asking for it when you need it. If you know that you want to get somewhere, you don’t have to do it all by yourself and often people are just waiting to know about it to help you. On the same wavelength, during the panel discussion, Vera commented that it’s important to “let the universe know” what you’re looking for, e.g. using social media, talking to people, and “very likely things will start to happen”, but you need to start spinning that wheel!
- Getting over a ‘no’ or a failure
On this topic, I really appreciated Ju and Paula ’s comments. Ju warned us to “remember to keep an eye on the overall pathway” of where you want to go. One fallback today doesn’t mean that it’s all gone, the journey is long. Paula’s advice brought us to think of the “no” as an opportunity to learn something. And a tactic she enjoys using is asking the rejectors, “What would it take for you to say yes?”. This gives a quantitative and clear path to success and holds the rejector accountable to the reasons for their decision.
- Self-promotion & self-worth
Vera’s career story and perspective stressed the importance of working with people that can see your potential, your actual person, your passion, even though you might be lacking in some technical skills. Because Vera told us “the passion is that uniqueness that will make you stand out”.
Paula shared some reflection on a similar topic by reminding us to think and “know your worth when you’re looking for jobs, and the incredible cognitive diversity you bring to the team. Every team needs good representation from different backgrounds. Diverse teams find more problems and solve more problems” When people see your value, they will listen - first you need to see it and believe in it yourself!
Across the panel, several women brought up the impact that investing in yourself and in your profile can have. For example, suggestions where to find a good coach or mentor or getting involved in committees, getting on boards. That’s where decisions are made and they are a great opportunity to connect to a broad range of people across the industry.
- Pragmatic advice on language from Paula
I loved the very practical, ready-to-use advice that Paula shared with the group by stressing on the importance of language. In particular, she has consciously stopped using the words “just” and “but” as, in most contexts, they can come across as demeaning words. For example, think about how different it sounds if you tell yourself “I’m just a scientist” or “I AM a scientist”!
- How do I get what I want?
A few times this idea was mentioned: “To get what you want, make it their idea!” which sparked a good amount of discussions and debate in the room and which tied in very well with the negotiation workshop that followed in the afternoon. We also learnt from Ute’s and Nicole’s career journeys that sometimes negotiating for what you want can take time, even years, and it requires patience and strategy.
Finally, I loved how Ute stressed several times throughout the discussion that, despite the hardship of what it takes to get through your career, the strategies and the fights, the most important thing is to “remain yourself throughout the journey”, keep anchored to your values and authenticity and don’t feel like you need to change to suit the environment.
Influence and Negotiation Coaching
The morning ended with an introduction about the “Art of Mastering Influence” delivered by the Melbourne-based coach Jo Ionannidis from Proto Science and an exercise for us to think about a time where we were able to influence others. This exercise of thinking about our past moments of influence made us aware that, if we have done it once, we can do it again!
Jo Ionannidis presenting, “Art of Mastering Influence”
After replenishing our energies at lunch, the afternoon continued with a workshop led by the Melbourne-based coach, mentor, and educator Melissa Rosenthal. Melissa guided us through an afternoon of practical, empowering, and vulnerable discussions about negotiations, touching on what it means and how we can approach it successfully, while making us reflect on our own experiences and stories. Melissa is an incredible coach and her approach in teaching was one to make us understand and reflect about these hard topics through conversations and sharing stories. She would introduce an idea and then open the floor to discussions. For example, when going into a negotiation, what’s your “intention”? How are you thinking of showing up? Are you aiming to show up as aggressive, as open, ready to listen. None is right or wrong, but knowing where you stand is key.
Melissa Rothenthal, “Communication Skills in Negotiation”
What mostly stayed with me after the session was the understanding that negotiation is a process of creating balance. A successful, ideal negotiation is one where both parties feel like they won something and that one should think about the other party in the negotiation as a “partner”, not as an opponent.
Melissa is also the creator of “52 conversations”, a card game to make it easier for leaders and teams to initiate and have those hard and important conversations. In summary, if you’re looking to strengthen the culture in your team, provide leadership development for a team or for the leadership, Melissa would be an invaluable coach!
Wrap up, and cheese board collaboration
The afternoon ended with nibbles, drinks, chats and loads of laughs, feeling energized, empowered and happy to have had the opportunity to meet this incredible group of people. What I loved the most about the day was the vulnerability with which everyone showed up in the room by sharing stories of successes or failures, of struggles and victories. It is exactly in an environment like this one, where you feel safe to share your stories that I believe growth can really happen.
I absolutely once more thank all the organizers for the fabulous day that they managed to put together and I hope to be part of many more of these!
Thank you to generous sponsors: Mass Dynamics, Peak Scientific and Sciex
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This blog post was produced by Anna Quaglieri, Ph.D using a combination of original notes from discussions and insights collected from attendees during FeMS Out of the Shadows Cohort 5. Any errors or omissions are unintentional, and the content is provided for informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employers, organization, committees or other group or individual
