Paulette Clancy

“First and foremost, you have to be in it for the long haul. There are no quick fixes. There are plenty of setbacks. There aren’t always too many incentives to promote diversity over other aspects of your job, like research output, promotions and career development, etc. Expect progress to be slow; change moves slowly but you have to keep ‘fighting the good fight.’ You have to be involved because you consider promoting diversity to be part of your ‘moral compass.’ And not because of the rewards; there aren’t many of those. You do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

“This really came about because the man who hired me for my first post-doc position was a chemical engineering professor at Cornell. Reflecting on this with the hindsight of decades, this transition from chemist to chemical engineer suited me. I like the focus on solving practical problems that engineers tend to focus on.”