​My name is Julieta Saluzzo, and I am 28 years old. Born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, I came to the United States at the age of 9 with my parents and younger sister in search of a more tranquil and financially secure life with more opportunities. My background is something that I have always treasured and which has allowed me to open my mind in many ways. Because I was raised in the US where there is so much diversity, and also having been raised partly in Argentina, I have always been aware of the many different ways of living that exist in our world. This has allowed me to explore with an open heart and mind and to understand others’ stories and realities. In addition, being a Hispanic woman in science and public health has allowed me to pursue invaluable opportunities in research to leverage myself and my career, such as the Mount Sinai International Training Program.
 
When I look back on my last decade, I see how far I have come: college, personal experiences, graduate school, international research internships, and my first job (fortunately enough, my dream job). I also see that every experience has built upon the ones before, something that I was unable to see at each stage. Lastly, I see that throughout my 10-year journey, there were people who helped me in many different ways. Each of these individuals who have made significant impacts on my life has given me skills, values, and qualities to equip me for not only a fulfilling career but a meaningful and purposeful life. Without these people, whom I call mentors, I would not be the person I am or be standing where I am today.
 
The Beginning of a Journey
My career path was neither planned nor straight, and growing up, I never had a vocation or knew what I wanted to do or be. In fact, I never would have imagined that I would be in my current role as I did not know that such a job existed until well into my college years. As a curious person, my interests have been many and varied. Yet it was my fascination with the life sciences and my desire to help humans that led me towards health sciences.
 
After exploring different health-oriented fields in college, I decided to pursue medicine given my interest in infectious diseases and intent to help and work with people. At the time, I thought it was the only career that would suit me. Having decided to take a gap year to apply to medical school, I began working in the research lab of one of my professors whose medical pathology class fueled my passion for learning about infectious diseases. This was a basic science lab that studied steroid hormone action in a breast cancer cell model and was my very first exposure to academic research. The skillset I gained during this role, including my very first publication and the abilities to mentor and train young students, would set the foundation for every experience that would follow.
 
During this time, I began to question my choice to pursue medicine, as I realized that there are many different fields that encompass my interests and perhaps better fit my curious nature. Additionally, I was starting to realize that medicine would be a huge undertaking for me personally. Therefore, I decided to expand my career lens and began exploring other options.
 
The work I was doing in the lab was enjoyable and I was quite good at it, yet there was something missing: the people aspect. Around this time, one of my friends was entering her MPH program. After speaking with her about what public health actually was (because I really had no idea), it sounded like the perfect combination of skills and tools to succeed in the areas in which I was passionate. One year later, I was the one embarking on my own Public Health journey at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
 
My Experiences Abroad
 
For me, traveling is a way to meet people, get to know other cultures, and expand my view of the world. The way that I prefer to incorporate travel into my life is by experiencing the day-to-day in a new environment by working and/or studying abroad. I have already had two incredible opportunities to do this, and I am striving for more in the near future.
 
The first time I completed an international research internship was during my MPH in 2016. I went to Santiago, Chile and worked at INTA, the “Instituto de Nutrición y Tecnología de los Alimentos” in the microbiology laboratory under Dr. Angelica Reyes, where I studied the effects of copper on Listeria monocytogenes. This experience has enriched me in ways I could never imagine, by making life-long friendships and mentorships, learning what it means to do research with varying levels of resources and language barriers when it comes to publishing.
 
I enjoyed this experience so much that I decided to pursue an additional international research program at the end of my MPH. As a Mount Sinai International Program fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Luz Claudio, I went to Dublin, Ireland. Before departing to our host countries, we had a week-long orientation in New York City. This was one of the most memorable weeks of my life. As part of the orientation, we received training in different areas of conducting research, heard from previous alumni of the program about their own experiences and where they are now, and prepared ourselves personally with Dr. Claudio for our research abroad.
 
In Dublin, I worked at Trinity College of Dublin in the laboratory of Dr. Laure Marignol, where I researched biomarkers for treatment resistance in prostate cancer cells. This experience allowed me to use the skills I learned in my first research experience with my professor in the lab by coming from a subject matter expert viewpoint and enabled me to develop my mentoring skills by teaching new students.
 
Through the Mount Sinai International Program, I built strong relationships with mentors who have shaped and guided me throughout and long-after the internship. They have provided support, guidance, opportunities for the future, and friendship. The benefits of doing an international research internship are life-long, providing skills and invaluable opportunities that will not only make you a better professional in your field but a better human being.
 
Fast Forward to the Present
 
Currently, I am the Legionella Epidemiologist at the Department of Health in Washington DC. My role is split between that of an epidemiologist and a program coordinator-which is great because I get to do both research and applied public health work. As an epidemiologist, I conduct surveillance and investigations of cases and outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease. As the coordinator for the Legionella Surveillance Program, I collaborate with and serve as a resource to stakeholders (e.g. other government agencies, healthcare facilities, the public) for Legionnaires’ disease prevention activities in DC.
 
During the Mount Sinai International Exchange Program, the importance of networking and mentorship was very encouraged. The way I arrived at my current position at the health department stemmed from the opportunity to network with one of the program alumni, Dr. Sasha McGee, whose journey reminded me very much of my own. After the program, I reached out to Dr. McGee seeking guidance during a time of uncertainty, and little did I know how much that would impact my life. After that initial phone call, Dr. McGee became a mentor to me, guiding me through the job-seeking process and giving me encouragement and advice. Eventually, I obtained a position working alongside Dr. McGee, one of the people whom I most admire. The past 10 years have not only allowed me to design my trajectory but to discover myself and my place in the world. Looking back at my career trajectory, I see that the job I hold now beautifully and delicately reflects my story thus far.
 
Obstacles Along the Way and the Tools for Overcoming Them
 
Of course, no journey gets on without a few walls to break along the way. Since I was very young, I have struggled with anxiety, and during my educational and professional experiences, impostor syndrome. Over time, I have learned to recognize them and deal with these head-on by working hard and with support from my friends and family. One of the ways I have worked through these is by learning to prioritize my own mental and physical health when necessary by doing activities that relax me and bring me joy, such as cooking and baking or going out for coffee with a dear friend.
 
Some tools that have helped me during tough times have been journaling and having a friend to talk to who understands what I am going through. I have also learned to trust my intuition and judgment in situations (from past positive experiences), allowing me to form a secure relationship with myself. These actions have helped to strengthen my self-confidence and self-efficacy. Lastly, I have never let myself shy away from doing that which drives my anxiety and impostor syndrome because that is adding fuel to the fire. You must find the water that will put it out instead- in my case, the positive experiences I’ve had, the amazing people I’ve met along the way, and recognizing the meaningful impact I have had on the world.
 
Looking in Hindsight and Advice to the Future
 
If I could go back ten years, there are some things that I wish I would have known or done differently. First, the realization that there are many different paths to many different outcomes: I wish I would have known that there are interests and there are skills and that those can be very different from each other but can be readily intertwined in many different jobs. While I do not regret the path I carved out for myself (I am actually very proud of it), I would have been more patient and less pressured.
 
Second, I wish I would have known to reach out to professors for research opportunities or internships during my undergraduate. Being a first-generation US college student, I did not know that  I could have sought out internships like the Mount Sinai International Program during my undergraduate and would have reaped the benefits of mentorship and networking much earlier in my career.
 
My advice to others in similar career paths would be to not shy away from contacting professors whose research you find interesting, or alumni whose advice you seek on potential career paths. Most, if not all of the people you approach will be more than happy to speak with you and share their stories.  And one never knows who will serve as a mentor and in what way. I would also advise others to say “yes” to each and every opportunity that comes your way because there will almost always be something to take home. Lastly, I would advise others to not worry about forming the perfect or most straightforward path-  just follow your interests, curiosity, and strengths, and the path will shape itself.

Caption: ​Dr. Sharon Attipoe and her three children, honored with Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Distinguished Professor at UCLA in the Fielding School of Public Health and the Geffen School of Medicine.

I was born in Ghana and remember growing up trying to find identity in the career path I wanted to pursue.  I was determined to be a lawyer because I got into trouble several times in school as “talkative”.  Yep, lawyers were chatterboxes in my mind!  It wasn’t until I emigrated from Ghana to the United States (US) that I had the thought of going into healthcare.  Even then I had the delusion of being a doctor and a lawyer at the same, although I now believe in that possibility more than I did back then.  In hindsight, this fiery attitude, together with my faith and beliefs were precisely the things I needed to get to where I am today.  
 
Identity
I have realized over the years that the concept of social descriptions of any human being is as complex as a spider web.  Being an immigrant, who spent my teenage years and early adulthood in the US, I have encountered the dichotomy trying to find my place in the world.  However, with time, I now consider myself plainly as a bicultural, millennial woman of African descent, Christian, wife, mom, scientist, author, and aspiring trailblazer in the field of health.  I left Ghana when I was 16 years to live in the US and to further my studies.  Throughout high school, I challenged myself with advanced courses while maneuvering the different cultures I was exposed to in my new country.  I liked discovery and learning about the way things worked because it was fun, but I was never satisfied with just reading theories from books.  Instead, I was fascinated with taking apart electrical objects, figuring out how the different components worked, then putting them back together.  With the lack of professional mentors in my life at that time, I pursued my interests solely based on gut feelings, the strength and wit I observed from the women in my life such as my grandmother, and my level of passion for different topics.  This experience has served me well as a female researcher who is capable of making both scientific and ethical decisions in my research projects. 
 
I finally encountered professional mentors such as Dr. Luz Claudio, who tugged on one of my strings of interests, which was to find a way to combine my love for the engineering sciences with the social sciences.  I was moved by her talk about finding my own path in my career.  Her words “find your own path in your career and be open to opportunities for career options that may not even yet exist”.  That advice sticks with me even today, because I am able to appreciate the beauty in the way I think, the way I like to approach solutions to problems I am passionate about solving, and also the way I see the need to make research impactful, and not just some type of academic activity. 
 
This way of thinking came into play when I was considering how to present findings from a recent economic study for an abstract on dissemination and implementation.  I induced the fact that research brokering in the field of dissemination and implementation requires stakeholders who always come to the table with the focus of what is in it for them.  How does the engineering part of my brain deal with this?  Imagine that the various frequency channels of radio stations represent the different stakeholders and turning the radio dial to the frequency of interest corresponds to a particular stakeholder.  When a stakeholder affiliated with that specific frequency, then the needs of that stakeholder are met.
 
Critical to my finding balance in both my work and personal life, are my faith in God and the support of my family.  I am blessed to be married to my best friend for over a decade, and we have three beautiful children.  Being a successful female scientist is not an easy feat without having an outlet in my life where I am constantly reminded of who I am and what my capabilities are.  I am fortunate to be able to have outstanding support from my husband and our three amazing children.  My family is more than an asset to me as I look back at the critical decisions I have made in my career and how they are all linked in one way or the other to the birth of my three children.  I am forever reminded to be present in this fact with every obstacle I face in my work on a daily basis. 
 
Journey
My interests have always been related to the influence of technology and engineering on health. Consequently, after completing my Master’s Degree in Biomedical Science and Biotechnology, I went to work for a company that manufactured medical devices.  During my several visits to health delivery centers, I was constantly drawn to the impact these devices had on patients’ health and what policies were in place to ensure that these devices were not only available to improve health outcomes but were used safely as well.  I majored in health services research during the course of my Master’s in Public Health and had the opportunity to learn about the US healthcare system and the discussion around access, quality, and costs driving healthcare.
 
In the course of my graduate school education as a doctoral student, I had the opportunity to learn more about the healthcare system of the US.  My analytical and scientific communication skills prepared me for my internship at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where I designed and carried out research on media coverage of a HPV vaccination campaign.   I gained experience in proposal development, manuscript writing, the conceptualization of a research framework for analysis, coding of media articles, and developing a database with variables in addition to performing descriptive analyses.  In addition to completing the project, I presented my work to a panel of researchers at the University of Cape Town and published my work in the Southern African Journal of Gynaecological Oncology.  The challenge involved with conducting research abroad in a limited amount of time was one I had to learn to overcome.   My ability to adapt to these challenges and produce results has prepared me for working in similar settings.   My academic achievements span different research contexts and include international research experience in Ghana.  I worked at the Ghana Health Services and conducted a comparative cost-effectiveness analysis between two outreach programs with a target population of pregnant women.
 
All of these achievements were not without obstacles, but with my continuous belief in the purpose God and the help of my family, I was able to overcome the several obstacles and still continue to flourish in my journey.  I have a husband who was willing to sacrifice immediate financial comforts and his time, to enable me to pursue my doctoral degree.  My mom stepped in to help raise my children during the course of the degree, and more importantly, my amazing children, who quickly understood their mom was working towards something important, provided me with great support in their own little way.  The best moments of my daily journey are when I get to share my professional feats with my family, especially my children.  I shared with my children the joy of publishing a children’s book that is dedicated to them.  I also take them to conferences and work events.  I regard these moments as priceless components of my journey.
 
Balance
Throughout my journey, the opportunities or coincidences that I have come across have all played a critical role in molding and tempering me into the role I am in now.  Experiences such as seeking research internships and fellowships to gain real-life experiences, and my decision to conduct primary data collection for my dissertation work, which granted me the opportunity to gain a life-lasting friendship with my dissertation supervisor, have all been impactful in shaping my career path.  Throughout all these experiences, the primary factor that made the most difference, although I wish I had been exposed to these earlier in my career, was professional mentoring.  My fortunate encounters with mentors, both personal and professional, who believed in my capabilities and my natural curiosity to learn have truly been rewarding.  An example of a great professional mentoring experience is currently at the CDC where my mentor told me on the first day of my fellowship that he wanted me to present to a Task Force, comprising of a team of public health experts, on the topic of the economic evaluation of a community-based intervention.  I thought he was joking, but he confirmed it the next day, and I did not regret his decision. 
 
I will be remiss, however, if I did not mention the importance of finding a balance both with my work and life outside my career.  Within the space of my career, there is the constant challenge of finding the balance between my voice and interests and advice from experienced individuals.  In my personal life, finding the balance between what I can handle independently and when to lean into the fantastic support of family and friends is the daily lesson.  Finding the balance also involves identifying the parts of me that are unique to me, that enables me to enjoy life, and bring my family closer despite the constant time battle between life and work.  Singing at church, traveling with my husband and kids, and watching TV shows with my family help keep me grounded and staying present to what is important.  These moments allow me to excel in my career.  Identifying this strength is a necessary part of making career choices and the boldness to undertake such decisions is not always easy.  If there is anything I would have liked to learn earlier in my career, it is to have someone to share this truth with me.  Seeking further funding opportunities to alleviate some of the financial strain I encountered in my doctoral degree program is something I would have loved to have known earlier in my career as well.
 
In the grand scheme of things, my ability to take advantage of all the opportunities that came my way, such as the excellent opportunity to be a student board member of AcademyHealth, has created a great network that I heavily depend on in my career trajectory.  If I were to provide some advice for upcoming students, it would be to find their passion, seek  funding, and create a support system to help them achieve their goals and dreams.  Investing in myself, no matter how difficult, being more open to reaching out to people, believing in my God-given purpose, sharing my dreams, not being afraid to take risks, and being fortunate to have the support of my family, have been critical elements to helping place value on my skills and expertise. 

Guest Blog Post: Dr. Carla Alvarado was one of my interns in the International Training Program for Minority Students some years ago.  Although I try to keep in touch with alumni of my programs, it is sometimes hard to keep track of where all of them are.  Imagine my delight when I went to a meeting of the Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences,of which I am a member and saw that the only other Latina face in the room was that of my former student, Carla Alvarado, who is a superb program officer there.  I am extremely proud of Carla, who after overcoming incredible odds, has risen to such a great career that brings together so many of her diverse personal and professional experiences.
Here is Carla's story in her own words. ​

Looking back at my growing up in the US-Mexico border, I feel fortunate that I have a bicultural and bilingual culture. I can say now that growing up in a predominantly Hispanic community did not prepare me for life as a “minority” once I stepped out of the Southwest. But I believe that life had a way of having me experience everything I need to in order to land exactly where I need to be. 


Seeing the Health Care System as a Nurse in a Minority Community
Fortune continued to follow me as I graduated from a high school that was a magnet school for health professions, where I pursued a practical nursing degree. I earned a Bachelor’s in political science with a minor in economics, a master’s in public health with a focus on management, policy and community health, and international health. Then I worked for a local health department in Texas before pursuing a doctoral degree in public health policy. After all these twists and turns, I am currently a program officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. 


During my nursing clinical rounds, I observed many patients in precarious conditions, both in terms of the state of their health and in their living conditions. I saw patients with multiple diseases, and I noticed that those without health insurance were treated differently and released as soon as possible and often, within days, you would see them back again at the hospital.  Being in a region where 30% percent of the population was medically uninsured, I witnessed the impact lack of access to healthcare could have on people’s lives. I will never forget how people diagnosed with stage IV cancer were being sent home to die because they didn’t have health insurance and they were not eligible candidates for cancer trials. I saw families that were put under severe stress because of the financial strain of hospitalization.  I started questioning the fairness of the health insurance system or lack thereof. 


Seeing the Health Care System as a Brain Tumor Patient
As fate would have it, I lived first-hand the need for health care.  A few weeks after I graduated from the nursing program, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and I had to undergo surgery. The surgery and the 2-year treatment that followed made me realize how lucky it was that I had health insurance that would cover the majority of the expenses, to this day I do not know how my parents were able to cope with the out of pocket expenses (nor will they tell me).


After being a patient and interfacing with the good, the bad and the ugly of the health care system, I needed to understand why the U.S. health care system was the way it was. I decided to study political science (to my parents’ dismay), and was subsequently dissuaded from a philosophy minor (because they said I’d starve) and encouraged to purse economics, which I did (but as a minor). As I completed my bachelor’s degree, I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do after college, I knew I wanted (and needed) a master’s degree, but in what? One night, after going dancing I was venting to a friend about not knowing my next step, and she told me about her friend pursuing a master’s degree in public health, which embarrassingly I knew nothing about (I know, not even as a former nurse). To my delight, public health married all three streams of knowledge I had attained throughout the years, and so I applied to grad schools for an MPH program. 


Putting it All Together
During my MPH I had a variety of experiences that (in hindsight) made me a well- rounded public health student: I was involved in environmental health research, health disparities research, as well as policy and international research. It was tough being involved in so many projects, but I loved not only learning about the different sub-disciplines in public health but also having hands-on experience. So hands on, that as a student I was approached to become a consultant for a binational entity to conduct HIV-related qualitative research.  Upon graduation, I secured a job at a local health department in Texas where, in the span of 3 years, I held 3 different positions: I was a health educator, a public health preparedness community liaison and a de facto special projects coordinator. During the H1N1 response (ten years ago!) I was the crisis and emergency risk communications lead and the preparedness community liaison, and let’s just say that the experience left me wondering how the federal and state governments made their policy decisions and why they were implemented the way they were. The experience was the push I needed to decide to pursue a PhD in public health policy. I always knew I wanted a PhD, as a personal exercise of intellectual endurance, and the experience at the health department helped me refine the topic I wanted to commit to for the next several years. Pursuing a PhD was the most gratifying experience I have had, it was a challenge and it was taxing, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. 


I wish someone would have told me to relax. Honestly. I wish someone had told me that yes, although it is important to be methodical about pursuing a degree (or several), the degrees give you (in the eyes of society as we know it) much more flexibility than people know. For example, I see people who graduated with a degree in public health who now work at the Department of Justice, friends who graduated with an urban planning degree working in public health, and other sorts of arrangements. I wish someone had told me that interdisciplinary experiences are also valuable and valued, being a generalist is also an area of expertise in public health. I wish someone would have mentioned that knowing about political science, economics, ethics, nursing, and public health would render a worthwhile portfolio of expertise, to hush all the people who pressured students to pick one thing and one thing only. 


The path to the National Academies makes sense to me in hindsight.  For starters, I graduated obtained a practical nursing degree in high school because my mother is a nurse and I thought that being a nurse was a pathway to becoming a doctor, as many of us children of immigrants are *encouraged* to become (note the euphemism). 
I am very fortunate to have found a job that allows me to apply the knowledge and multitude of experiences to the various projects we work on and even affords me the ability to keep learning about the maturing field of population health.
 
Some of the biggest obstacles that I have faced have been of the interpersonal kind.  Interacting with people who are not open to someone with a different background can be challenging.  But overall, it has been an asset to be a bilingual (Spanish and English) Hispanic woman, with experience in the clinical field, the research and practice-based public health field, and in health services research.  I can navigate in and out of many different areas, both professionally and personally. However, the ability to navigate different terrains means I have had to make in-roads into each, and that takes work and patience because you have to establish and exercise your agency. There have been many times, both professionally and personally, when any of the social categories  I am part of has been used against me. No need to exemplify such unpleasantries, but (sadly) it took me a long time to learn that those who use them against you are taking out their frustrations, ignorance, bigotry, and inferiority complexes on you, as opposed to there being something wrong with being any of the categories you represent.
 
I love learning and traveling.  Internships, especially those like the Mount Sinai Training Programs directed by Dr. Claudio, are so dear and near to me because they are professionally and personally intense, challenging, and rewarding all at the same time.  Those internship experiences helped me put my career together.  


The National Academies is a great place to work for people like me, it is a learning incubator if you will.  I am given liberty to pursue intellectual and professional endeavors that are aligned with our mission. There are days where I am at professional conferences attending or chairing a session, there are others where I spend most of the day reading familiarizing myself with a new topic because we are organizing a workshop, yet other days involve providing technical assistance to our innovation collaboratives, supporting the roundtable, writing proceedings, doing research for one of our reports, etc., etc. I especially enjoy the range of activities I get to carry out. No week is the same, and that is very helpful in terms of the quality of life within the workplace. I am truly honored and thankful that I have a job where I get to interface with so many of the great experts in public and population health. I get to nerd out and learn something new every week, meeting and interacting with experts from around the nation and learn about their work.  I do however miss data analysis, but that I can do as an extracurricular professional exercise.


I was once told that degrees do not mean anything, this was coming from a much older coworker at the health department who had been trained on the job and been working longer than I had been alive.   To which I said, “maybe you should tell your daughter that, isn’t she the first one in your family to obtain a college degree and is now pursuing a master’s degree?” Back then I didn’t realize that out of almost 400 employees, only 5 of us had a master’s in public health, including the Director and the epidemiologist, and I was the youngest, the amount of work and responsibility was too much too soon in most people’s eyes and so they would hit below the belt. At the time I was distraught and confused about their animosity, but now all I can do is be thankful that my degrees have opened doors to a breadth of experiences that I never knew existed, and that they still do not, or ever will. 
​

“What?!  You want to interview me for a podcast about fashion?” I said on the phone, incredulously.  
I continued, “Before I say you are crazy, maybe what you mean is that you want me to talk about the environmental impact of the fashion industry?”  (This is something that I have written about in one of my most popular research papers, so that would make total sense.)  “No,” said Misha Kaura, the fashion designer, and podcaster who was calling me on the phone.  “I want to interview you about the role of fashion in your professional life.”
Until that moment, I had not consciously thought that fashion played much of a role in my career.  Sure, I like to look nice and presentable, but that is a long leap from being fashiony.  
Misha’s invitation made me think.  Hmm…  I guess fashion does play quite a role in my professional life.  I did mention in my TED Talk that when I present about environmental health to girls, they also ask me about my clothes, shoes, or hair.  This can get annoying, until you think about it from their perspective.  I don't fit the media image of a scientist, so the girls are curious.  
For the podcast, Misha asked me to talk about my career path and when fashion entered my consciousness.  So I had to recall that my biggest role models were my aunts.  You see, I grew up in the mountainous countryside on the island of Puerto Rico.  My aunts were all professional women, 6 of them were secretaries.  That they had these glamorous jobs was pretty rare at that time.  And I wanted to grow up to look like them.
I remember that my aunts would walk down our unpaved road with their work shoes in hand.  When they got to the bottom of the mountain where the paved road started, they would wash their feet and put their heels on to go to work in the nice offices in the city.   To me, that was what a professional woman did.  
Now that I am an environmental health scientist, some people have the idea that I work with trees and forests and wildlife. But in fact, I work in an office and lab in a big hospital in Manhattan.   
Passion for fashion is important to me because many people think that a woman scientist doesn't really care about fashion.  Why would we, right?  We tend to wear lab coats and anyway, a woman who is brainy can’t possibly care much about her appearance.  That's if you believe the media.
For me, the concept of fashion is aspirational and also inspirational.   Aspirational because being a non-traditional female underrepresented minority scientist, I needed to break those stereotypes to be taken seriously.  Therefore, I started dressing more like who I wanted to be, a professional.  Like my aunts.  Carrying my high heel shoes in my hand until I get to the paved road. Literally and figuratively.  
Inspirational because, as I said in my TED Talk, when I talk to my students, especially young women and girls, it's really important to them to see somebody they would want to emulate. Now that I have a 12-year-old daughter I see more clearly how important this is to them.  I want to say to girls and young women: "you can dress and look anyway you want and still be a kick-ass scientist.  If you don’t fit the stereotypes, so be it."
I personally don’t have a lot of clothes, but what I do have I like. Last year, I joined the No New Clothes for a Year pledge.  I made the year,  buying only a pair of walking shoes and underwear, but cheated by having my friend, Martina Dietrich make me a dress for my TED Talk.  I got the jewelry from my friend Jane Diaz.  
So in the podcast I said that fashion style is not about having a ton of clothes or being trendy.  It comes with getting to know yourself and being able to reflect that knowledge in your own style.   Style comes from being able to wear clothes that make you feel in control, whether those clothes are the kind you see on the runways or the byways. 
Yes, being a woman scientist has the advantage of forcing people to see your brain power rather than only being measured by superficialities. That must allow for all styles to be represented.  Once I was wearing a classic Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress at work, when a colleague sarcastically asked me "are you coming to the seminar or to a cocktail party".  In fact, I was going to both!
Fashion style is about wearing and looking like who we are and who we  want to be.
Listen to the podcast here: https://passionforfashionwithmishakaura.simplecast.com/episodes/misha-kaura-interviews-dr-luz-claudio-ArYr0Fco

Since graduate programs are very focused on a specific subject, they are best for students who are pretty certain of what discipline interests them most.
For an article published in US News and World Report, Ilana Kowarski asked several experts in higher education to explain what is graduate school. Students must weigh the decision to pursue graduate education very carefully and this article is intended to help in that regard.
One common misconception about graduate school is that it is similar to college, but higher education experts say that graduate courses tend to involve more self-directed learning than courses at the undergraduate level.
"Too often, college students or people who only have had a college experience somehow think that graduate school is going to be more of the same, and it's not," says Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University in California. "It's going to look very different. So students might be tired of sitting in small plastic seats in large lecture halls and listening to professors drone on and then taking tests and things like that, and they don't realize that often graduate school is not that way at all."
Plante says graduate courses tend to involve small classes as opposed to large lectures, and he notes that grad students are typically engaged in academic research outside of the classroom.
In addition to Dr. Plante's comment, I was quoted as follows:
 "Luz Claudio, a tenured professor with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, says graduate school typically requires an abundance of motivation and personal accountability, since students are frequently asked to work independently.
"I tell college students that one of the keys to success in graduate school is self-discipline," Claudio wrote in an email. "There's generally no 'homework,' quizzes and few exams. Students need to learn how to learn class materials without such close guidance from a teacher. However, most graduate programs have a long-term project that students must complete, such as a research paper. These require a different kind of relationship with a teacher. For these, the teacher becomes more like a mentor and the student is more like an apprentice."
To read more, go to US News & World Report.

Do you have a friend who once did a frog dissection and now acts as if they were a surgeon?  Well, I don't want to be like that friend.
I have done one TED Talk.  Therefore, I am no expert.  I am still learning and exploring how I can incorporate that experience into other parts of my professional life.  But  since this is what you asked in the FAQs, then I will tell you the things I learned that helped me.  Hope that they may help you next time you have to give a scary talk:

• Prepare, then prepare some more: Nothing calms the nerves like being prepared.  Study, rehearse, record yourself.  Try it in front of friends and family.  I once recited my Talk to my poor friend Lucia while we waited to be seated at a restaurant.  I'd say, if someone is willing to sit through it, they are fair game for having to listen to my Talk.  It is important to try your Talk with different people.  I rehearsed my Talk with my group of residents several times.  Although the feedback was valuable, the reactions were no longer genuine.  You really need new people to rehearse with in order to know whether jokes, meaning, tone, will work with a new audience.  
• Think about how much time it will take you to prepare the TED Talk, then double it: The TED Residency program requires near total commitment for 4 months.  And you will need every minute of that time, if you are not experienced.  Since I continued my work at my job during that time, I ended up working 12 hours a day, seven days a week from September to December.  Other residents had a more sane schedule, but none worked less hard than me.  
• At one point, you just have to let go: One of the difficult things about giving such a short talk is that every word is important.  So every word has to earn its place on the Talk. After every sentence, I would ask my self: "Is this what I really mean?".  But there comes a point when the Talk is done.  You must give yourself a deadline and stop editing.  Accept that it is what it is.  Now it is time to memorize. 
• Memorize?:  Yes.  Memorize.  I am often asked whether there were teleprompters.  The answer is NO.  Almost every speaker memorized their Talks.  I used a modification of the Memory Palace technique,but others used repetition, or writing it long-hand.  Either way, it is a scary and for some, an impossible task.  But I tell you, it can be done, with practice.  I was lucky to have had two occasions during which I had to give 5-minute speeches in the weeks before the TED Talk.  I did not have to give memorized speeches on those occasions, but used the opportunities to practice and modify the Memory Palace technique to use in the TED Talk.  Not only did it work, but I am amazed at how long the memory has stayed.  I think I could still give the TED Talk without notes all these months later.  
• Balance memorization with improvisation: The Talk that I gave on the TED stage was 90% what I had memorized.  The other 10% came to me in reaction to the audience. As I was speaking, I realized that one section needed more explanation, so I winged it and added a couple of sentences.  I feel that I was able to do that because I was very present and in the moment, and because I had studied very hard for this.  Can you spot where I went improv in the Talk? 
• Do YOU: In preparation for the Talk, I watched dozens of Talks. Some of my favorites. Some of the most popular.  Some of the most informative.  Some about topics similar to mine...  I tried some of the classic TEDTalkish approaches: The enumeration ("Three things that I learned"), The epiphany ("And suddenly..."), the dreamer ("Imagine a world..."), and the dramatic ("If we don't do this now, the world as we know it will end").  None of these strategies worked for my first TED Talk.  I just wanted to tell my story.  Maybe next time I will do a TED Talk that is more of the classic stereotype.  But for now, I just wanted people to get to know me and my work.
• Speak slowly: It is so counter-intuitive, but when we have a very short time to give a talk, we try to cram it all in by speaking faster and watching the clock.  This is such as big mistake!  By speaking slowly, I was able to connect with the audience and think through the Talk instead of going full blast autopilot. Speaking slowly I was able to feel what I was saying and feel comfortable being more me.  So I wrote a 5 minute talk and allowed for a bit of stretch and pauses to get to the 6-7 minute mark required.  

There are books and books about how to give Talks.  Hey, Chris Anderson, TED's founder himself published a book about this, and there's numerous other copycats.  If you would have asked me "what I would have done differently about my TED Talk?", I could have filled pages.  But thank you for asking me about what I learned.  That was a much better question.

You know that warm and fuzzy feeling that you get when walking on a lovely beach at sunset? 
Giving a TED Talk was NOT like that.
Giving a TED Talk was more like riding a roller coaster, when you are not a roller-coaster- type-of-person.  It was the longest 6:54 minutes of my life.  I felt every emotion: fear, excitement, despair, focus, distraction, nausea... then, just like riding a roller coaster, as soon as it was over, I wanted to do it all again.  
To answer your second most frequently asked question (FAQ), here are some of the salient points of this experience:

• It was not a competition: Everyone in the TED Residency wanted each other to do their best.  Especially since everyone was speaking about vastly different topics, we all shared our best tips and genuinely cheered each other on.  It was more like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood than Survivor.  The lesson from this: When other people do well, it doesn't take away from your own Talk.  Everyone can do well without there being a ranking of who's the best.
• Intense bonding experience: Like getting stuck in an elevator with 4 strangers for hours, going through a hard experience with other people creates an intense bond within the group. I can honestly say that I consider many of the people in the group friends-for-life, even though our experiences may be so different outside of TED.  I have seen this happen with many people in the group.  Some have hired TED classmates to work at their startups.  Others have hosted them at their homes.  Although everyone is really busy, we are meeting once a month as a group.  I am excited to hear about everyone's successes every time we get together.
• More storytelling, less elevator pitch: I never thought of the story of my research as compelling or interesting but only to my closest friends, if to anyone.  My Talks have always been about the facts and the data.  Through this experience I came to understand that my story IS part of the research.  Talking about it is part of the reporting, but it was hard not to feel indulgent for telling this story.  I had to get over this feeling if I was going to be an effective storyteller for this Talk.  That was probably one of the hardest things to do.
• Clarity was key: I have many topics that I could have talked about for TED. After all, I have been a scientist for many years, but I am also a Mom, an underrepresented minority, a writer, etc.  The hardest part was to become clear about what my intention was with this Talk.  My intention was not to sell an idea for a start-up or a book.  My intention was to get you to know me in my most authentic self.  My TED Talk is a calling card.  Once I decided that intention, everything fell into place.
• Once it's done, it's done: I could easily spend sleepless nights second-guessing my choices in the Talk.  I cringe about my hand movements, my messy hair, and even whether I could have looked better, sounded better, been more X... There are a million things that I can see I could have done differently.  But unless I see this as a learning experience, those thoughts could drive me mad.  This TED Talk is done.  It's out there for you to see.  I learned a lot, now I will move on to the next thing.
• Everyone wants you to do well, really: I felt that everyone; my fellow TED Talkers, the Residency directors, people in the audience, everyone wanted us to do well.  While I was giving the Talk, I felt like dying at minute 3:42.  What helped me get through it was to "know" that people didn't want me to fail.  It helped me to focus on that one person who was looking straight at me, hanging on my every word. Or at least, I imagined that is what they were doing.  It helped.  

So, to answer your question, I can tell you that at some times, doing the TED Talk felt like torture.  I asked myself more than once "why did I need to put myself through this?!"  And then, like a roller coaster, with hands shaking, I wanted to do it all again.

I know, I know.  You've heard it all already.  Climate change is happening.  And it's happening now.  But the issue is so important that it begs the question, can there ever be TMI about climate change (too much information)? 
We were one of 5 scientists interviewed by Bustle about climate change.  I talked about the worsening of air pollution and its effects of human health.  Here is what I said:
" Dr. Luz Claudio, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine tells Bustle, "The environmental challenge that I am focusing on in my research is to try to identify, prevent, and reduce the effects of environmental pollutants in vulnerable human populations, especially children. I do this work because children are particularly vulnerable to exposure to pollutants in the environment. Children tend to have higher exposures per body weight because they absorb chemicals more readily, they breathe more air, they are closer to the floor where there are often more of some classes of pollutants and they tend to put everything in their mouth, especially when they are really young. Also, exposure to a chemical pollutant early in life, even before birth, could have effects later in the life of children that can be unmasked as they grow.
"My team and I have investigated the asthma epidemic in children, especially children in minority and poor communities. We have also assessed how different other environmental factors can interact with poverty, diet, minority status, poor housing and other factors to cause disease More recently, we have also investigated the role of air pollution in causing neurobehavioral effects on children."
Human activity, she says, is culpable for these health issues, but we can do a lot to help. "Most of the types of air pollutants that we are investigating for their effects on children’s health are released through human activity." Air pollution can come from everything from domestic activities like cooking and heating to exposure to factory smoke, waste-burning, dust storms, and traffic emissions. "Collectively, we can as a society value the health of children by reducing emissions from traffic and other fossil fuels. For example, we are now in the process of estimating how small actions such as done by many people may quantifiably reduce the burden of disease in children.
"On an individual level, people have more control about their indoor air," Dr. Claudio tells Bustle. "Being aware of the role that indoor air can play on children’s health is a great step towards addressing this issue. Never smoking in the home, removing sources of VOCs [Volatile Organic Compounds] such as certain carpeting, reducing or aerating items that produce a lot of off-gassing, and wall treatments that contain volatile compounds can be small actions that significantly reduce some of the indoor air pollutants."  

I'd do anything for my daughter, even a TED Talk!
   When my daughter had the idea of having me apply to the TED Residency, it did not occur to me that I might actually get it.  As a big fan of TED Talks, I have watched many, yet, I've never seen a Talk by someone I know.  All the speakers seem so confident and knowledgeable, and famous.  It all seemed so out of my league.
  To say that I was shocked that I was selected for the TED Residency is an understatement.  Once the shock dissipated, reality kicked in:  How would I find the time to prepare? What is my idea worth spreading? What should I wear?!  Reality check number 1.
   Sure, as an academic research scientist, I have given talks, seminars, lectures, classes, workshops.  I would say that I have been an average speaker giving the average seminar in which every statement is illustrated by a Powerpoint slide.  The purpose of an academic seminar is usually to present data.  It is very much like a scientific paper in oral form: the intro, the methods, the data, the conclusions.  I quickly learned that I wasn't going to get away with that on the TED stage.  Reality check number 2.  
   And as scientists, what do we ever feel sure about?  We are trained to say "the data suggests" in our papers.  We still call evolution a "theory". And we end every research paper with "more studies are needed".  What can I say on the TED stage that I "know for sure", as Oprah would say?  Reality check number 3.
   The TED Residency program helped me check off all those realities.  The program selected a VERY DIVERSE group of professionals and put us together in a pot, raised the heat to simmer, and stirred.  
   Twenty residents were selected, ranging in age from 21 to 70, different races and backgrounds, different areas of expertise, from different countries, working together in open cubicles at the TED Conferences Headquarters for three months.  During this time, I continued working at Mount Sinai, submitting three research proposals to NIH.  I was working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Thanks to my family and a flexible schedule at my job, I was able to do it.
   At TED, I was quickly humbled by how much I needed to learn.  Mostly, I learned from my peers in the Residency. I engaged in conversations with two veteran New York Times reporters about health information and the media, learned from two young African-American men about using technology for social good, and was moved to tears by two LGBT youth about how to tell their stories. The most helpful and surprising learning experience came from an amazing British rapper.  This young red-headed woman taught me the value of every word I say in my Talk. I am forever bonded with all the residents in my group.  It was like going skydiving with strangers, after that experience, you really can't call them strangers anymore.  
   I can honestly tell you that it was very hard for me to do this.  It required a lot of unlearning and learning.  It was truly a humbling experience.  I am still not totally sure that I was deserving, and it took me a while to be willing to share the Talk with all of you.  But I could not let my daughter down.  She kept saying: "Do it Mamami, do it!"  So I tossed the reality checks out the window.  Shook off the impostor syndrome.  And worked my butt off.  
Thank you all for your support during this journey. I really need you to view and share this TED Talk with your contacts.  Now we both can say that we know someone who did a TED Talk. ;) 

Our previous research has shown that exposure to contaminants in outdoor and  indoor air can affect respiratory health, especially in children.  This is important because diseases such as asthma, bronchitis and other conditions are very common and affect many families. 

We have also previously written about how children show exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals from personal care products and other sources.   Recently, I was interviewed by Kelly Bryant for an article in Reader's Digest.  The article lists 14 ways in which toxins "sneak" into our homes in ways that may be unexpected or surprising for many people.  I was quoted in the article as follows:
It feels good to put dry-cleaned clothing back in your closet, crisp and pressed for your next outing. But the process which made them look brand new could carry some trouble. “Perchloroethylene is a chemical used in dry cleaning,” says Luz Claudio, PhD, professor of environmental medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Although it’s not known how much of it may be released in the home when you bring dry-cleaned clothes in plastic bags, it may be best to open the bags and aerate them outdoors before bringing inside.”
The other 13 sneaky ways toxins may be entering your house, according to the article, are: 

• Through the floorboards in the form of radon, a gas that can lead to lung cancer after prolonged exposure.
• With new carpets that emit volatile organic compounds, especially during the first 72 hours after installation.
• Your mattresses when they are treated with toxic flame retardants.
• Air fresheners as the perfumes and scents can contain toxic chemicals.
• "Natural" products with labels that can be misleading.
• Indoor air products that are intended to perfume or mask odors in the air.
• Household dust can accumulate and concentrate many of the non-volatile toxins that exist in the home.
• Self-care products such as nail polish, shampoo, and others may release formaldehyde, which causes cancer.
• "Safe" ingredients such as polyethylene glycol are very common in cosmetics and cleaning products.  The Environmental Working Group and others question the safety of these ingredients.
• On your shoes you can bring anything that you walked on outdoors including bacteria and other organisms.
• In your walls can be lurking mold which can be an asthma trigger, especially in children.
• From the tap water in as many as 33 states have been found to have unsafe levels of several chemicals.  
• Through your air conditioner, when not well designed or maintained, can contribute to concentrating polluted indoor air. 

To read the full article, visit the Reader's Digest website.  Click below.