Black Excellence Oral History with Sarah Lemer, June 15, 2021 (Ms2024-072)

Korin Jones: My name is Korin Rex Jones, and I’m interviewing Dr. Sarah Lemer via Zoom for the Black Excellence in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] Oral History Project. Today is June 15, 2021. Could you start off by stating your full name and date of birth for the record?

Sarah Lemer: Of course. Hi Korin; my name is Sarah Lemer, and I was born on March 31, 1983.

Korin: Thank you. To get an idea of where our story will end up, could you give a brief description of your current role and a little bit about the research that you perform?

Sarah: Yes. I am currently an assistant professor in marine invertebrate genomics at the University of Guam. I’ve been holding that position since a year now, and my research focuses mostly on mollusk evolution, phylogeny, population genetics. And at the same time, as well, I work on coral gene expression and how they are dealing with climate change.

Korin: Thank you. Now, to jump way, way back. Where did you grow up?

Sarah: That’s a simple question with a complicated answer. I was born in France from a French Parisian dad, and my mom is from French Guiana. And I was born in France. And then, I grew up a little bit everywhere because of my father’s job; we traveled a lot. So, I did spend a lot of my childhood in France but also in Indonesia, the Caribbeans, French Guiana, obviously, Spain. A little bit everywhere. Always near the ocean, though.

Korin: Nice little theme. Tell me a bit more about your parents. What did they do exactly?

Sarah: My father worked for a hotel chain. He was a hotel manager. The hotel chain would send him to manage different hotels around the world for a very short amount of time--between six months to two years. That’s basically how long we stayed in various places during my whole childhood. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for the longest time. She did not have any other degrees; she just graduated high school. And she did go back to college, once me and my sister were grown up, and she didn’t have anything else to do at home for us. She decided to go back to school; she got her bachelor’s degree, and then started working with kids, after-school programs for kids that had nothing else to do and needed some activities.

Korin: You just had one sister or were there any other siblings?

Sarah: No, I have one little sister.

Korin: My next question, then, is at what point did you realize that you are interested in science exactly? And if you can’t pinpoint the one moment, then, maybe, what group of experiences triggered your interests?

Sarah: I think--and I like to believe that I was, as far as I can remember--I was always interested in science. As a kid, I played a lot outside. Those were the times before internet, so we played a lot outside. I always had a lot of questions. And because I grew up on the beach or near the beach, often, I spent a lot of time playing on the beach, snorkeling in the water, and I had many, many questions about everything I was seeing. And I remember asking my parents all the time, what is this? Why is the ocean salty? Why is the ocean blue? What are these things that I just found? And they did not have answers. Most of the times, they did not know the answer. And I remember being very frustrated about that. And so, very young, I decided I need to figure these things out. And that was my way of thinking as a kid. As I grew up, I realized, oh, well, I can probably go to school and university and learn all these things. And as I was learning more of these things, I’m realizing that there’s more and more questions that we don’t have answers for. And, very quickly, I understood that I wanted to spend my time, if I could, trying to answer questions that we didn’t know the answer about.

Korin: Was it always ocean-centered?

Sarah: No, it was not. Although, I think it was my very first interest. Then, at some point, I got really interested in botany as well. So, I was collecting plants and pressing them and doing things like that. At some point during middle school, I had this idea that I wanted to be an astrophysicist because--that was the biggest question ever, right? What are we? What’s out there? So, that’s the question I wanted to tackle. And then, very quickly, I realized that you need to know a lot of things about physics and math, and that was not my favorite topic at school. So, quickly, I realized biology was what I liked a lot. And in college, after my bachelor’s degree, I had to decide if I wanted to do a master’s degree. There were two programs I was interested in; it was marine biology or botany. I decided marine biology is what I know, what I’ve been enjoying most of my life. So, let’s just go for this. And it worked out.

Korin: Really interesting. Given that you moved around quite a bit--and for relatively short periods of time--what was your early school life like? Were you able to make friends or relationships with your teachers as well in those subjects, or was it a lot of you became more friends with the subject, rather than, necessarily, the human community around it?

Sarah: I was always the kind of student that just likes school, and you don’t always make good friends when you’re that kind of student. But that was who I was. And, I mean, I was very lucky that--because of my father’s job--he always got to negotiate good schools that I could go to because we were abroad. So, he was always saying, okay, I will go; the one condition is that my kids can go into a good school. Because I was not gonna start learning in Indonesian and Spanish and other languages, although I did a little bit. I spent my time in an American school. And so, the good thing is it was an international school, so I learned English really young, but I also got to be in contact with a lot of international students and people. So, very young, I was immersed in international cultures and learned about different cultures very quickly. Obviously, in a very privileged environment; I’m totally aware of that. I also spent some time at school in France, and the main difference is when we were abroad in these American schools, I think I had a really good science curriculum during that time, and very early, when we were kids, the biology classes would bring us out in the field and do some quadrants and count things. So, very early, I would realize, oh, this is really nice. I only developed some good relationships with a few teachers very early on and probably in the places where we stayed the longest. There are some times where I didn’t even finish the whole school year at the same place, so I have very little memories of those teachers, but I do remember my very first time at school and my very first teacher because I was obviously in English as a Second Language classes. I didn’t speak a word of English, so they put me there. I don’t remember how I learned English, but I remember I was sitting there looking at images of cakes and rabbits and learning words, and I remember that teacher very well. Mrs. Hill was her name. So, she made a big impression on me. It was probably this woman that I did not understand a word about what she was saying at the beginning, and then at some point, we could communicate. So, it was really a revelation for me.

[K]; When you moved on to college for your undergraduate, did you and your sister end up at the same place, and did you share similar interests? So, is your sister also interested in science, or did she break off and do her own thing?

Sarah: My sister and I are eight years apart, so we did not go to college together. And, I think, for a good time, she was interested in biology, but maybe because she was looking at me, and that’s what I was doing. But when she got her own chance to figure out who she was, she’s not a scientist at all. She works in a startup. She’s doing some computer coding stuff.

Korin: That’s actually what my little brother was doing for a while, so I can relate. Could you elaborate a little bit about your undergraduate experience? How was that?

Sarah: So, for my undergraduate, I came back to France. At that time, the rest of my family was in the Caribbean. I came back to France at the end of high school because we have this big test at the end of high school, and I really wanted to be in a school in France, where I could have passed this test and go to a college in France, instead of being, again, in a foreign country. I came back to France, and I stayed with my uncle and aunt for my last year of high school, so I could pass this test there, and my whole family was in the Caribbean. Then, I entered college in France. Undergraduate is three years, and it was a very good, very interesting experience. I really enjoyed it. I think the rhythm of college versus high school fit me really well. I enjoyed learning on so many different topics; most of my classes were science; I didn’t have to do all these other things that I didn’t really like. I made friends. Unfortunately, I don’t have any contact with any of my undergraduate friends anymore. After those three years, I moved on to a master’s degree. Those were really, really big classes, so there was no specific relationship with the professors. I’ve been, now, in the U.S. for a while, and I’ve taught a little bit here in U.S. universities, and there’s quite a big difference for undergraduates and the relationship they have with their professor. I noticed in the U.S., we try to create more relationship; you can email your professor, or in some colleges, you can even have their phone numbers. In France, we don’t have that. We don’t create any relationship with the professor. They come into this empty theater; they come in, they do their class, they go out, and then if you have any questions, some classes have teaching assistants, but most of them don’t. It’s just lectures for the whole semester and one big exam at the end with no other kind of relationship or contact or going deeper into the subject. You’re basically on your own doing your stuff.

Korin: Is there any undergraduate research component? Can you join labs and conduct research as an undergraduate or is that not a thing?

Sarah: I don’t wanna speak for the whole university system in France, but where I was at, I did not have this opportunity, and I am not a hundred percent sure that it’s not possible. I just probably did not know that it was. None of my parents went to university, so I had no idea. I just went to school, to classes, did my work, studied at home, and did my exam. I remember my last year of undergraduate. That’s only when I realized that there was a lab of exobiology on campus, and I did not know that, and at this time I was still thinking maybe I could work in space-related fields. And so, that was my last year, and it was already almost the end of the year, and I remember being super bummed that I did not know that earlier, and I did not talk to anybody there.

Korin: Your parents, at this point, were you talking to them about your career goals, and did they understand them? Was this also something that they wanted for you? Did they get that research was your direction?

Sarah: My parents were always very focused on my education, and they always wanted me to get some kind of degree. I’m not sure they were, specifically, pushing me to do science. I’m pretty sure they weren’t. I think for them whatever I was doing--as long as I was going to college--they were happy about that. My dad is more of like a businessman mindset. Those were different times; he did go to college, but he dropped out. He realized it wasn’t for him. My mom never did, so she was happy that I was going to college. About the science research, my parents were just always very supportive, and I don’t think they ever understood exactly what academia life is and what I was going for, but I didn’t know either. So, that was what it was.

Korin: So, this transition from undergraduate to the master’s degree that you got, how was that? Was it more of an extension or was this like a complete transformation, as far as what was expected of you and what the environment was like?

Sarah: So, in France, in order to do a Ph.D., first, you have to do a master’s degree first. You cannot enter from undergraduate to Ph.D. directly. So, for me, in my mind, it was just a continuation. I was aiming for the Ph.D., so I’m gonna do a master’s degree. That’s how I saw it. In reality, I think it was an awakening, like an electroshock. I was always a very good student. I didn’t really have to work that hard. I always worked hard, but I always had good grades. And then, when I started my master’s degree, I realized, oh, now this is a different level. I actually need to work really hard. My first year of my master’s degree was not a good one. My grades were pretty bad, and I realized that I had to change my whole way of studying. I was just used to--it’s like college, all these classes, I just learn everything by heart. I had a really good memory. I learned everything. It’s biology; you learn all the systems, how it works, and then you just spit it out during your exam. The master’s degree was not like that at all. It required more comprehension. I think, for me, it was a wake-up call, and I realized, okay, if I wanna be an actual researcher--a scientist--I have to change my way of thinking and my way of studying. It was a little hard at the beginning. But I caught up; I was not the best student of my master’s program, but I definitely learned a lot during that time.

Korin: And in your master’s program--I’m still not quite a hundred percent sure how they work--but in this, did you also have like a research project you were working on throughout this, or was this more of coursework?

Sarah: There’s also a research project. It is, however, much more course-focused than in the U.S. The master’s degree is two years. And the first year, you only take classes. The second year is when you also do a research project, in addition to taking classes. So, your project is not as developed and heavy as in the U.S. It’s a shorter project, so, obviously, you can’t do as much. But I was lucky enough that, at that point, I realized that I wanted to work on coral reefs or coral reef environments. So, I contacted a lab in New Caledonia, and I was able to fly there for my research project. So, that was my first contact ever with the reef as a scientist or a scientist-in-training. It opened my eyes. I’m like, okay, this is really what I want to do. I’m doing the right thing. I was only six months--for my master’s degree--in New Caledonia to collect data, but it was really eye-opening. Definitely made me feel like this is what I wanted to do. The way it used to work, at least at the time, is in your cohort, at the end of your master’s degree, you get grades, and they ranked you. Each university has a certain amount of Ph.D. fellowships or stipends that comes from the government. If they have two, then the best two students get that fellowship, and they are automatically enrolled in the Ph.D. program. So, that’s one way to enter a Ph.D. program. The other way is more like you can find in the U.S., you contact the principal investigator, maybe they have funding, or you find your own funding, et cetera. But the most prestigious way is if you are one of the best students, and you get in automatically. So, obviously, we’re all aiming for that. At this point, I became a good student again, so I thought I really had a chance. So, I tried real hard. I managed to publish two papers out of my master’s with that, which I thought was really good. I defended my master’s, and I was waiting for my grades. This year, the university only had one fellowship, and I did not finish first. I was really disappointed about it because I finished second. And so, it’s like, ugh; if I was third, fourth, whatever. I finished second. So, what I did is I went back to New Caledonia with my advisor there--my master’s advisor--and he hired me for a year and a half as a lab manager. So, in the end, I got the chance to develop more skills in the lab. At that time, I was just doing polymerase chain reaction testing constantly and data analysis. And because I was there for so long, after a master’s degree, I developed a network of other researchers that were working in coral reefs that were coming to New Caledonia for a field season or whatever. And that’s how I met someone who was actually a postdoc in the lab where I was going to do my Ph.D. So, she was a postdoc there on a field trip, and we chatted. I helped her in the lab because I was a lab manager and she said, you know, I think my principal investigator is actually looking for a Ph.D. He just got this funding; he’s looking for someone. I’ll put you two in contact. That’s how it worked out, and in the end, it was a perfect scenario.

Korin: Really cool, and I’d actually been wondering about that because it seems like, among all of the interests that scientists have, be it frogs or beetles, there is often that question that you get asked of like, well, why is your science important or why should we care about that? But when it comes to coral reefs, it doesn’t feel like that’s a question that gets asked very often because people are like, of course, duh, we need those. That field seems to be very competitive. So, would you say that that’s a difficult field to get into, and that networking is something that’s critical for actually entering into that?

Sarah: Absolutely. I actually didn’t start right away working on corals. I worked in coral reef environments, so my master’s was about coral reef fish, and my Ph.D. was about the population genetics of black-lip pearl oysters, pearl oysters in French Polynesia, and these guys only live on the reef. They’re a coral reef species, but they’re not corals. After my Ph.D., all my postdocs were mostly about mollusks that live on the reef. And so, I went to all these--the International Coral Reef Society conferences, ICRS. And I was in the session of the few of us who are not talking about corals, but we’re talking about other animals that live on the reef. However, this does still allow us to interact with other people and be in coral reefs-centered labs. I was always interested in corals, but I also realized the organisms and the systems that I work on is not--like you said--they’re not as competitive, and there’s a lot to do because people are focusing a lot on coral. So, I was never really looking to work on corals. It just fell on me, when I moved to Guam, so it’s been very recent. I’ve been here for four years. I’m an assistant professor since last year, but for the past three years before that, I was a faculty, just not on tenure track, just on soft money. I just started working on corals here because Guam is located in this place where the reefs are dying. Every summer, we have bleaching, and there’s a lot to do here, and there’s a lot of agencies who want to fund projects to look at coral. So, I started working on coral since four years now. I started late in the game, and now I am competing with people that are at my level that have been working on coral since their master’s degree or their Ph.D. And I’m just coming and being like, hey, I have this idea. And people will tell me, oh yeah, we’ve done that; it doesn’t work.

Korin: Could you elaborate a bit more on what your Ph.D. experience was like?

Sarah: My Ph.D. experience was probably one of my best memory of me doing research in retrospect. Obviously, while I was in it, it was hell, and I was like, I’m never gonna finish this. The lab where I did my Ph.D. was a lab that is part of the Sorbonne University in Paris. But the actual lab is in the south of France on the Mediterranean Sea. They also have a field station in French Polynesia. My principal investigator--my advisor--was Serge Planes; he spent his whole life working in French Polynesian islands. He’s mostly a fish person, but now he’s so senior that he worked on everything, but his main research agenda was fish population genetics. I entered his lab, and I was going to work on mollusks. I got to do a lot of field work in French Polynesia, and that was really cool. I remember my very first field work; it was maybe four months after I started my Ph.D. He was like, ok, Sarah, we’re going to sample--so, he organized everything, obviously; I was just a newbie. I didn’t know anything. We were on this tiny boat; it was not a research vessel; it was a fishing boat. It was jam-packed with field supplies and big barrels of gasoline for the boat. And we took off into the blue, and we were in the Tuamotu Islands, going from one island to another. That was the plan. The very first day, we took off from the island where we landed, and we are aiming for the next island. And there’s this maybe one- to two-hour lapse of time where you stop seeing the island you came from, and you don’t yet see the one where you’re going, and you’re in the middle of nowhere with an advisor that I just met, a boat crew, three guys who are smoking cigarettes, while I’m sitting on a barrel of gasoline, and this other student that I also didn’t know until that day. I was the one in charge of holding the dry bag that had the satellite phone and the GPS. I’m there--I remember this vividly--I’m sitting there at that moment; we can’t see any land anywhere. There’s this big swell; we’re on this tiny boat; I’m sitting on the barrel of gasoline; I’m holding the two most essential items in my mind, right? Surrounded by only guys that I don’t know. And I’m thinking, what am I doing here? What is this? What if we capsize? My parents don’t even know where I am. I’m not even that familiar with this organism I’m gonna be working on. Is it that important? Is it worth all of this? I was questioning everything. But then the next two weeks we were visiting a new atoll every day, spending the day in the lagoon, searching for and collecting samples, sleeping in tents on the beach every night, and going to the next island the next day. So, after two weeks, I was like, oh yeah, this is my life now. I want to do this forever. No questions asked. So yeah, that was my Ph.D. The fieldwork was like that and then a lot of time in the lab. I don’t think my parents ever had a clear idea of what I was doing and how it all took place. But yeah, I loved it. It was all very new. I had traveled a lot in my life, but never in these conditions. And the field station was packed with other students as well. So, we were all living this adventurous life together. That was for the first, at least, two or three years; we’d do mostly fieldwork. And then all the analysis and all of that was once we were back in France, and, obviously, that’s the more data-crunching and lab rat, and that’s when you question everything again.

Korin: Was there a lot of bioinformatics that was done at that time, or was that a skill that you picked up later on?

Sarah: No. That’s something that I picked up later on. At that time, I was just using those basic population genetics programs where you click--maybe a little bit of R programming--but mostly click and try. The bioinformatics, I learned that during my second postdoc. My first postdoc was in French Polynesia. That’s when I learned gene expression and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reactions. I was looking at how color originates and differs in different individuals of the black-lip pearl oyster. These pearl oysters are the ones that are used to make the famous Polynesian black pearls. But about bioinformatics, my second postdoc, that’s when I went to Harvard, and that’s where I did my second postdoc at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. There, in the lab of Gonzalo Giribet, all his lab was already working on transcriptomic data. That was perfect for me because I started in a lab where everybody, the postdocs, but also the grad students, were very familiar with this technique. I was able to learn really fast and develop my own projects using transcriptomic data and bioinformatics. It was very impressive at the beginning, like coding and bash typing. I mean, [I was thinking,] I’m an adult now; I don’t think I can learn this. But at the end, with the support of my colleagues, it turned out that it was not as hard as I thought. That’s how I learned. Obviously, now, these things move so fast that now, I rely on my postdocs to teach me the new upgrades of the new program and how it works. I spent four years in that lab, and during those four years, that’s when I learned how to use bioinformatics to analyze my data.

Korin: Here is a question: going from mostly France or French Polynesia to Harvard, how was that cultural shift for you?

Sarah: That’s a really good question. There was a cultural shift, for sure. Obviously, Harvard is a prestigious school, and everybody who’s there is very smart, at least, everybody thinks they’re very smart. I was always a hard worker, but during my whole experience in academia, until then, my whole cohort, or whether it was other PhD students or postdocs, we were all working really hard, and we’re all helping each other. Or if we’re not helping each other, just not helping each other. Harvard is a little different. There’s a lot of competition, so this is something I had to learn, and it’s not everybody. I made really good friends in my lab, while I was there, but you also realize that not everybody really wants you to succeed. I thought that’s really weird because I never experienced that in the past. There had always been people that I was not especially good friends with, but that means I just don’t interact with them that much. I’m not trying to beat them at a game of who’s gonna be more successful, and at Harvard there was a little bit of that. But I was lucky enough that in the lab where I was, ninety percent of the people were really, really friendly. And my principal investigator was also really nice, so that was really good. But you could see that some interactions were a little bit more intense than I was used to.

Korin: Yeah so, kind of getting to that, what I wanted to know is how you ended up, specifically, in Guam. Were you just sort of open to wherever is going to offer me a great job or was it location-based? Did you need to be near stuff? Was it more because you wanted to be near what you were studying? How did you make that decision?

Sarah: It is a little bit of everything you just listed. It was during my fourth year as a postdoc that I started applying to jobs, and I applied to jobs back in France. I applied to jobs that were opening in the U.S. mainland. My husband is also a researcher, and he’s also doing population genetics, also on corals, so, this was our main problem. We’re two people doing the same thing, and we were at the same level in our career. I was just a year ahead of him, but at that point, it doesn’t mean anything anymore. So, we were both applying to the exact same jobs. The University of Guam is the one place that offered us two positions. Knowing that it’s really hard to get--especially when we do the same thing--what university needs two population geneticists of marine invertebrates? So, that was definitely something that weighed a lot in our decision to come here. We were also looking very much into living in the Pacific because that’s where both of us did all of our research. All our research was mostly based in the Pacific Ocean. We both spent some time living on islands in the Pacific, so we already knew we liked it, at least. And now, the best part is that, while I’m talking to you right now out the window, I can see the reef, and my study site is right there. I don’t need to hop on a plane and condense on my field work in the two summer months. I can go whenever. So, it worked out pretty well. That’s why we made that decision to come here.

Korin: Could you tell me a bit more about Guam, in general, the research culture there, how that works?

Sarah: Guam has one university, the University of Guam, where I am at. There’s a community college as well. The University of Guam is the only place where you can do research here on Guam. There’s a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office as well. The University of Guam is mostly an undergraduate-focused university. So, we have different programs, but there’s only two graduate programs: there’s a mostly terrestrial and marine biology with the Marine Lab. The University only offers master’s degrees, no Ph.D. So, as you can see, they’re doing really nice research, but it’s very limited in manpower. We have everything we need here on-island. We have a really well-developed genomics lab. But it’s a little bit slower. We only have master’s students. They’re here, and when they’re here, they don’t know much. We teach them everything, and once they’re good, after three years, they leave, and you start over. That’s the main thing that is kind of slowing us down. But apart from that, I think the location here is really, really good. And because we are in a very interesting area of the Pacific, where it’s been pretty much under-studied, the Micronesian area, and very interesting genetic patterns around here, so the good thing is we have a lot of colleagues and work a lot with people outside of Guam and the U.S. mainland, and even Europe. Also, I think what drives all these international collaborations is that the faculty here at the University, or at least at the Marine Lab, is very international. There are, obviously, U.S. citizens; there’s a bunch of Europeans; there’s Japanese; people from around the world come here to work at the University, so that creates an interesting melting pot. The undergraduate student body is very local, so it’s Guam and Micronesia. Our graduate students, the majority of them, are from the U.S. mainland; they’re not local because--well, it’s something that we’re really trying to change, but what I’ve observed since I’m here is that our local undergraduate students--the ones that are really interested in science and marine biology--come here all the time for internships and everything. Once it’s time for them to apply to master’s programs, they just want to see the world, and so they fly out. And then we get the ones that are from Florida or California or Texas and they’re like, I wanna see the world! So, they fly in. We basically exchange students.

Korin: Being a mostly undergraduate institution, do you have a lot of research scientists and postdocs that work there, as well, or is it just more professors that are conducting the research?

Sarah: It’s mostly professors conducting research. The reason why they were able to hire both my husband and I--four or five years ago now--is because the university just had obtained a really big National Science Foundation grant for Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. So, it’s those National Science Foundation grants that are specific for U.S. states or territories that are not Massachusetts or California. So, it’s all the states in the middle, and Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico. So, we don’t compete with the Michigan Institute of Technology and people like that. The funding is usually to help develop the faculty body, the infrastructure, and give stipend for students. The university here just got a grant like that, and that’s how they were able to hire four new faculties at the time, including me. At the beginning, on a non-tenure track because it was limited to the length of that grant. So, at that time, I was a research faculty only. There were multiple of us like this. At the end of that, then they finally hired me as an assistant professor. We wrote a grant last year--all these new faculty that were hired at the same time wrote a new grant--and then we got, again, funding for the next five years. Thanks to that funding, we will be able to hire four new research faculty that will be working the same way I was in the past. If the University manages to get more funds, they will be able to hire these guys as well on a tenure track. That’s how it worked, at least, for us. We have here a couple other researchers that are not professors that are mostly on soft money. We have a couple postdocs, for sure, but that’s also very recent, thanks to those big grants that we’re just bringing in. I know when I arrived here, there was no postdoc, so that’s something new. I think the university really grew with that first NSF EPSCOR grant they got in 2016, and then they hired four new, young faculty, and then we came with, let’s bring postdocs and let’s bring colleagues in.

Korin: I have another question that’s a bit more of a tangent from this. Being in France, which is a country with its own unique culture, and then going to Harvard, which has, again, a very specific American culture, but American culture none the same. Did you notice anything different about how you’re racially perceived? Because there seems to be a lot of focus on America when it comes to race issues. And a lot of that is because I’m in America, so that’s what I hear. But did you notice anything different in how that impacted you?

Sarah: The answer is yes; it’s very different, and I’m not sure it is the way--what Black Americans would expect what I’m gonna say. I think there’s different types of racism and discrimination, and I think in Europe, we have the kind where everybody pretends to be colorblind. That’s the thing, and we don’t talk about it. I feel like in Europe or in France, you get a little bit more of microaggressions, where you can’t really say something because people are gonna be like, well you’re overreacting because that’s really not what they meant. Whereas, in the U.S., because the race problem is very upfront, everybody always speaks about it. To me, it was very refreshing, in that sense, that, oh, other people are aware of what I’m living, and it’s not just in my head, and I don’t have to be quiet about it. That was the thing that I noticed from my own perspective. Obviously, the main difference is the physical violence that you can see in the U.S. towards African Americans. We don’t have that in France. But that’s because we have much less guns and violence, in general, not that it doesn’t happen at all, but it’s really not comparable. That is something that I also had to learn that I was not aware of. You don’t really hear about these stories, when you are not in the U.S., so moving into the U.S., I realized all of these things. It was definitely something that I had to learn. In my work environment, or in my little life environment, in general, the fact that because you are Black person in Harvard, you can now meet with other Black people, have those meetings, talk about those issues, and you can put words on them was very liberating for me. Whereas in France, I was always surrounded by--all my cohort of students or teachers were mostly white. I don’t think anybody was ever aware of how I perceived how they were interacting with me. Whereas, in the U.S., it’s something that I could actually share. That was the one thing that I noticed. You know, there’s this thing--I don’t know, it’s this--In Europe, I feel like people don’t speak about it. They probably don’t see it or pretend it doesn’t exist. But you get more of that--I don’t know how to say it--you get more of the condescending type, you know, you’re a nice person, but I don’t expect you to go very far anyway. Not said this way, but that’s the background message. And in the U.S., you get a bit more of the blatant overt racist slur that are thrown at you randomly, and you’re like, oh, what? At least that happened to me outside of work, but that rarely happened to me in France, which was very shocking, but at the same time like, well, at least I know where I’m standing. You’re not all big smiles and then stabbing me in the back, so, okay, I’m not gonna hang out with you anymore. So, it was definitely juggling with those different type of discrimination that you can get. On one side, I’d been really happy about the fact that I could speak about it in the U.S., where I was not able to do that in France, but at the same time, very aware and saddened about the fact that it was much more violent in the U.S. than it is in France. That was my perception.

Korin: Follow-up question. Moving to Guam, then, how did that feel? Was it sort of an, this isn’t as big of an issue anymore, where that weight sort of lifted, or is it still there in some degree?

Sarah: I want to say--this is a message to people out there. If you are Black, brown or whatever, just move to Guam. It’s so liberating. This is a multicultural island, where the majority of the people are not white. I mean, it’s mostly brown, Asian, Asian American, or East Asian population. But it’s so liberating. You don’t have to deal with that as much at all. There’s other issues, obviously, but discrimination based on skin color, I have never been--or not many times have I been in a place--where it doesn’t seem to be an issue at all. So, in that sense, it’s really great. Now, they have different issues. I think if I was a man, I would say this is the perfect place to be. I think they have a little bit more issues with gender, sexism, rather than color, but one step at a time.

Korin: Have issues of sexism, specifically, made this more difficult for you--which might be an obvious answer--but would you like to speak on that?

Sarah: I think like every other woman who’s trying to make a career. For me, it’s not always easy to pinpoint where the issue was purely sexism because I feel like, which one is it? You can pick. Is it because I’m brown, or is it because I’m a woman, or is it probably both? So, it’s really hard to pinpoint what the issue was. There are multiple examples where--sometimes it’s just a feeling that you have or you assume, it’s because I’m a woman--but there are multiple instances where I’m like, oh, there’s no question. Here’s one example. Me and my colleagues wrote this grant for the National Science Foundation and got the money. We are at a meeting where there’s multiple people from NSF and other institutions for people who got the grant. We’re three people, two of my colleagues and me, two men and myself. We are basically lined up just chatting, and some official person comes. They know that we are people from Guam who just got this grant, and they come to shake our hands and introduce themselves, I assume. I’m standing in the middle, and that person comes, shakes my colleague’s hand and shakes my other colleague’s, while we’re in a line. They say, oh, so you’re doctor this and this from the University of Guam; congratulations on the grant. And I’m in the middle. So, I’m there like, oh, this is really obvious, and I don’t know…who do you think I am? Maybe just a wandering person? I don’t know. So, there’s things like that, for sure, where you know; there’s no question, and I think it’s mostly because I’m a woman, but--I don’t know what to tell you. I feel like I have always worked really hard. I was always a good student because I liked it. But I think that it helped me a lot to be where I am today because I always had to work a lot anyways. When I enter a room--or for my master’s defense, my Ph.D. defense, any talk I gave as a junior researcher--I know that people don’t expect much, or they already have some ideas of what’s going to happen. So, I always have to come and give the best and try to impress even more because they’re not expecting much for me. At least that’s how I feel. Because when I do get feedback afterwards--positive feedback--it’s never, oh, that was great. It was, oh that was really good; where did you go to school? [I think to myself,] you’re actually telling me it was good but with the surprise in your voice that you were not expecting that. It’s getting better. I think as you get a little bit more recognized in your field by some of your peers, it gets better, but it’s always gonna be there. I rely a lot on some of my colleagues and my former advisors to speak up for me every now and then because I don’t always have the energy to do it--my husband as well has no choice but to be my advocate. And sometimes he just looks at me, and I’m like, yeah, you heard that? I heard too, but I’m not gonna say because I’m just too tired. I am also often the only woman or one of the rare women. But if I’m not one of the rare women, I’m one of the only Black person. So, if I speak up, and I often do, I have a strong character. There’s been meetings where I’m the one speaking up all the time, and I get some push back at this. Like, Sarah, we know. Yeah, well, I still have to say it. Sometimes a colleague or my husband--if he’s here--he will say it for me. He’s a white man, by the way, so he will speak in my place, when he sees that I can’t do it anymore. It’s good, but, sadly, it works sometimes better than when I’m the one who speaks up.

Korin: Thanks for that. Follow up to that, I guess is, it’s gotten better for you as you move through your career and become more established, but do you think that it’s gotten better for new researchers? Women who are starting out, or also just Black people that are starting out; do you think the barrier to entry has gone down at all?

Sarah: No. I don’t think so. No. It’s something that I’m really trying to be part of the solution. I think there’s a lot of groups out there. I’m following--and I want to say I’m involved in, but I’m not that involved--but I’m part of this Black Woman in Science group. So trying to uplift other people of color, mostly women, in that case. It’s a very, very slow process. I think, in the past year, obviously, since last summer, where everybody’s now realizing, oh, we have to promote Black researcher--Black people and everything--now, I get a lot of calls for that. Can you give a talk at our university? Can you do this? And, obviously, I’m going to do it because I think you should have been doing this for a very, very long time. Now, it’s starting; I’m just wondering how long it’s gonna last. Also, I know some of the other Black women or Black men researchers, that are invited to these talks, and we’re all--I call myself senior, although I’m not that senior--we have already a career. It’s good to show us, but there’s a lot of other people out there who would also benefit from that kind of promotion. I truly believe that, obviously, the Black community has to help each other, uplift each other, but I also have this strong feeling that we can’t do it without the others. We can’t do it without the people who have the power. They have to be the one to bring us up there with them. We can’t climb, if you’re throwing rocks at us. They have to lend a hand, and there’s still a lot of work to do there.

Korin: Thank you so much for that; that’s a really good answer. Is there anything else you’d like to say before the interview concludes?

Sarah: Well, first of all, thank you very much for interviewing me. I think that was a very good opportunity for me to think again of all my history, and how I came to become what I am now. What I would like to say is that Black researchers in America or in the world, there’s a lot of us out there, and there’s a lot of us with very, very different histories, backgrounds, culture. And we all, at some point, face the same walls, the same issues, and we all have our own way to respond to it because our upbringing was different, our culture was different. I still think that there is place for us out there, and we should all be helping each other, and we should all do this job of being inclusive, supportive, and most importantly, speaking up. And the ones that are in power, whether it’s women or men, it doesn’t matter, but once you get up there, I think your goal should be to get other people up there with you. I’m saying that knowing that it’s not easy because your own path to whatever your goal is--your career goal is--it’s a really hard one, and sometimes, you don’t get the help that you need, and so you’re working really hard, and once you’re there, you’re like, I did it; I need to rest a little bit, and they can do what I did; it’s everybody’s own battle. But I think we should really do a big effort, and once you get where you wanted to be, to clear the path and make it easier for other people like you to make it up there. That would be my message, and I hope this interview was interesting for you, and it will be interesting for the other people. Thanks a lot for giving me this opportunity.

Korin: Thank you so much. The interview has been great, and with that, I will conclude it.

[End of interview]

2