My “Hump Day” started in the worst possible way – with a Fire and Security Drill – that saw the entire building-full of people stream out onto the sidewalk and stand around for what felt like hours. Having been through a school fire when I was young, and numerous earthquakes since then (including in this office building back in 2012), it’s not hard to figure out what to do when the alarm goes off. But apparently we need to practice. A lot.
I had a really great lunch meeting today with a PhD’d ecologist in my department who oversees our international grant programs. This colleague is about 15 years older than I, and has years of experience in grant-making and international NGOs. It’s always fascinating to talk to him about grant-making at other organizations, and his NGO work in Singapore and Indonesia. As someone fresh out of academia (well, four years ago, but who’s counting?), it’s always helpful for me to speak with other PhDs in the grant-making field to hear about how they’ve navigated their careers.
I spent the rest of my Wednesday continuing to work through this metric analysis of gender bias (or not) in our grant making. I have to finish crunching the numbers before I can say anything conclusive, but if there proves to be an interesting (and possibly disturbing) trend in the findings, we’ll need to have an important discussion internally about the possible causes.
Questions? Share your thoughts!