How My Intersectionality Made Me a Better Mentor
By Patricia Silveyra, PhD
In 2008, on a cold February morning, I touched American soil for the first time in my life. I had just turned 27 years old and had defended my PhD thesis a month prior. Born and raised in Argentina, I had studied to become a biomedical research scientist and thanks to a scholarship from The Rotary Foundation, I was embarking on an adventure to pursue my postdoctoral training at Penn State University.
American culture and its academic and research environment were entirely new to me.
While I could read and write English at a moderate to advanced level, I had spent my entire life studying, conducting research, and communicating with others in Spanish, and I had never even visited a country where English was the primary language before.
As an Argentine scientist, I brought with me a set of unique and shared identities. I am the first person in my entire family to obtain a PhD. I am also the first woman in my family to attend college. None of my grandparents finished high school, and some did not achieve more than a 3rd grade education. My parents did what in Argentina is called “tertiary education”, which are 1- to 4-year degrees related to education or technical professions. My mom spent her whole career as a schoolteacher educating the less fortunate, always choosing to work in schools located in poor neighborhoods regarded by others as slums. My dad spent his career as a police officer investigating crime scenes and applying science principles to the criminal justice system. They imparted in me a passion for education and social justice, strong work ethics, and a love for learning.
The experience of moving away from my home country came with a new set of identities and challenges.
I became “a person with an accent,” “a Latina in science,” an “international graduate,” and “an immigrant scientist.” And with that, a new set of stereotypes began to threaten my confidence.
My ability to pursue certain opportunities was defined by my visa status. Some of my grant proposal reviews had comments about my foreign PhD not being as “prestigious” as those from US institutions. My accent was often interpreted as lack of knowledge or ability. And for the first time in my life, I experienced being part of an underrepresented minority group.
Luckily, many of my peers in graduate school shared these identities, and it was nice to be part of a generation of young scientists who were connected and very vocal about the issues of our generation. As a graduate student, I belonged to an organization called “Jóvenes Científicxs Precarizadxs”, which discussed science policy and fought to improve working conditions of scientists in training. I knew back then that a sense of belonging was important to me.
Meanwhile, acquiring the immigrant identity came with its own lessons. Outside of the lab, the word “immigration” was essentially a dirty word in some spaces. Some people I interacted with were quick to explain that I was not like “the others”. But inside the lab, almost everyone I worked with was an immigrant, or if they weren’t, their parents were. The United States has a long history of immigration of scientists who contributed to its growth and progress.
Scientists of all types moved to America, bringing expertise that significantly contributed to advancing scientific discovery.
Data from the National Foundation for American Policy shows that immigrants have been awarded 38% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in Chemistry, Medicine, and Physics since 2000. However, this data also shows that the vast majority of these immigrants came from Europe or Asia. And here is where I realized that my new identity had to be expanded; it had to include the intersectionality of Latina and immigrant.
While we do not hear much about Latin American immigrant scientists, organizations like SACNAS have helped amplify their voices and stories. Several keynote speakers at the SACNAS National Diversity in STEM Conference have been Latin American immigrants, like Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez, and Dr. Miguel Garcia Garibay. Student groups created by SACNISTAS, like “Caminos en Ciencia”, have interviewed many of us, some who came to the country as students, and others, like me, who immigrated later in our professional careers. All of us had persevered over uncertainty to find our way in STEM.
Now, as an Associate Professor and Principal investigator, I spend a lot of my time working with graduate students. Graduate school is a time of change, of uncertainty, of constant identity challenges, and of financial stress for many. Over time, I learned that the perspective and advice of a Latin American immigrant was actually very well received by graduate students, and not just the ones working in my lab. For example, students often reached out to me to share feelings of anxiety over renewing or changing their visas, or guilt for not being able to travel home when a family member or loved one was sick.
Thus, the reach of my mentoring has benefited from my intersectionality, because I could offer advice about being far from family, balancing finances, dealing with visas, feeling like an imposter, and many other issues.
Ultimately, my intersectional identities presented challenges, but more than that — they became my power.
The constant sense of uncertainty about the future made me concentrate on the present and be more proactive in my career and life. I learned to consider the time variable in every project and assignment, and how this variable is different for everyone involved, making me a better advisor for my students and lab members, and a more productive researcher. When you have to switch cultures and learn to communicate with others in a second language, you become creative in ways you did not expect. Having to pay extra attention and ask questions to understand science conversations in my second language made me a better listener when collaborating with others. I developed new and improved communication skills that made me a better teacher in the lab and outside.
So, when I reflect on my journey, I see that the challenges I faced due to my intersectionality were transformed into growth opportunities, and now I am a better mentor, professor, and scientist because of them.
About the Author
Patricia Silveyra is the Beerstecher-Blackwell Distinguished Term Associate Professor, and Director of the Biobehavioral Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she directs a NIH-funded research program on sex specific mechanisms of lung disease. Dr. Silveyra earned her BS, MS and PhD from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She did a postdoc at Penn State College of Medicine, where she later joined their faculty, and established her independent research program with support from a K12 BIRCWH award. Dr. Silveyra has received numerous awards for her research, mentoring of students, and efforts to promote diversity in STEM. She is a SACNAS Board Member, chapter advisor, and former Treasurer. She is also co-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine New Voices program, and member of the Board on Higher Education and Workforce.
@patosilveyra (twitter) @patrilinn (Instagram)
