Leslie Cruz describes how she landed her first permanent position, and why it makes her happier than work at the bench.

{credit}Image credit: Sarah Goertzen{/credit}

After completing a PhD at the University of California, San Francisco and a postdoc at Stanford University, Leslie Cruz found job satisfaction in regulatory affairs. Here she describes how she chose this track, and got the training and connections to land her first position.

Click here to read about how Cruz drew on experiences to recognize that regulatory affairs was a good fit.

You credit your postdoc advisor for directing you to career services to find opportunities outside a research lab.

She helped me realize that being happy while working was very important. This was something that I had struggled with. It is important to find a mentor who is supportive of your decision to transition out of the lab.  And to be truly honest, I encountered people who weren’t honest. I would ask people ‘are you happy with what you do’? And they couldn’t answer me. One should be happy in what they are doing. I feel that now.

I didn’t want to leave science. I love science. That’s who I am, but you don’t have to be a professor or a research scientist to use your science education. Continue reading →