Season 1 |
Episode 4: The Power and pressures of being first
[00:00:00] Emilia: You're listening to Science Wise, the podcast designed to inspire people embarking on a career in science through conversations that will feel like talking with your wisest auntie.
[00:00:22] Rori: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Rori.
[00:00:28] Emilia: And I'm Emilia. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming and to amplify the contributions of women.
[00:00:34] Rori: Dr. Leticia Márquez-Magaña has done it all. She was the first in her family to go to college, at Stanford, and she kept on in academia, earning a PhD at UC Berkeley in biochemistry. Leti was then the first Latina faculty member in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University. While her training and her early faculty research was in microbiology, studying bacteria, she pivoted, transitioning to do research about health equities through a molecular lens.
With no lack of blood, sweat, and tears, she has created institutional change, making biomedical research more inclusive, more just, and more connected to communities. She has been awarded NSF and NIH funding, and at the time of this interview, she is PI on four separate projects. Thank you for including the massive SF Build grant that seeks to improve the representation of Black and Brown scientists in biomedical research.
I first met Leti when I was interviewing for a faculty position in biology at San Francisco State. I knew that I really wanted the job when during the interview dinner, Leti went ahead and started talking about how she danced with Baile Folklórico de Stanford, including leading an anti-apartheid protest in the early 80s.
She risks her rest while dancing to the mariachi song, “El carretero se va” Since then, I've been lucky to know Leti as a colleague and a source of wisdom and inspiration. Today, we are very happy to amplify some of her insights.
[00:01:52] Emilia: It's an honor to have Dr. Leticia Marquez Magaña on the show today. Welcome, Leti.
Let's start with Leti as a kid and with a little of your early family life. So you were born and raised in Sacramento. How many siblings did you have?
[00:02:09] Leti: Three. I'm the oldest and follow along with some of the characteristics of the oldest Latina. I was definitely the one that watched over my brothers and sisters and remember from a very early age wanting to make sure that when they went to school, they were better prepared than I was.
For example, I would you know, in school, I would bring it home from my brothers and sisters and say, look, this is what you get in school. So, uh, yeah, I was, I was definitely the, the one that wanted to shelter the others and also to bring, you know, the outside in.
[00:02:39] Emilia: Were these expectations that you, that your parents expected of you, or you just had them for yourself as being the oldest daughter?
[00:02:47] Leti: I think, you know, it was out of necessity, but it's also very cultural. I spoke English and my parents did not. Then, you know, I was also the, the, the navigator for our family. And so it was the translator, the one that figured papers out, all that sort of thing. And so I hear other folks say, well, you know, I have to take care of my brothers and sisters.
And I'm like, what do you mean you have to, that's just a thing. I mean, you just do that, you know? And so in the sciences, when I talk about, you mentor one another and you support one another, it's just the thing you do, and so to me, it's like, why are we training folks to be mentors? I mean, It's the thing you do.
[00:03:23] Emilia: What did your parents do for work as a kid?
[00:03:25] Leti: Until I was 10 years old, my mother was, was at home taking care of us. And she would make money every once in a while by like peeling garlic for the restaurant when I was really little. So that's how she made it. Dad worked for the Tigard Construction, which is a company that does freeway building, and he was actually, we have a picture, he finished Highway Five.
So Highway 5 is the longest, yeah, from Mexico all the way up to Canada, and he was on the team in the CMI, which is the big construction thing that slays down the, the cement. It was all decorated, and my dad's role was to put the guide for it. So he would take these stakes and he'd go bang. And then he, you know, tied the ropes and the machine guided off of his, his placement of these, of the rope.
The thing that's always amazing about that, he could do it without having to use a yardstick. He could do the job of three people because he could just put the stick down, go bang. He had a lot of props for being the one that could do it. So he had some skills. Major skills, mad skills. Mom later on when I was 10 went to work and she worked in a fish market and she canned fish and so she would bring home like big old bags of shrimp, camarones, and we would have shrimp pizza and we would have shrimp omelets and we'd have, we were tired of shrimp and other people were like, oh my god, you have shrimp, fresh shrimp?
She also was a nanny and she was a housekeeper.
[00:04:45] Emilia: Wow, so she held lots of jobs. So when and how did you get interested in science, Leti?
[00:04:52] Leti: Growing up, my mom was really worried about us being the immigrant kids on the block that dressed funny. She made our clothes using Hancock fabrics. So we didn't have the JCPenney look.
I mean, we definitely had the, the mom designed it look and, and we would get teased and that sort of thing. And I think she worried that we might get rightfully so. I mean, later on in that neighborhood, somebody did get stabbed. So, you know, there was that kind of stuff going on. And so we would watch TV all day long on cleaning the house.
And there was only three channels back then. Bugs Bunny was on the Warner Brothers cartoons. And there's one episode where Bugs Bunny has a lab coat on and is holding a graduated cylinder with green stuff in it and all the stuff is coming out of it and Bugs Bunny's running around and it's just, it looks so much fun.
And then, you know, pours the green stuff on the monster's head, and then the hair goes just beautiful. And I was like, oh my gosh, being a scientist is fun, being a scientist is power, and you can affect change. And this is like really little and, you know, but I just remember that's when I wanted to be a scientist.
And then in reflection later on, I was like, well, why was that so pivotal in my memory? It was because of those reasons. That's the moment that really, like, I want to be a scientist because I want to be like Bugs Bunny and have fun and change things.
[00:06:06] Emilia: Way to go, Bugs Bunny. Did you feel like you could pursue science as a career?
[00:06:11] Leti: Sure. Bugs Bunny did. Right. I'll share the other story. I'm on the playground, either in preschool or kindergarten. I'm not sure. And I'm feeling really good because I'm learning English because I learned Spanish at home. And so I was really proud of myself and, and I'm sitting there and a classmate comes up and they say, it's too bad you speak two languages.
It makes you so dumb and in the moment, my little resistant avatar says, no, let the, you know, you speak two languages. Maybe she's the dumb one. Right. And so in that moment, I remember thinking to myself, data can be used to oppress. So, for her, the fact that I spoke two languages made me dumb, but for me, it was like, I speak two languages.
I speak more than you, then I'm smarter than you. Does that make sense? So as a kid, I knew that that was my path. I needed to be the one that could use the data in a high-integrity way to liberate.
[00:07:03] Emilia: Does that experience as a child, has that helped you to respond both internally and externally to racism and misogyny?
[00:07:10] Leti: That's a good question. I don't think I thought about it as racism or misogyny. I thought of it as like unfair. What I learned from my dad is my dad would always call out unfairness. When they showed him the house that we lived in, he tells the story of how they said, Oh, you can't afford this. And just because they said that he was going to make sure that he afforded it.
So I learned from my dad early on that, you know, you just rail against the system that's keeping you down.
[00:07:34] Emilia: That's really interesting. Are these strategies that you still use and have served you well or as you went on in your academic career?
[00:07:42] Leti: Absolutely. I think I have a ability to connect things very quickly.
And in terms of, you know, Tara Yosso has a 2005 paper where she talks about community cultural wealth. And one of the capitals is resistant capital. And that resistant capital is cultivated by having experience in overcoming adversity. As I've become older, I've become more spiritual. And I, I tap into these energies.
And sometimes I'll be in a moment where before I can even think, something comes out of my mouth and I'm like, wow, that was the perfect thing to say. One story, I'm at my first NSF panel review. So I come in, I look at the room. There's a few women, but they're all international I'm the only historically excluded minority right there and mostly men. And I'm like, just keep your head down that they don't get in any trouble. And uh, Rita comes in. I know, Rita's the NSF director at the time and she comes in and she says, uh, before the panel starts, there's an article in a Texas newspaper, uh, where they've interviewed a scientist and he said, I'd rather hire four Chinese, uh, immigrants to do research in my lab because I can keep them in one apartment and just give them a bag of rice and get the work done.
And, why would anybody say something like that? And I'm like, oh my gosh, Leti just keep your head down. You know, because first of all, why is NSF or NIH or any federal agency funding these scientists to do this kind of indentured subertude? I mean, that's, you know, that's totally wrong. But beyond that, that's why he's not including folks like me, you know, in, in, in his lab.
Okay, just keep your head down. So she says, what do you think? What do you think? Across the panel from me on the other side, this individual says, work ethic and immediately out my mouth, I say, based on what data? He says work ethic, and it wasn't even a skip beat. I just said based on what data? And I'm like, where did that come from?
But it was the perfect response because we were on a panel where we're supposed to be using data to make judgments about what to grants to award and this individual is saying work ethic.
[00:09:44] Emilia: Do you think people are convinced by data alone?
[00:09:47] Leti: No. So I was thinking about that in terms of what a colleague of mine shared, global climate change.
Right? No matter how much data you throw to people about global climate change, and they're like sitting in Texas in 127 degree heat because that's what happened, there's no global change. That's the confirmation bias. They can always find that argument to support the fact that there's no global climate change.
It's just an aberrant cycle. So I think that, yes, even though you put forward all the data, there are some people who are not going to change their mind.
[00:10:14] Rori: Well, I mean, I couldn't agree more Leti, and it's kind of ironic because I am a data scientist, but the, the rhetoric value of data is really limited. So when you think back at all the stages of your career, do you think of it as a continuous time or do you think of it in terms of chapters?
[00:10:34] Leti: I think of it more as like circles. I feel that within my career there's been a lot of circles and I don't know that I think of them as linear, so maybe I do think of them as more chapters, but they were, you know, they're just all organized in different things, in different ways. And so that's how I think of, and I think right now especially, I'm feeling like there was a lot of forward momentum in our department in terms of promoting equity in science and equitable access to research experiences. But I feel like now we're experiencing the backlash sometimes going forward, sometimes going back, sometimes not being in synchrony with each other, sometimes being in synchrony with each other.
[00:11:11] Rori: That comes from your years in academia. Like you see these patterns, it's not unfamiliar, which I'm guessing also gives you insight about how you think it'll play out.
[00:11:22] Leti: Someone asked me because one time I was just in horrible tears after a decision the department made and someone said to me, well, did you think you were going to get a touchdown?
I'm like, yeah, I did. I thought that by the end of the 30 years it'd be a touchdown. And then, you know, and, and that person said, well, you know, let they think about, uh, who gets tackled on the football field. Someone with the ball. And I'm like, oh man, there's been some times where I've had the ball and trying to run it forward and I haven't had the defenders in to keep me safe.
In fact, maybe they're letting the other side come through. And then, you know, so I think the principles of interest convergence, when the dominant majority also benefits from the inclusion of historically excluded folks, then it will keep moving forward but there has to be a recognition of that. Right.
So there's that whole book of dying to be white, and that's folks who will not vote for, you know, socialized medicine because they don't want Black people to get health care. Right. But that means that they deny themselves. And so think about how sad that is. So when folks can understand that their own well being is tied up in the well being of others.
In Lak'ech, you are my other me, you know, or Umbutu, you know, I am because we are. That is not part of capitalism. That is not part of some of our Western philosophies where your existence is based on how you think. I am because I think. I am because I think. That's our relationship to other people.
[00:12:48] Rori: Yeah for that.
It's a deeply United Statesian thing to be so intensely individualistic that you would move towards your own demise instead of moving towards collective liberation.
[00:13:06] Leti: Absolutely. Oh, that's so well said.
[00:13:15] Rori: I mean, I like the image that you draw where you're like, there are cycles, but it's not like, They're not identical cycles.
So you see movement in different directions at different times and you see like repeating patterns, like both are happening. How would you define some of the important cycles of your career and how did it change from the time you first got your faculty job until now?
[00:13:23] Leti: You know, growing up I was very patriotic and I believed in the American dream.
And I thought, I just need to work really hard and I will advance. And it took a while and it took my undergraduate time at Stanford and taking Chicano Studies courses to realize that the dream is an illusion and that it's something that's reserved for folks who, I have a certain privilege class and some of us break out because we got lucky.
So then I moved from thinking that, you know, all of us had equal access and I just needed to work hard too. It doesn't even matter how hard I work and it doesn't matter how hard other people work, there's always going to be these structural barriers. to overcome and then realizing now that when you work together to overcome these structural barriers, it still takes a toll on you.
And so now as I'm turning 60 years old, I'm like, man, I should have maybe held back a little bit because my blood pressure is uncontrolled. I had a stent put in at 48. Obviously some of that is genetic, but there's chronic stress that comes with being the one and only. by being the one that's always challenging the status quo, that sort of thing.
And so now I'm at a stage where, you know, I'm the elder. I really feel like I need to, you know, support others to take on this role. And then now what I'm worried about as well, but I also need to make sure, take care of yourselves. That's where we're at now. We're in, we're in this place. Thank you for this podcast.
I know that it'll support the development and the thinking of many individuals, but take care of yourselves and you have each other. So that's awesome.
[00:14:49] Rori: Yeah. We're lucky. Emilia and I are lucky in that but I hear what you're saying and I mean it kind of goes back to some of these thinking about cycles too.
Like you see young faculty coming in today and you think about ways that they can carry on some of the work that you've started and you, it sounds like you think about ways that you're like advise them to do something different from what you did too.
[00:15:07] Leti: Yeah, absolutely. So as you know, a recent hire in the department is somebody who was a bachelor's and master's student with me.
And then now is a beginning professor and she learned from watching me and she says no a lot because she knows what her, what she wants to get accomplished. And that's not something that I could do really well. And so she's, she's advanced me past me in terms of that. The thing that's really interesting now is we're trying to figure out how to get past some, some barriers in the department.
Because we're always thinking, Oh, greater good. How do we make the argument for that? We all benefit. And then we were like, well, what has been the arguments that have worked for other folks? And those arguments are really about professional development and how this is, these resources are critical for them to, to get to tenure.
We're like, well, instead of making the arguments for the greater good, make the argument that they understand about your individual success and how that is, in order for you to achieve that, you need these XY resources. But that's you, you know?
[00:16:06] Rori: I mean, that's real strategy right there, too.
[00:16:08] Leti: Yeah, and I'll share a story that began my journey in that way, is that when I was a beginning professor, I had a student who was undocumented.
And so he worked nights at LensCrafters and days, you know, in the research lab and had the most amazing research hands and one day I come in and the radioactivity is behind the shield and it's melted and he's not there and I'm like where is this person and it turns out that he was such a lovely man that he had taken so many other students home in his car and ran out of gas but when they had gotten to the person's home they had had a beer or maybe two beers and so when he ran out of gas the police I said, where's your papers and take a breathalyzer.
And the breathalyzer was right at the margin of, I think it's 0. 08. And I think he was at 0. 07, something like that. And so they pulled him in. Next thing I hear is he's in jail. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, no, he's going to get deported. And so myself and another colleague, Robert Ramirez, we're like, let's write a letter to the judge and talk about how amazing he is and how we can't lose him.
And his girlfriend was Heather Warren. And Heather went to the police. To the jail and said, my boyfriend is at a 0.07. You illegally brought him in there. It's 0.08. You need to let him out now. Or if you don't let him out, I'm gonna go to X, Y, Z. They let him out. Mm. And so then I was like, you know, I would've never thought all that stuff.
Yeah. You know, I'm trying to like, you know. And, and so that's, now I'm like, that's how I think, it's like sometimes like, why do I need to implicitly threaten, right? Which is sad, I don't want to operate that way, but it works.
[00:17:39] Rori: Yeah, I think that's so interesting, like, like we can learn from people who walk with more privilege than us about how they can get something done, that's not a way we think about it.
At what point were there senior women, like on your campus?
[00:17:52] Leti: There were some, but I mean they were more peers. I think the, the point when Sue Rosser, when Sue Rosser became provost on campus, it was like there was a senior woman who had done scholarship on women in science and so that was when I was a senior woman on campus.
[00:18:05] Rori: Which is also saying something because that's when you were like a full professor. So you didn't even see senior women in science, like in your life growing up in science?
[00:18:14] Leti: Well, there was some in the department. Alyssa Arp was in the department and Jennifer Bruckman, but they all didn't get along. Okay.
Interesting. You know, so they were all white women. There were five of them and they didn't get along and I didn't know why. And then later on I found why and, and I thought, well, that's just not me. People talk about imposter syndrome and I never felt like an imposter cause I never thought of myself as a scientist.
I always thought of myself as a Latina scientist and that Latina scientist identity is very intersectional. So, I'm a woman, but I don't identify with other women in science, because mostly women in science are white women in science. You know, I'm kid of a Mexican immigrant since, I mean, and we were poor when I was little.
I mean, there's, there's so many facets of my identity.
[00:18:57] Emilia: You are a very accomplished researcher and academic, but I want to hear about how does your family see you? Are they proud of you? Do they think that you're the smart one in the family? That's a good question.
[00:19:10] Leti: I'm definitely one of the smart ones in the family, for sure.
My littlest brother is someone who followed me to Stanford. Went to Harvard for a policy degree and then came back to UC Berkeley for a law degree and was named by Governor Brown when, you know, back in the day as a judge for, an appellate court judge for a particular district. And then he didn't think he was doing enough good as a judge and then he went and became this, the CEO of Santa Clara County, which is like the biggest county in California and ran that during the pandemic and stuff.
And now he's the city manager for .Then my sister you know, she became a lawyer at UCLA. That's where she got her law degree and was the first judge appointed by Governor Brown in the Inland Empire. So I'm just the beginning, the leading edge because I was the first.
[00:20:01] Emilia: Wow. Sounds like impressive, impressive family.
[00:20:04] Leti: I think the way folks see me though is that, and this is sad, is that very much I have committed to serving students, you know, students. And on their behalf, working with faculty to better service, and all that kind of thing. And it's viewed by many folks as naive, including my family. My mission is to advance science by enhancing the diversity of the workforce.
[00:20:26] Emilia: But why do you think it's important for us to make a mark in science, as opposed to any other profession?
[00:20:33] Leti: Well, I don't know. I think we need to make a mark in all fields. It's just that the field that draws me is science. I mean, politicians, lawyers, you know, other fields are super important, but the disciplines are not grounded in like necessarily the natural laws.
So when politicians are making cases and using lawyers to either advance policies that are going to address global climate change or not, right, they're not basing their arguments based on. The data, the science, and, and they're basing it on cost effectiveness, or I don't know, you know, what the, who's going to make more money, but if, if scientists were to look rigorously at what's going on, and then establish ways to take that knowledge to improve the well being of all of us.
We'd all be in a better place.
[00:21:24] Emilia: Yeah, I agree. And so now that you have a lot of experience being an academic, you are probably, at least what I see, and you probably have seen this as well, is that many trainees in academia are constantly thinking about staying or leaving academia. Would you choose academia again?
[00:21:42] Leti: That's a very good question. Ultimately, yes. The thing about academia is you don't make very much money. And that's, that's been the biggest, the biggest hard thing for me. So when you say, but I choose something else, I may have chosen something to make a little bit more money so that I would have more stability, especially since academia is hard.
And so if to get to the profit, you need to have a heterogeneous team, you know, with many diverse perspectives, because that's been shown to improve deliverables, the products. then they're going to do that because the bottom line is the profit. And so that's the hard thing about higher education because that's not just only true for the students, it's true for the academics.
And so for those of us that are truly trying to break out of that and to break out it, not for just only ourselves, but for the students, it's a really hard battle. And so you have to be up for the fight. And I think that's why folks are like, do I stay or do I go? Can I achieve these same objectives by having my own foundation or having my own company?
Well, yeah, maybe you can you know, and maybe you can feel really good about it.
[00:22:37] Emilia: Leti, what is one thing that you like to do for fun when you are stressed or are anxious about something? What do you do to relax?
[00:22:46] Leti: At the individual level, what I've come to do now is I use some of the healing tools that I've learned.
So after a long day, I'll say to everybody, I'm going to go take a shower. So what does that mean? I put the lights low, I have an aromatherapy shower balm that's lavender, and I put that in with, you know, the shower nice and warm, and you can feel the lavender, which is very, you know, healing. And I just take a long hot shower, and then when I get out, I use, you know, lotions, and a face mask, and massage, and I sleep so well.
Because it's just everything comes off. You know, the water, the day, and then the soothing. When I want to relax with someone else, it's usually, it's my husband usually and we go out and we have a nice dinner in a lovely setting and we have a wonderful conversation and that is also very healing. If it's with other people, it's really just comadreando.
You know, and you know what comadreando means. And so, you know, it's, it's really like minded individuals, you know, sharing a conversation that's really meaningful and important and where we have mutual respect for one another and we're listening to one another.
[00:23:57] Emilia: I guess it goes back to that question. I mean, how do you persuade people to do things?
How do you bring them onto your side? I think those are questions that you probably have a lot of experience with that I think would be good to know. And, and your experience, I think a lot of people will appreciate that hearing those experiences.
[00:24:15] Leti: I think that the biggest thing that I'm stuck right now on is interest convergence.
Always figuring out what does the dominant majority want and how can you align your mission with theirs. But I mean, I remember being a little kid and it's like, I don't want to get up and do the dishes because that's my chore. But I have candy and I'm from Halloween and I didn't eat it and you ate, you know, I purposely didn't eat it because I knew my brothers and sisters love candy more than me.
And so then for the rest of that, the year for months, I can say, well, you do the dishes and I'll give you this handful of candy. So like they did what I wanted and they got what, you know, interest convergence. Right. I mean, so.
[00:24:53] Emilia: How did you feel, I guess one thing I'm curious because I experienced this, you're the oldest, I am not, I'm the middle child, I have two brothers.
And what I experienced was, but I was considered the most responsible one. And maybe I was. You're the woman. Because I was the woman. Right. Did you ever have any feelings of unfairness with respect to your own family dynamics.
[00:25:16] Leti: At the beginning, I was just like, this is just the way it is, and my mom needs me.
You know? I mean, it was more that I had a concern for her wellbeing. Mm-Hmm. . And my mom, you know, she had so much on her plate, and so the least I could do is to step up as the, oh, this is just the way it was. But there was a point where I got punished because I tried really hard to get them to do their chores, and instead of doing their chores, what they did is they knew I was afraid of heights, so they hid on the roof.
You know, I mean, I had no power in that situation, so then the choice didn't get done and I got in trouble. I don't know if I fought. I basically stood up, you know, stood up to my parents and said, that's not fair. And so, you know, I made my arguments and it gave me so much you know, I can see how as a professor, I can do 10 things at the same time.
And so I watched the professors and it's just like. What do you mean you can't? I wrote my statement for being a faculty member with a baby right here, my two little deditos, you know, writing the personal statement. We have mad skills that we gained because of the unfairness of being put into these positions where we got to practice all these abilities.
Does that make sense?
[00:26:24] Emilia: No, I agree. Yeah. I'm lucky to have the parents that I have and they've also given me so much and shown me love in like many other ways that I appreciate for sure. You started as a microbiologist and then what made you change to health disparities research? How do you decide, okay, I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to do this other thing. And that also takes guts because yeah, you're going to say, I'm going to change.
[00:26:50] Leti: It does take guts, but it's also, in my case, it was practical. So, I was at an Avon event for breast cancer survivors. And this is when I was still a microbiologist, a microbial geneticist, and I was listening to all these investigators talk about breast cancer.
They were all white, they were all men. And I was like, you don't even have breasts that's what I kept thinking and the breast cancer survivors, because it was a woman of color, breast cancer, you know, and I'm like, and you're not, of color. And so, at one of the breaks, I'm standing with the breast cancer survivors and they're like, can't you be a breast cancer researcher?
You can, you would be a great breast cancer researcher. And I'm like, well, I study bacteria. And they're like, yeah, but there's DNA in bacteria. I'm like, yeah, of course there is. I would be a transition and Frank McCormick, who was the director of the Cancer Center, white man at UCSF, comes over and he's like, Oh, what are y'all talking about?
And I said, well, Frank, we're talking about whether I should transition to becoming somebody who looks at breast cancer disparities, for example, and how hard that would be versus you as a cancer researcher changing to be more of a community engaged researcher and working with these individuals and without skipping a beat, he goes, well, of course it would be much easier for me to do that.
And yeah, and so I'm the personality, someone tells me something like that, I'm resisting from the get go and I want to prove you wrong. Right? And so the thing is, is he's talking to me and they're behind the back of him and they're like going, oh no, like the women are going, oh no, oh no. I mean, like vigorously, oh no.
And I'm like, okay, community sees that I have inherent skill sets, being a woman, being of color, having anyone, so then I was like, that's the beginning of it. And then I taught a health disparities and cancer class because part of the reason I was involved in these groups is because I was the SF state leader of a grant with UCSF to reduce cancer health disparities.
And so we taught a class and I taught it with somebody who was a health disparity researcher and he presented the SEER data, surveillance epidemiology and end result data, looking at cancer mortality across 1970 something to present, which was like 2005, 2002, something like that, with racial ethnic breakdown and there was no data gathered at all on Latinos until 1993. And so the lack of data, what I thought to myself, they didn't even care enough to collect if we died. And then I'm like, Oh man, I have to change careers because I have to be somebody who cares enough to at least see if we're dying more or less.
And so that was, that was that point. And then the last part was when I was at UC Berkeley, I was working there live with Mike Chamberlain and we went out of grad school. I published five papers, which for my discipline, that's a lot.
[00:29:16] Emilia: For any now that's huge. Five.
[00:29:19] Leti: Some of them published them. I'm boring. I know somebody who published like 13.
I like it. I don't do that anymore. Okay. So, so the last two papers I had actually written and Mike was sort of disengaged and he just he didn't even put in any changes to it, and we submitted it, and they got accepted without revision. So I knew I could write papers, right? I mean, you know, Science at Berkeley.
And then I go to San Francisco State, and I'm submitting papers, and they're not getting accepted, and it's just taking so long and I'm like, now I recognize that as the prestige bias, right? And it was just so hard and it's like, I kept getting pushed back and putting even more and getting more and so I'm like, okay, two things are happening here.
One, there's prestige bias and the other, when I was in Mike's Chamberlain lab, there was big ground to break and once we broke the big ground, because I was the one that, that with John Hellman showed that alternate sigma factors did more things than heat shock and developmental regulation, but that actually participated in flagellar and chemotaxis, which was a big deal in this little small field.
Then after that, it was all incremental knowledge. How does the sigma factor interact with the promoter region? Which are the amino acids that are involved? Which is all the minutiae and so I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm never at San Francisco state, less resources, less prestige, I'm never going to get anywhere in this field.
I have to find another field where there's like big things to crack. Okay. Health disparities or health equity, which is I prefer is a new field. And there's like, I'm, I'm reviewing a paper now where one of the reviewers said, these studies have been done plenty before we know what's going on these connections, but the studies have all been with white americans.
And so this paper is looking at Latino Americans and the reviewer is saying, we don't, we already know everything and I'm like, Oh no. Oh no. You know? And so we still have to crack that. There are differences based on populations and how they are viewed, how they view themselves and how they interact. So there's big nuts to crack in this field.
So that was the, you know, so all those things aligned and that's why I'm well funded now.
[00:31:14] Emilia: Yeah. Because I mean, yeah, you have lots of, I mean, that's, that's great that you're doing something that you're really into and that you have the funding for it. Did you always want to go to SF State, Leti, or did you No.
No. It just happened?
[00:31:28] Leti: I did really well at Berkeley in my PhD, but in my postdoc, I struggled. Basically, I didn't get any papers because my project was to create a transgenic mouse using the mouse DNA sequence for insulin degrading enzyme to pull out the other way around the rat, the rat sequence to pull it out of the mouse genome so that we can recreate the transgenic mice mouse.
And I thought I could do it, but at the end there was only 80 percent identity between the two and so I was trying to do whole genome things and there just wasn't enough identity to pull stuff out. So anyways so my pro, my, my postdoc didn't yield anything, and that's when I had Joaquin, my, my oldest and I had preeclampsia.
So I was, you know, 10 weeks in so there's a bunch of stuff that happened up until then. I was gonna be a professor to tier one institution, but then the postdoc fell apart and my husband was in med school, and so I was the breadwinner and I just needed to get a job and I had an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship and this job at San Francisco State came along and I said, what, I'm going to go for it and I was an Affirmative Action Hire.
I came in third and people, the powers that be, that's how I got in there and I remember just crying and crying and Thomas was like, why are you, my husband, why are you crying? And I'm like, because I'm supposed to be like a Stanford or Berkeley and da da da. Leti, what are you wanting to be a professor? To help other people like myself get into science.
They said, well, where are those other people? Are they at Berkeley? Are they in San Francisco State? And so then it was like, this is where I'm supposed to be, right? So, but it was the only place I applied to, right? Like coming out of high school, I applied to all the UCs, all the CSUs and a lot of the big names and I got in everywhere. And then it just like whittled down, whittled down, whittled down to like, I only applied to one place for my professorship and that's where I got in and it made sense because Thomas was at UCSF. I was just down the street, San Francisco state. And in the end it's worked out really well, but no, I, I, my plan was to be somebody like yourself, who's at a tier one institution.
[00:33:25] Emilia: Well, you've done so much good, Leti, and I think your legacy is big.
[00:33:31] Rori: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, please share it with your friends in science. You can also support this program by writing a kind review. This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, Sound Engineering by Keegan Stromberg.
Special thanks to Dr. Leticia Marquez Magaña. The hosts of Science Wise are Emilia Huerta Sanchez and me, Rori Rolfhs.
[00:00:22] Rori: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Rori.
[00:00:28] Emilia: And I'm Emilia. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming and to amplify the contributions of women.
[00:00:34] Rori: Dr. Leticia Márquez-Magaña has done it all. She was the first in her family to go to college, at Stanford, and she kept on in academia, earning a PhD at UC Berkeley in biochemistry. Leti was then the first Latina faculty member in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University. While her training and her early faculty research was in microbiology, studying bacteria, she pivoted, transitioning to do research about health equities through a molecular lens.
With no lack of blood, sweat, and tears, she has created institutional change, making biomedical research more inclusive, more just, and more connected to communities. She has been awarded NSF and NIH funding, and at the time of this interview, she is PI on four separate projects. Thank you for including the massive SF Build grant that seeks to improve the representation of Black and Brown scientists in biomedical research.
I first met Leti when I was interviewing for a faculty position in biology at San Francisco State. I knew that I really wanted the job when during the interview dinner, Leti went ahead and started talking about how she danced with Baile Folklórico de Stanford, including leading an anti-apartheid protest in the early 80s.
She risks her rest while dancing to the mariachi song, “El carretero se va” Since then, I've been lucky to know Leti as a colleague and a source of wisdom and inspiration. Today, we are very happy to amplify some of her insights.
[00:01:52] Emilia: It's an honor to have Dr. Leticia Marquez Magaña on the show today. Welcome, Leti.
Let's start with Leti as a kid and with a little of your early family life. So you were born and raised in Sacramento. How many siblings did you have?
[00:02:09] Leti: Three. I'm the oldest and follow along with some of the characteristics of the oldest Latina. I was definitely the one that watched over my brothers and sisters and remember from a very early age wanting to make sure that when they went to school, they were better prepared than I was.
For example, I would you know, in school, I would bring it home from my brothers and sisters and say, look, this is what you get in school. So, uh, yeah, I was, I was definitely the, the one that wanted to shelter the others and also to bring, you know, the outside in.
[00:02:39] Emilia: Were these expectations that you, that your parents expected of you, or you just had them for yourself as being the oldest daughter?
[00:02:47] Leti: I think, you know, it was out of necessity, but it's also very cultural. I spoke English and my parents did not. Then, you know, I was also the, the, the navigator for our family. And so it was the translator, the one that figured papers out, all that sort of thing. And so I hear other folks say, well, you know, I have to take care of my brothers and sisters.
And I'm like, what do you mean you have to, that's just a thing. I mean, you just do that, you know? And so in the sciences, when I talk about, you mentor one another and you support one another, it's just the thing you do, and so to me, it's like, why are we training folks to be mentors? I mean, It's the thing you do.
[00:03:23] Emilia: What did your parents do for work as a kid?
[00:03:25] Leti: Until I was 10 years old, my mother was, was at home taking care of us. And she would make money every once in a while by like peeling garlic for the restaurant when I was really little. So that's how she made it. Dad worked for the Tigard Construction, which is a company that does freeway building, and he was actually, we have a picture, he finished Highway Five.
So Highway 5 is the longest, yeah, from Mexico all the way up to Canada, and he was on the team in the CMI, which is the big construction thing that slays down the, the cement. It was all decorated, and my dad's role was to put the guide for it. So he would take these stakes and he'd go bang. And then he, you know, tied the ropes and the machine guided off of his, his placement of these, of the rope.
The thing that's always amazing about that, he could do it without having to use a yardstick. He could do the job of three people because he could just put the stick down, go bang. He had a lot of props for being the one that could do it. So he had some skills. Major skills, mad skills. Mom later on when I was 10 went to work and she worked in a fish market and she canned fish and so she would bring home like big old bags of shrimp, camarones, and we would have shrimp pizza and we would have shrimp omelets and we'd have, we were tired of shrimp and other people were like, oh my god, you have shrimp, fresh shrimp?
She also was a nanny and she was a housekeeper.
[00:04:45] Emilia: Wow, so she held lots of jobs. So when and how did you get interested in science, Leti?
[00:04:52] Leti: Growing up, my mom was really worried about us being the immigrant kids on the block that dressed funny. She made our clothes using Hancock fabrics. So we didn't have the JCPenney look.
I mean, we definitely had the, the mom designed it look and, and we would get teased and that sort of thing. And I think she worried that we might get rightfully so. I mean, later on in that neighborhood, somebody did get stabbed. So, you know, there was that kind of stuff going on. And so we would watch TV all day long on cleaning the house.
And there was only three channels back then. Bugs Bunny was on the Warner Brothers cartoons. And there's one episode where Bugs Bunny has a lab coat on and is holding a graduated cylinder with green stuff in it and all the stuff is coming out of it and Bugs Bunny's running around and it's just, it looks so much fun.
And then, you know, pours the green stuff on the monster's head, and then the hair goes just beautiful. And I was like, oh my gosh, being a scientist is fun, being a scientist is power, and you can affect change. And this is like really little and, you know, but I just remember that's when I wanted to be a scientist.
And then in reflection later on, I was like, well, why was that so pivotal in my memory? It was because of those reasons. That's the moment that really, like, I want to be a scientist because I want to be like Bugs Bunny and have fun and change things.
[00:06:06] Emilia: Way to go, Bugs Bunny. Did you feel like you could pursue science as a career?
[00:06:11] Leti: Sure. Bugs Bunny did. Right. I'll share the other story. I'm on the playground, either in preschool or kindergarten. I'm not sure. And I'm feeling really good because I'm learning English because I learned Spanish at home. And so I was really proud of myself and, and I'm sitting there and a classmate comes up and they say, it's too bad you speak two languages.
It makes you so dumb and in the moment, my little resistant avatar says, no, let the, you know, you speak two languages. Maybe she's the dumb one. Right. And so in that moment, I remember thinking to myself, data can be used to oppress. So, for her, the fact that I spoke two languages made me dumb, but for me, it was like, I speak two languages.
I speak more than you, then I'm smarter than you. Does that make sense? So as a kid, I knew that that was my path. I needed to be the one that could use the data in a high-integrity way to liberate.
[00:07:03] Emilia: Does that experience as a child, has that helped you to respond both internally and externally to racism and misogyny?
[00:07:10] Leti: That's a good question. I don't think I thought about it as racism or misogyny. I thought of it as like unfair. What I learned from my dad is my dad would always call out unfairness. When they showed him the house that we lived in, he tells the story of how they said, Oh, you can't afford this. And just because they said that he was going to make sure that he afforded it.
So I learned from my dad early on that, you know, you just rail against the system that's keeping you down.
[00:07:34] Emilia: That's really interesting. Are these strategies that you still use and have served you well or as you went on in your academic career?
[00:07:42] Leti: Absolutely. I think I have a ability to connect things very quickly.
And in terms of, you know, Tara Yosso has a 2005 paper where she talks about community cultural wealth. And one of the capitals is resistant capital. And that resistant capital is cultivated by having experience in overcoming adversity. As I've become older, I've become more spiritual. And I, I tap into these energies.
And sometimes I'll be in a moment where before I can even think, something comes out of my mouth and I'm like, wow, that was the perfect thing to say. One story, I'm at my first NSF panel review. So I come in, I look at the room. There's a few women, but they're all international I'm the only historically excluded minority right there and mostly men. And I'm like, just keep your head down that they don't get in any trouble. And uh, Rita comes in. I know, Rita's the NSF director at the time and she comes in and she says, uh, before the panel starts, there's an article in a Texas newspaper, uh, where they've interviewed a scientist and he said, I'd rather hire four Chinese, uh, immigrants to do research in my lab because I can keep them in one apartment and just give them a bag of rice and get the work done.
And, why would anybody say something like that? And I'm like, oh my gosh, Leti just keep your head down. You know, because first of all, why is NSF or NIH or any federal agency funding these scientists to do this kind of indentured subertude? I mean, that's, you know, that's totally wrong. But beyond that, that's why he's not including folks like me, you know, in, in, in his lab.
Okay, just keep your head down. So she says, what do you think? What do you think? Across the panel from me on the other side, this individual says, work ethic and immediately out my mouth, I say, based on what data? He says work ethic, and it wasn't even a skip beat. I just said based on what data? And I'm like, where did that come from?
But it was the perfect response because we were on a panel where we're supposed to be using data to make judgments about what to grants to award and this individual is saying work ethic.
[00:09:44] Emilia: Do you think people are convinced by data alone?
[00:09:47] Leti: No. So I was thinking about that in terms of what a colleague of mine shared, global climate change.
Right? No matter how much data you throw to people about global climate change, and they're like sitting in Texas in 127 degree heat because that's what happened, there's no global change. That's the confirmation bias. They can always find that argument to support the fact that there's no global climate change.
It's just an aberrant cycle. So I think that, yes, even though you put forward all the data, there are some people who are not going to change their mind.
[00:10:14] Rori: Well, I mean, I couldn't agree more Leti, and it's kind of ironic because I am a data scientist, but the, the rhetoric value of data is really limited. So when you think back at all the stages of your career, do you think of it as a continuous time or do you think of it in terms of chapters?
[00:10:34] Leti: I think of it more as like circles. I feel that within my career there's been a lot of circles and I don't know that I think of them as linear, so maybe I do think of them as more chapters, but they were, you know, they're just all organized in different things, in different ways. And so that's how I think of, and I think right now especially, I'm feeling like there was a lot of forward momentum in our department in terms of promoting equity in science and equitable access to research experiences. But I feel like now we're experiencing the backlash sometimes going forward, sometimes going back, sometimes not being in synchrony with each other, sometimes being in synchrony with each other.
[00:11:11] Rori: That comes from your years in academia. Like you see these patterns, it's not unfamiliar, which I'm guessing also gives you insight about how you think it'll play out.
[00:11:22] Leti: Someone asked me because one time I was just in horrible tears after a decision the department made and someone said to me, well, did you think you were going to get a touchdown?
I'm like, yeah, I did. I thought that by the end of the 30 years it'd be a touchdown. And then, you know, and, and that person said, well, you know, let they think about, uh, who gets tackled on the football field. Someone with the ball. And I'm like, oh man, there's been some times where I've had the ball and trying to run it forward and I haven't had the defenders in to keep me safe.
In fact, maybe they're letting the other side come through. And then, you know, so I think the principles of interest convergence, when the dominant majority also benefits from the inclusion of historically excluded folks, then it will keep moving forward but there has to be a recognition of that. Right.
So there's that whole book of dying to be white, and that's folks who will not vote for, you know, socialized medicine because they don't want Black people to get health care. Right. But that means that they deny themselves. And so think about how sad that is. So when folks can understand that their own well being is tied up in the well being of others.
In Lak'ech, you are my other me, you know, or Umbutu, you know, I am because we are. That is not part of capitalism. That is not part of some of our Western philosophies where your existence is based on how you think. I am because I think. I am because I think. That's our relationship to other people.
[00:12:48] Rori: Yeah for that.
It's a deeply United Statesian thing to be so intensely individualistic that you would move towards your own demise instead of moving towards collective liberation.
[00:13:06] Leti: Absolutely. Oh, that's so well said.
[00:13:15] Rori: I mean, I like the image that you draw where you're like, there are cycles, but it's not like, They're not identical cycles.
So you see movement in different directions at different times and you see like repeating patterns, like both are happening. How would you define some of the important cycles of your career and how did it change from the time you first got your faculty job until now?
[00:13:23] Leti: You know, growing up I was very patriotic and I believed in the American dream.
And I thought, I just need to work really hard and I will advance. And it took a while and it took my undergraduate time at Stanford and taking Chicano Studies courses to realize that the dream is an illusion and that it's something that's reserved for folks who, I have a certain privilege class and some of us break out because we got lucky.
So then I moved from thinking that, you know, all of us had equal access and I just needed to work hard too. It doesn't even matter how hard I work and it doesn't matter how hard other people work, there's always going to be these structural barriers. to overcome and then realizing now that when you work together to overcome these structural barriers, it still takes a toll on you.
And so now as I'm turning 60 years old, I'm like, man, I should have maybe held back a little bit because my blood pressure is uncontrolled. I had a stent put in at 48. Obviously some of that is genetic, but there's chronic stress that comes with being the one and only. by being the one that's always challenging the status quo, that sort of thing.
And so now I'm at a stage where, you know, I'm the elder. I really feel like I need to, you know, support others to take on this role. And then now what I'm worried about as well, but I also need to make sure, take care of yourselves. That's where we're at now. We're in, we're in this place. Thank you for this podcast.
I know that it'll support the development and the thinking of many individuals, but take care of yourselves and you have each other. So that's awesome.
[00:14:49] Rori: Yeah. We're lucky. Emilia and I are lucky in that but I hear what you're saying and I mean it kind of goes back to some of these thinking about cycles too.
Like you see young faculty coming in today and you think about ways that they can carry on some of the work that you've started and you, it sounds like you think about ways that you're like advise them to do something different from what you did too.
[00:15:07] Leti: Yeah, absolutely. So as you know, a recent hire in the department is somebody who was a bachelor's and master's student with me.
And then now is a beginning professor and she learned from watching me and she says no a lot because she knows what her, what she wants to get accomplished. And that's not something that I could do really well. And so she's, she's advanced me past me in terms of that. The thing that's really interesting now is we're trying to figure out how to get past some, some barriers in the department.
Because we're always thinking, Oh, greater good. How do we make the argument for that? We all benefit. And then we were like, well, what has been the arguments that have worked for other folks? And those arguments are really about professional development and how this is, these resources are critical for them to, to get to tenure.
We're like, well, instead of making the arguments for the greater good, make the argument that they understand about your individual success and how that is, in order for you to achieve that, you need these XY resources. But that's you, you know?
[00:16:06] Rori: I mean, that's real strategy right there, too.
[00:16:08] Leti: Yeah, and I'll share a story that began my journey in that way, is that when I was a beginning professor, I had a student who was undocumented.
And so he worked nights at LensCrafters and days, you know, in the research lab and had the most amazing research hands and one day I come in and the radioactivity is behind the shield and it's melted and he's not there and I'm like where is this person and it turns out that he was such a lovely man that he had taken so many other students home in his car and ran out of gas but when they had gotten to the person's home they had had a beer or maybe two beers and so when he ran out of gas the police I said, where's your papers and take a breathalyzer.
And the breathalyzer was right at the margin of, I think it's 0. 08. And I think he was at 0. 07, something like that. And so they pulled him in. Next thing I hear is he's in jail. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, no, he's going to get deported. And so myself and another colleague, Robert Ramirez, we're like, let's write a letter to the judge and talk about how amazing he is and how we can't lose him.
And his girlfriend was Heather Warren. And Heather went to the police. To the jail and said, my boyfriend is at a 0.07. You illegally brought him in there. It's 0.08. You need to let him out now. Or if you don't let him out, I'm gonna go to X, Y, Z. They let him out. Mm. And so then I was like, you know, I would've never thought all that stuff.
Yeah. You know, I'm trying to like, you know. And, and so that's, now I'm like, that's how I think, it's like sometimes like, why do I need to implicitly threaten, right? Which is sad, I don't want to operate that way, but it works.
[00:17:39] Rori: Yeah, I think that's so interesting, like, like we can learn from people who walk with more privilege than us about how they can get something done, that's not a way we think about it.
At what point were there senior women, like on your campus?
[00:17:52] Leti: There were some, but I mean they were more peers. I think the, the point when Sue Rosser, when Sue Rosser became provost on campus, it was like there was a senior woman who had done scholarship on women in science and so that was when I was a senior woman on campus.
[00:18:05] Rori: Which is also saying something because that's when you were like a full professor. So you didn't even see senior women in science, like in your life growing up in science?
[00:18:14] Leti: Well, there was some in the department. Alyssa Arp was in the department and Jennifer Bruckman, but they all didn't get along. Okay.
Interesting. You know, so they were all white women. There were five of them and they didn't get along and I didn't know why. And then later on I found why and, and I thought, well, that's just not me. People talk about imposter syndrome and I never felt like an imposter cause I never thought of myself as a scientist.
I always thought of myself as a Latina scientist and that Latina scientist identity is very intersectional. So, I'm a woman, but I don't identify with other women in science, because mostly women in science are white women in science. You know, I'm kid of a Mexican immigrant since, I mean, and we were poor when I was little.
I mean, there's, there's so many facets of my identity.
[00:18:57] Emilia: You are a very accomplished researcher and academic, but I want to hear about how does your family see you? Are they proud of you? Do they think that you're the smart one in the family? That's a good question.
[00:19:10] Leti: I'm definitely one of the smart ones in the family, for sure.
My littlest brother is someone who followed me to Stanford. Went to Harvard for a policy degree and then came back to UC Berkeley for a law degree and was named by Governor Brown when, you know, back in the day as a judge for, an appellate court judge for a particular district. And then he didn't think he was doing enough good as a judge and then he went and became this, the CEO of Santa Clara County, which is like the biggest county in California and ran that during the pandemic and stuff.
And now he's the city manager for .Then my sister you know, she became a lawyer at UCLA. That's where she got her law degree and was the first judge appointed by Governor Brown in the Inland Empire. So I'm just the beginning, the leading edge because I was the first.
[00:20:01] Emilia: Wow. Sounds like impressive, impressive family.
[00:20:04] Leti: I think the way folks see me though is that, and this is sad, is that very much I have committed to serving students, you know, students. And on their behalf, working with faculty to better service, and all that kind of thing. And it's viewed by many folks as naive, including my family. My mission is to advance science by enhancing the diversity of the workforce.
[00:20:26] Emilia: But why do you think it's important for us to make a mark in science, as opposed to any other profession?
[00:20:33] Leti: Well, I don't know. I think we need to make a mark in all fields. It's just that the field that draws me is science. I mean, politicians, lawyers, you know, other fields are super important, but the disciplines are not grounded in like necessarily the natural laws.
So when politicians are making cases and using lawyers to either advance policies that are going to address global climate change or not, right, they're not basing their arguments based on. The data, the science, and, and they're basing it on cost effectiveness, or I don't know, you know, what the, who's going to make more money, but if, if scientists were to look rigorously at what's going on, and then establish ways to take that knowledge to improve the well being of all of us.
We'd all be in a better place.
[00:21:24] Emilia: Yeah, I agree. And so now that you have a lot of experience being an academic, you are probably, at least what I see, and you probably have seen this as well, is that many trainees in academia are constantly thinking about staying or leaving academia. Would you choose academia again?
[00:21:42] Leti: That's a very good question. Ultimately, yes. The thing about academia is you don't make very much money. And that's, that's been the biggest, the biggest hard thing for me. So when you say, but I choose something else, I may have chosen something to make a little bit more money so that I would have more stability, especially since academia is hard.
And so if to get to the profit, you need to have a heterogeneous team, you know, with many diverse perspectives, because that's been shown to improve deliverables, the products. then they're going to do that because the bottom line is the profit. And so that's the hard thing about higher education because that's not just only true for the students, it's true for the academics.
And so for those of us that are truly trying to break out of that and to break out it, not for just only ourselves, but for the students, it's a really hard battle. And so you have to be up for the fight. And I think that's why folks are like, do I stay or do I go? Can I achieve these same objectives by having my own foundation or having my own company?
Well, yeah, maybe you can you know, and maybe you can feel really good about it.
[00:22:37] Emilia: Leti, what is one thing that you like to do for fun when you are stressed or are anxious about something? What do you do to relax?
[00:22:46] Leti: At the individual level, what I've come to do now is I use some of the healing tools that I've learned.
So after a long day, I'll say to everybody, I'm going to go take a shower. So what does that mean? I put the lights low, I have an aromatherapy shower balm that's lavender, and I put that in with, you know, the shower nice and warm, and you can feel the lavender, which is very, you know, healing. And I just take a long hot shower, and then when I get out, I use, you know, lotions, and a face mask, and massage, and I sleep so well.
Because it's just everything comes off. You know, the water, the day, and then the soothing. When I want to relax with someone else, it's usually, it's my husband usually and we go out and we have a nice dinner in a lovely setting and we have a wonderful conversation and that is also very healing. If it's with other people, it's really just comadreando.
You know, and you know what comadreando means. And so, you know, it's, it's really like minded individuals, you know, sharing a conversation that's really meaningful and important and where we have mutual respect for one another and we're listening to one another.
[00:23:57] Emilia: I guess it goes back to that question. I mean, how do you persuade people to do things?
How do you bring them onto your side? I think those are questions that you probably have a lot of experience with that I think would be good to know. And, and your experience, I think a lot of people will appreciate that hearing those experiences.
[00:24:15] Leti: I think that the biggest thing that I'm stuck right now on is interest convergence.
Always figuring out what does the dominant majority want and how can you align your mission with theirs. But I mean, I remember being a little kid and it's like, I don't want to get up and do the dishes because that's my chore. But I have candy and I'm from Halloween and I didn't eat it and you ate, you know, I purposely didn't eat it because I knew my brothers and sisters love candy more than me.
And so then for the rest of that, the year for months, I can say, well, you do the dishes and I'll give you this handful of candy. So like they did what I wanted and they got what, you know, interest convergence. Right. I mean, so.
[00:24:53] Emilia: How did you feel, I guess one thing I'm curious because I experienced this, you're the oldest, I am not, I'm the middle child, I have two brothers.
And what I experienced was, but I was considered the most responsible one. And maybe I was. You're the woman. Because I was the woman. Right. Did you ever have any feelings of unfairness with respect to your own family dynamics.
[00:25:16] Leti: At the beginning, I was just like, this is just the way it is, and my mom needs me.
You know? I mean, it was more that I had a concern for her wellbeing. Mm-Hmm. . And my mom, you know, she had so much on her plate, and so the least I could do is to step up as the, oh, this is just the way it was. But there was a point where I got punished because I tried really hard to get them to do their chores, and instead of doing their chores, what they did is they knew I was afraid of heights, so they hid on the roof.
You know, I mean, I had no power in that situation, so then the choice didn't get done and I got in trouble. I don't know if I fought. I basically stood up, you know, stood up to my parents and said, that's not fair. And so, you know, I made my arguments and it gave me so much you know, I can see how as a professor, I can do 10 things at the same time.
And so I watched the professors and it's just like. What do you mean you can't? I wrote my statement for being a faculty member with a baby right here, my two little deditos, you know, writing the personal statement. We have mad skills that we gained because of the unfairness of being put into these positions where we got to practice all these abilities.
Does that make sense?
[00:26:24] Emilia: No, I agree. Yeah. I'm lucky to have the parents that I have and they've also given me so much and shown me love in like many other ways that I appreciate for sure. You started as a microbiologist and then what made you change to health disparities research? How do you decide, okay, I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to do this other thing. And that also takes guts because yeah, you're going to say, I'm going to change.
[00:26:50] Leti: It does take guts, but it's also, in my case, it was practical. So, I was at an Avon event for breast cancer survivors. And this is when I was still a microbiologist, a microbial geneticist, and I was listening to all these investigators talk about breast cancer.
They were all white, they were all men. And I was like, you don't even have breasts that's what I kept thinking and the breast cancer survivors, because it was a woman of color, breast cancer, you know, and I'm like, and you're not, of color. And so, at one of the breaks, I'm standing with the breast cancer survivors and they're like, can't you be a breast cancer researcher?
You can, you would be a great breast cancer researcher. And I'm like, well, I study bacteria. And they're like, yeah, but there's DNA in bacteria. I'm like, yeah, of course there is. I would be a transition and Frank McCormick, who was the director of the Cancer Center, white man at UCSF, comes over and he's like, Oh, what are y'all talking about?
And I said, well, Frank, we're talking about whether I should transition to becoming somebody who looks at breast cancer disparities, for example, and how hard that would be versus you as a cancer researcher changing to be more of a community engaged researcher and working with these individuals and without skipping a beat, he goes, well, of course it would be much easier for me to do that.
And yeah, and so I'm the personality, someone tells me something like that, I'm resisting from the get go and I want to prove you wrong. Right? And so the thing is, is he's talking to me and they're behind the back of him and they're like going, oh no, like the women are going, oh no, oh no. I mean, like vigorously, oh no.
And I'm like, okay, community sees that I have inherent skill sets, being a woman, being of color, having anyone, so then I was like, that's the beginning of it. And then I taught a health disparities and cancer class because part of the reason I was involved in these groups is because I was the SF state leader of a grant with UCSF to reduce cancer health disparities.
And so we taught a class and I taught it with somebody who was a health disparity researcher and he presented the SEER data, surveillance epidemiology and end result data, looking at cancer mortality across 1970 something to present, which was like 2005, 2002, something like that, with racial ethnic breakdown and there was no data gathered at all on Latinos until 1993. And so the lack of data, what I thought to myself, they didn't even care enough to collect if we died. And then I'm like, Oh man, I have to change careers because I have to be somebody who cares enough to at least see if we're dying more or less.
And so that was, that was that point. And then the last part was when I was at UC Berkeley, I was working there live with Mike Chamberlain and we went out of grad school. I published five papers, which for my discipline, that's a lot.
[00:29:16] Emilia: For any now that's huge. Five.
[00:29:19] Leti: Some of them published them. I'm boring. I know somebody who published like 13.
I like it. I don't do that anymore. Okay. So, so the last two papers I had actually written and Mike was sort of disengaged and he just he didn't even put in any changes to it, and we submitted it, and they got accepted without revision. So I knew I could write papers, right? I mean, you know, Science at Berkeley.
And then I go to San Francisco State, and I'm submitting papers, and they're not getting accepted, and it's just taking so long and I'm like, now I recognize that as the prestige bias, right? And it was just so hard and it's like, I kept getting pushed back and putting even more and getting more and so I'm like, okay, two things are happening here.
One, there's prestige bias and the other, when I was in Mike's Chamberlain lab, there was big ground to break and once we broke the big ground, because I was the one that, that with John Hellman showed that alternate sigma factors did more things than heat shock and developmental regulation, but that actually participated in flagellar and chemotaxis, which was a big deal in this little small field.
Then after that, it was all incremental knowledge. How does the sigma factor interact with the promoter region? Which are the amino acids that are involved? Which is all the minutiae and so I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm never at San Francisco state, less resources, less prestige, I'm never going to get anywhere in this field.
I have to find another field where there's like big things to crack. Okay. Health disparities or health equity, which is I prefer is a new field. And there's like, I'm, I'm reviewing a paper now where one of the reviewers said, these studies have been done plenty before we know what's going on these connections, but the studies have all been with white americans.
And so this paper is looking at Latino Americans and the reviewer is saying, we don't, we already know everything and I'm like, Oh no. Oh no. You know? And so we still have to crack that. There are differences based on populations and how they are viewed, how they view themselves and how they interact. So there's big nuts to crack in this field.
So that was the, you know, so all those things aligned and that's why I'm well funded now.
[00:31:14] Emilia: Yeah. Because I mean, yeah, you have lots of, I mean, that's, that's great that you're doing something that you're really into and that you have the funding for it. Did you always want to go to SF State, Leti, or did you No.
No. It just happened?
[00:31:28] Leti: I did really well at Berkeley in my PhD, but in my postdoc, I struggled. Basically, I didn't get any papers because my project was to create a transgenic mouse using the mouse DNA sequence for insulin degrading enzyme to pull out the other way around the rat, the rat sequence to pull it out of the mouse genome so that we can recreate the transgenic mice mouse.
And I thought I could do it, but at the end there was only 80 percent identity between the two and so I was trying to do whole genome things and there just wasn't enough identity to pull stuff out. So anyways so my pro, my, my postdoc didn't yield anything, and that's when I had Joaquin, my, my oldest and I had preeclampsia.
So I was, you know, 10 weeks in so there's a bunch of stuff that happened up until then. I was gonna be a professor to tier one institution, but then the postdoc fell apart and my husband was in med school, and so I was the breadwinner and I just needed to get a job and I had an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship and this job at San Francisco State came along and I said, what, I'm going to go for it and I was an Affirmative Action Hire.
I came in third and people, the powers that be, that's how I got in there and I remember just crying and crying and Thomas was like, why are you, my husband, why are you crying? And I'm like, because I'm supposed to be like a Stanford or Berkeley and da da da. Leti, what are you wanting to be a professor? To help other people like myself get into science.
They said, well, where are those other people? Are they at Berkeley? Are they in San Francisco State? And so then it was like, this is where I'm supposed to be, right? So, but it was the only place I applied to, right? Like coming out of high school, I applied to all the UCs, all the CSUs and a lot of the big names and I got in everywhere. And then it just like whittled down, whittled down, whittled down to like, I only applied to one place for my professorship and that's where I got in and it made sense because Thomas was at UCSF. I was just down the street, San Francisco state. And in the end it's worked out really well, but no, I, I, my plan was to be somebody like yourself, who's at a tier one institution.
[00:33:25] Emilia: Well, you've done so much good, Leti, and I think your legacy is big.
[00:33:31] Rori: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, please share it with your friends in science. You can also support this program by writing a kind review. This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, Sound Engineering by Keegan Stromberg.
Special thanks to Dr. Leticia Marquez Magaña. The hosts of Science Wise are Emilia Huerta Sanchez and me, Rori Rolfhs.