If you aren't already on the wait list for the next cohort of K-R Essentials, head to our website to sign up so that you can be the first to hear all the details about the program and to get your questions answered. You can do that at sarahdobsonco slash k2r, that's S-A-R-A-H-D-O-B-S-O-N, dot C-O. Slash K, number 2 R. Today's episode is a conversation with a recent K-R Essentials graduate. Today's episode is a conversation with a recent K-R Essentials graduate. These episodes are really special. They're a little longer than a typical episode. You'll hear from me and, of course, you get to hear directly from a former student about their experience in the program. The reason I love these conversations so much, aside from getting to chat with a graduate, is because it's one thing to hear me talk about the perspectives and tools that I teach inside K-R Essentials, but it's another thing entirely to hear someone who's applied those tools and perspectives in their own career and to hear what happened when they did. Here's our conversation. Welcome, welcome. So the very first thing, can you introduce yourself and share your pronouns? Sure.

My name is Amy LeClaire. My pronouns are she, her.

And just tell us a little bit about your research and what drew you to that area of research in the first place.

Yeah, I am a medical sociologist and a qualitative researcher by training.

Sociologist and a qualitative researcher by training and I think globally my research is focused on health equity and specifically structural level interventions to the healthcare system rather than patient level interventions.

I went into my PhD program really focused on gender and sexuality and race and ethnicity and kind of those broader to healthcare.

But I have found that as a sociologist, bringing those lenses to the study of healthcare, specifically in the United States, has been so exciting and infuriating and rewarding and there's so much that sociology can teach us about the healthcare system. And so a lot of my work has been partnering with clinician researchers in different specialties or disease areas like primary care or infectious disease or working with a rheumatologist on lupus and finding ways to use my strengths to enhance their work, and then eventually ended up at a place where I wanted to do my own work and kind of get back to driving the research agenda instead of just participating, and so have been focusing on LGBTQIA plus health equity and one of the things I love about that population is the intersectionality and that it brings in all of those other aspects of life, and so that is where my research is focused now and specifically on looking at data collection and clinical spaces, because if we don't identify people, we literally make them invisible in health equity research.

Yeah, and can you paint us a picture, amy, of your experience in your K award and what that has been like for you?

Yeah, so I had an internal K through the Birch program, which is building interdisciplinary career, research careers in women's health. And you know, as I've shared with you, in the position I was in, I was faculty but had kind of always been the bridesmaid and never the bride and was really functioning as a we jokingly use the word qualitician because it's normal to have like a statistician join your team but there's less of a mold for people that do qualitative research but really functioning in the same way. And I was working on this project around patient navigation for breast cancer patients in the city of Boston, and it was focused mostly on racial and ethnic disparities, although we looked at some other factors and I thought, wow, it would be really cool to translate this program for sexual and gender minority people with breast cancer, because there are known disparities there. And I realized that in the systems that we were conducting this clinical trial, most of them didn't collect that data and so there was no way to do that, there was no way to tailor this program. And my mentor was like why don't you apply? You know you're at this point in your position. Why don't you apply for this? That hadn't really been the plan, you know, and so I applied. It took me three cycles, um, but when I finally got it, I didn't know how much I wanted it until I got it, um. So I got two years on the birch but, as happens with NIH funding, two years was really one year and nine months, and then there was, you know, applying for extensions and things. But it was really great because during the different cycles that it took me to get funded, I was able to start some of the work. I had this unbelievable undergraduate research assistant and it was just so.

One of the things that I've always found really interesting in the research that I do, and one of the things I like about partnering with clinicians across diseases or across specialties, is what is common across all of these conditions rather than what is unique, because I think those point to some fundamental flaws in our healthcare system and those are all opportunities for intervention. Those are all opportunities to make things better for people. Opportunities for intervention, those are all opportunities to make things better for people. And so, talking with my first aim of my K was understanding barriers and facilitators to sexual orientation and gender identity, or SOGI, data collection in a primary care setting and, at the time, the practice that I was studying, had not yet implemented that. So it was, you know, kind of perceived, and it was just so interesting to me how many people had never thought about this. And that's not their fault, it's not what they're trained to do.

And I think increasingly we ask people to do things without any training or without any introduction. And we wouldn't take that approach to, I don't know, working on a car. You know you wouldn't hand someone a car and say, hey, can you fix this without giving them training about, and they'd be like, oh, I've never worked with a Subaru before, I've only worked on bicycles. Right, like you wouldn't do that. But we do that in healthcare sometimes. And so it was just really interesting to again talk to people and kind of hear them think through this for the first time and articulate, intentionally or not, some of the big gaps in the structure of healthcare, something like gender neutral bathrooms, just not having that, and getting people to think about what it means for a structure, for an organization, for a facility to be cis, normative or heteronormative. And so that was the beginning of my K, and then I've just, you know, been kind of chugging along and trying to figure out what the next steps are.

And so way back I mean it feels like eons ago, but way back in the fall of 2024, as you were considering joining K to R Essentials what was going on for you in that period? Like, what was it that made you think like this is something that I want to do, this is something that might help me? Like, what were you struggling with?

Yeah. So one big factor was that in November of 2023, we welcomed twins into my family, and at that time we had a six-year-old, and having twins really kind of smashed the thinking about what was next, and I never saw myself as somebody writing R01s and leading the program, but it was like I have to give this a try, because the other option is to be a full-time collaborator, and that has its own. You know challenges, as you know, and having infants, having these two small children, creates a lot of challenges in terms of work-life balance or even just doing them, not balancing them, not getting everything right. So in every other area of my life, I think I'm pretty good at lining up the supports I need. So I am not interested in taxes or finances or any of that. Sure, could I listen to a couple of podcasts or read some books and do the. You know how to do research and learn some things, yeah, but that's not a good use of my time and I have zero interest, and so I hire someone to, you know, to manage that.

I entrust another professional and I had been following you for a while.

I first heard about you actually at a Birch meeting at my institution through the Edge for Scholars program and it was like, well, here is a support system, here is an opportunity to get some guidance. And I really struggled in grad school because I didn't understand the hidden curriculum, I didn't understand how to get myself those supports. And so, rather than saying, oh okay, well, it's too late and I'm at this point and now I need to figure it out on my own. In the same way, I try and have backup babysitters and if my primary childcare falls through, it was like why don't I give myself some supports, why I don't have to struggle through this? You don't get more money if you struggle and do it by yourself and you're probably less likely to be successful. And so it just seemed like the right opportunity at the right time, and really a gift that I could give myself, to say I deserve this support, I deserve this type of mentorship and structure to give myself a better chance at success in this career path.

Yeah, and I want to just reflect something back to you that I'm hearing. Aside from the more sort of concrete elements of support that you're talking about, the story that you've told to me sounds a little bit like you were really finally ready to just go all in on yourself as a PI. Like it's not. You were at this point where you had to decide is this something that I want to do? And what does that look like for me? You know, not just with young children in the mix, but just like what do I want my professional life to look like? Do I want to be, you know, like a jack of all trades, jill of all trades, collaborator, or do I want to really be leading projects? And how can I make that work for me?

Yeah, absolutely, make that work for me. Yeah, absolutely. I think also I didn't have a quote, unquote traditional career path in terms of, you know, timing and what I thought I was training to be when I went to grad school and what I ended up doing, and so I think there's always been some level of shame or kind of like diminishment of myself that because I was on a different timeline, and rather than saying it kind of doesn't matter how I ended up here or when I'm ending up here, this is where I am now and again, I like deserve to give myself the best shot. I don't have to apologize, you know, probably mostly to myself, but for what it took to get here. This is where I am and this is an opportunity that I have now to support me where I am.

Exactly, Exactly. And so what? What were you hoping that that support would look like? Like, what were you, what were you hoping the support would look like and what were you hoping to achieve having that support?

I don't know. I don't know that I had any hope or expectations about what I thought it would look like. Um, you know, I had seen your other material and liked it and found it useful and wise and informative. Um, and I think it was more of I'm going to put myself in this structured environment and see what it has to offer. Yeah, I don't know that I had a lot of expectations, but I was like, well, it's called K to R and that's what I'm doing, so let's do it.

I find it so interesting. I mean, there are plenty of people who come into K to R Essentials with very specific objectives about what they want to accomplish inside the program, and I love hearing the other side of it, where you're like I just needed a container to figure out what I needed, and I love that, because I am the exact same way in the containers that I'm in. I'm like well, I think this is going to help me. I'm not exactly sure how, but I feel committed to just immersing myself in this experience and seeing what emerges for me, and I know that whatever emerges is going to be useful. Yeah, exactly, that's great. That's great. Can you think of a moment or an insight from the program that really changed things for you?

Yeah, I think that. So a couple of things. So I think, off the bat, it was in one of the kind of very early sessions. You know you ask us to just trust the process and you know you talk a lot about many of the traits and characteristics and behaviors that got us to where we are no longer serve us. You know, I think people that uh end up in PhD school and I'm sure for MDs as well uh tend to be type A, um, a little rigid Um, and it's funny to see these characteristics reflected back to me and our children Um, rule followers, you know, want a guidebook, want a set of instructions and, ironically, choose this field where that doesn't exist.

Right, there's so much uncertainty, there's most of the feedback is negative, and so you asked us to just trust the process and that, even if we didn't think it was going to work or we didn't think it was a good fit for us, and I think there's also this egotism and I don't mean that in a negative way I think there's, um, I think it's actually quite self-sabotaging where we go, well, that's not going to work for me, or I'm not like other people, or um, you know, and I heard someone talking once about a therapist suggesting positive affirmations and they're like, well, that's ridiculous. And they're like, okay, well, how are the negative voices going? And it's like touche. And so, you know, you were like, just trust the process and it felt not silly I don't even know what the right word is, which is funny because I have a lot of words but doing, like the time, edit, or doing, you know, like characterizing what's a rock and what's sand and what's water, and going through and doing those exercises. You know there was a.

I had a reluctance to do them and it was like, well, what is that? What's that about? And rather than taking the emotional space to figure that out, like, just do it, just do the exercise, like Sarah told you to do it, just do it and finding it really useful. You know, I know we've talked before. We have a friend in common and I was talking to her about the program, was going, and I was saying, you know we had our coaching call and Sarah said, you know, keep your eyes on your own paper. And I was like, well, first of all, how dare you?

You know, there is this again, this like comparing ourself, right. And so I'm on a coaching call with these brilliant women and you know this person is solving caregiver burnout and Alzheimer's right or whatever it is, and I'm like holy moly, you know I'm just doing this little thing. And it's like, don't do that, worry about yourself. Like this isn't a competition and I think one of the challenges again in this field is there's always someone doing better than you.

Right, there's always someone who got their first R when they were 24 years old or you know, or has six R's or got this grant on their first submission, and I don't benefit from comparing myself to that person. I don't benefit from comparing myself to someone who's got 72 first author publications first author publications. What I benefit from is taking the skills and the lessons that you are teaching us and applying them to myself, and so I feel like those two things early on that were like trust the process and like keep your eyes on your own paper, like have. I feel like they've humbled me in a good way and I don't think of myself as someone with like a big ego. I think is, you know, our brains are our greatest asset and also our worst enemy, right?

And so a lot of what we talk about, especially in the early part of the program, is just, yeah, staying focused eyes on your own paper, just make sure that you are building trust and compassion for yourself and not using that comparison against yourself, right? And the other piece of that is to your point about you know, actually just trusting the process and doing the exercises. It's really easy to look at because we're academics, because we're so bright and we pick things up really quickly. We can look at something and like game out the next steps without actually doing the work. And so we understand something theoretically and we're like, oh yeah, I got it, Like no problem, I got that. But the actual doing of it, the implementing of it, teaches you so much that you could never anticipate just by understanding the theory behind it.

And that's really what exactly. Yeah, Like reading a book about riding a bike versus getting on a bike.

Exactly yeah exactly, and that's the piece around really just committing to the process and trusting it and just doing it and seeing what you learn, just really engaging that curiosity.

Yeah, and I think what you said, like we tend to be these analytical, or we are these analytical people and again, we can get a little bit cocky without realizing it, or get a little bit dismissive and be like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, without giving ourselves the experience and you know, thinking that we know all the answers, or like we know what the outcome is and right, in research, you always have to leave room to be wrong, you have to be falsifiable or it's not a question. You've decided a priori what the answer is and we do that to ourselves in a way we wouldn't do that to our work.

Yeah, we're always arguing for our own limitations, and I think that's the ego piece that you're talking about. It's sort of using our ego and our exceptionalism against ourselves instead of for ourselves, by saying this will never work for me. These are all the reasons that I am theorizing that this is not going to work out and so I'm just going to go all in on that instead of actually trying something and learning from it and, you know, proving myself wrong. Yeah, so, amy, this is sort of a similar question to the last one, but I wonder if the answer is a little bit different. Is there something that you learned in the program that you didn't realize that you needed to learn?

Yes, definitely. I think two things that are really concrete examples are the periodization, right, so A weeks and B weeks, and I tend to be very all or nothing. And so you know if I'm teaching and I have a class on Thursdays I had that, you know, this semester while I was in your course so much of the prep and then the teaching itself, and everything is a high intensity activity, even if it doesn't take that many hours. And so, rather than not getting any writing done and beating myself up for it, if I can acknowledge, like, okay, you know, the second half of this week is going to be about teaching, and so just don't plan to get deep thinking work done, then you're going to be more successful. I like setting myself up for success.

And then I think the other thing is like scheduling out tasks, because I have a lot of this like amorphous free time and oh, also, don't use your inbox as a to-do list, oops, and so right, I would be like go into the day with no plan and be like or my plan is I'm going to work on this paper today, which is, you know, as ridiculous as it sounds and so I think saying, okay, here's a perfect example, like this week. We have a disruption in child care and we've got backup care. We've got stuff worked out, but it's a change from our normal schedule. We've got stuff worked out, but it's a change from our normal schedule. And so my mental load is different this week and then I'm remembering different things I have to do, pick up and drop off at different times, and just and rather than going okay, well, this week is shot, I'm not going to get anything done, I can go.

Okay, maybe this isn't a great week for some deep thinking work. What are some tasks that I can get done? What are those? What's the sand that I owe to other people? That I can check things off a list and get that work done this week. And then, if I make you know, instead of saying I'm going to wrap up this paper, what I'm going to do is I'm going to allot an hour to review co-authors' comments, like something really specific. But that isn't the deep thinking work on my part. That is going to have to wait until next week. But that doesn't mean I can't get anything done this week, but I can work with my own limitations or changes and the amount of effort that I have to give and I can move things forward. Yeah, yeah, Well.

So I tend to characterize that and tell me what you think about that. I characterize it as sort of mitigating that tendency towards perfectionism, Like if I can't do it perfectly, I'm not going to do it at all, so like there goes the entire week. But what I'm hearing you say is that by sort of mitigating that tendency towards perfectionism, you are able to just maintain momentum by recognizing the inherent limitations that you have around you in any particular week or or day.

Yeah, and I think some of the tools that you've given us, like allow me to name that and like just even the concept of A weeks and B weeks, right, or, and I don't even know that I have emotional, physical energy you have to give to those tasks and doing the progress and not the perfection, because the other thing is, with the perfectionism, then I wait until the last minute, I do something and then I kick myself for wasting all of this time. If I had started this three weeks ago, this is how much better it would have been.

So it's just a lose-lose situation that I previously would have set myself up for, but it's really about recognizing that your circumstances are going to look different and if they are even somewhat predictable, you can anticipate what your capacity is and account for that as you are planning. So it's a way of being intentional, and it's also a way of being kind to yourself by recognizing things are not constant. We've got stuff coming at us all the time, and if we're able to predict what those circumstances look like, even in very broad strokes, we know what type of energy and focus we can commit towards that particular circumstance. Yeah, exactly. So I don't want to gloss over the fact, amy, that you participated in a cohort that began in January of 2025. And so I wonder how being part of this cohort, being part of this community during what is inarguably an extremely stressful period really an existential crisis for higher education and biomedical research how that sort of shaped your experience in the program, or how the program shaped your experience?

Yeah, I am so grateful that I am in this program at this time, because the shared experience of being with all of these other brilliant women who rely mostly on NIH funding to do their careers, to do the stuff that they have trained for and that they have put years, years into preparing and building I think can't be understated. I think there are a lot of similarities to when COVID hit, and I have an online group of academic mamas with babies born in 2017. Shout out to my 2017 AMs and that group during COVID was so helpful too, because you know these natural disasters. Because you know these natural disasters this isn't a natural disaster, but these external events often kind of rip the roof't again. I can't even explain it right. There's this having to deal with these existential threats to your way of life and still have to go through the day and send emails and pay your water bill and pack lunches, and so being with this group and having your guidance and your leadership has been so helpful helpful as a touchstone, and you know so.

We did the work in January on our North Stars. Then we got to February and things really started to fall off the track. But having that North Star and saying, okay, all of this craziness is happening, that we have little to no control over what is your professional identity and mission, and having that to go back to and then saying, okay, here are all the circumstances that are beyond my control, what are the things that I can control? What are the things that I can control and what can I do for myself personally, professionally, that is in line with this North Star is so grounding and I am deeply, deeply grateful for the program and for this cohort of women and for you, because the only way through this is in community, whatever that means to people. But this is a really important community to me has been, as you said, really, really grounding.

That has been. My observation in the cohort is that, on the one hand, it gave a bit of space for people to air their anxieties, but it also, I think, grounded people in who they are and why they're here. And I think when you're facing that level of uncertainty and lack of control, that's that's as you said the one thing you can always come back to is is your professional identity and your and your purpose. Yeah so, amy, what advice would you have for somebody who's considering joining K to R Essentials about how to get the most out of the program? What would you advise?

Yeah, so the one would be to do it and to show up for yourself and to do the work self and to do the work. And I, you know, in my calendar today, because you were letting us repeat the course, which is amazing I have blocked off like K to R time. And so you know, it's like if you're in physical therapy for an injury, right, like you have to do the exercises at home and you're only hurting yourself if you don't do it. And so for saying that, like, even if it's hard, even if it's, um, you know, a little bit painful sometimes, to go through and do a time audit and be really honest with how much time you spend on your phone, if you're me, um, and to quantify that that it is useful information and that you are worth investing the time, like of all the time that you have spent training and writing and doing coursework and whatever else you needed to get your degree and to establish yourself as a professional, why wouldn't you carve out this small amount of time relative to everything, it may feel big in the moment, but to really commit and give yourself this like that it is a gift to you and that you, you don't need to earn it, but like, by God, have you earned it?

Um, I think that is the is the biggest thing is to say, like you know, if you were going to take the GREs or the MCATs or whatever, you would block off the time to study because that standardized test isn't about how smart you are, it's about knowing how to take the test, and so so much of this is the same thing skill building for what you need for this K to R transition. And so block off the time to do not the Kaplan, but the Sarah Dobson work to prepare yourself for that. Yeah, I just I really see it like as a gift to yourself and that you deserve it.

Is there anything else that you want to add before we wrap up today?

No, no, and then I will continue to say things like I don't want to interrupt you. Yeah, I think the one thing is like I think sometimes people can be really skeptical about the kind of not that what you do is alt-ac or something you know, but is, you know, academia adjacent and can be kind of disparaging, and I think that maybe in an ideal world there would be not your business world, obviously, but there would be less of a demand for these types of services. But I think, really acknowledging that these are the things that we are not taught and we are not trained for. So you know, like the last module is really about project management. Well, and all of it is right, the rocks and the sand and the water and everything, and sorting these out and blocking things off, and all of these tools are how to project manage yourself, for grant writing and other things and that we are not taught those tools.

And I think again, there's this notion that, like academia and research are these snowflakes that you just need a brilliant brain to do and if you're not successful it's because you, the individual, are not brilliant, rather than acknowledging that, like everything else, it is a business, it is an industry, it is a field and that there are things that we can do to enhance our opportunities for success, and so I really think that you spelling that out and providing those supports is just so invaluable, because we need to acknowledge that those don't. Those don't exist. You know, I think that I am brilliant at project managing my household, and so why wouldn't I take that approach to my work? And I do it for other people's teams. I'm great at doing it for other people's teams, and I think taking this, doing this program, has given me the tools, but also the insight, to do it for myself.

Yeah, thank you for saying that, and I mean I say something similar in the invitation to the graduates of the program to come on to the podcast. Right, like we want to normalize getting support for the areas of our careers that we haven't been taught how to optimize, and there is a certain amount of shame in academic spaces around first of all admitting you need help at all and then actually seeking it out right and so being able to normalize it in this way by speaking to people who have recognized how important it is, I think it's so valuable for everybody to hear that it's okay to seek help for things that you want to improve or optimize in your own career, and so thank you for being here today and sharing your experience and your wisdom and the amazing insights and wins that you had in the program during an incredibly difficult period. Truly.

And thank you, you've been amazing.

Wow, you have been an absolute delight to have in the program and it has been wonderful to see you and catch up, and I look forward to more.

Thanks so much, sarah.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Significant Impact from K Award to your first big R1. If you want to dig deeper into what we learned today and move a significant step closer to a smooth K to R transition, visit sarahdobsonco slash pod and check out all the free stuff we have to help you do just that. Don't forget to subscribe to the show to make sure you hear new episodes as soon as they're released. And if today's episode made you think of a colleague or a friend, please tell them about it. Tune in next time, and thanks again for listening.