Director of Community Wanted Something Different

Name: Susanna Harris (she/her)

PhD: Microbiology and Immunology, UNC at Chapel Hill, 2020

What was your main area of research?

Just like how the good bacteria in yogurt or kimchi can help keep us healthy, some bacteria in the soil help plants grow. Farmers would like to use these "beneficial bacteria" instead of chemicals to increase how much food their crops produce, but the bacteria don't always hang around long enough to provide those benefits. I studied whether we could create communities of bacteria that would help the beneficial types stick to the roots better and increase the impact of using them.

What is your current job?

I am the Director of Community at Breakout Ventures in San Francisco, California.

Breakout Ventures invests in biotech startups that turn cutting-edge research into tools and products that increase the health of humans and our planet. My job is to build an ecosystem of founders, investors, and partners who help build these companies.

I love helping scientists find the resources they need to take their research from the bench to the people who need it most: patients who need new treatments, doctors searching for better diagnostics, manufacturers who want to increase sustainability... science can solve so many more problems than I ever realized when I was in grad school.

How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?

It all came down to keeping in touch with my network. I met the team at Breakout Ventures while I was working at a different venture firm. I kept in touch with them regularly, even when I moved out of venture capital for a while. By sharing the work I was doing through LinkedIn and talking openly about what I was excited about, Breakout knew to reach out to me when the Director of Community position opened up.

PhD graduate ➡️ Marketing & Communications ➡️ Venture Capital Communications ➡️ Biotech Startup Community Building ➡️ Science Writing ➡️ Venture Capital Community

Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?

The people who were happiest in their roles in academia (generally - obviously, I can't speak for everyone) liked very different things than I did.

While I was most excited about chances to communicate my work by speaking at broad-audience conferences and meeting with the public, they preferred writing grants or attending niche meetings.
While I needed to understand how the work I was doing would benefit people outside of academia, they could focus easily on hyperspecific questions that lent themselves more to the goal of peer-reviewed publishing.
While I loved training new undergrads and TA-ing the next generation of scientists, they saw it as a distraction.

In short, they were great at their job because they loved it as it was.

"I always wanted something slightly different."

What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?

Gather advice from a wide range of people with a wide range of interests - especially outside of academia. Only 1-in-5 PhDs stay in academia as professors, so you should aim to get the majority of your career input from people who aren't tenure-track. Then, follow the advice of the people you want to see yourself becoming - the ones who share your interests and strengths.
Strive to find the things that you *don't* like. Just as in research, you want to cross off the wrong answers as quickly as possible. Try new things and have the goal of dropping them as soon as you realize it's not a right fit. You'll learn faster, plus it won't be a "failure" if you decide to move on.
Your first job out of grad school will almost definitely not be your last. You aren't signing on to another 5-7 years somewhere, so you don't need to find the perfect fit anytime soon. Plus, you might need more time than you think to decompress from the stress of graduating. Additional note that helped take the stress off for me: it's (literally) illegal to pay people a lower hourly wage than you get in grad school, so keep in mind that you can likely support your current lifestyle with just a minimum wage job.