Name: Caitlyn Miller (she/her)
PhD: Bioengineering, Stanford, 2022
What was your main area of research?
I was co-advised by Carolyn Bertozzi and Jennifer Cochran. I developed and evaluated tumor-targeted therapies for immunotherapy and drug delivery, including the design and synthesis, in vitro assays, and mouse efficacy and mechanism studies.
What is your current job?
I am the CEO and Co-Founder of TwoStep Therapeutics in San Carlos, California.
My job involves a little bit of everything, and something new every week. That is the startup life!
The best part is I get to work on a treatment that I truly believe in and getting to see it through is really rewarding. I also get to work with incredible people and meet new ones everyday, which is awesome.
How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?
I spun out TwoStep Therapeutics from Stanford with my PIs based on research I had done there.
PhD ➡️ postdoc (same labs as PhD) ➡️ entrepreneur in residence ➡️ CEO & Co-Founder
I did my entrepreneur in residence at Stanford IMA.
Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia? Was this a difficult decision or one you felt came easily?
I really wanted to translate the therapy we were developing into the clinic, but that takes a lot of money to do. There are some who manage to do that from the academic side, but it made more sense for me to pursue it from the startup side. Also pitching and having conversations with investors is much more exciting and fun to me than writing grants -- I didn't really enjoy writing grants and papers while a PhD, but I loved presenting the work! So I guess it was an easy decision to leave academia in the end, but I didn't know what I wanted to do when I first started my PhD.
What are three pieces of advice you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?
Be willing to ask for help and advice from people in your network with careers that sound interesting to you. You can also go to general networking events/happy hours/etc. and meet a lot of new people!
Get a LinkedIn profile and as you start meeting new people in person, connect with them on LinkedIn within a few days so they remember your name/face (also so you remember theirs!). You never know if that person will one day post a perfect job position for you. Or maybe you are the one hiring one day, and they turn out to be a perfect fit.
If you are interviewing for a job, make sure you also evaluate them throughout the process. If your potential new boss is acting like a jerk or inappropriate during interviews, it'll probably only get worse after you accept the job (not speaking from personal experience here, just stories from friends).