Entrepreneurial Mindset: "Inside the Box" Thinking & Other Critical Skills for Making It in Science & Business
Cover Photo Credit: NASA (Yajaira Sierra, Ph.D. in MARS Simulation Holding Flag of Puerto Rico)
Welcome, friends! 👋🏼👋👋🏾 Love science, but not quite sure how to forge a career path that merges it with business or entrepreneurship? Have I got the perfect person for you to learn from: Yajaira Sierra, Ph.D., a scientist and educator with business skills.
Sierra combined science and business to create opportunities for herself.
She's also a fellow writer on Bulletin (the platform where you're reading this newsletter). Sierra writes, "From the Nanoworld to Planet Mars."
In today's newsletter, you'll find out the following:
🌴 How to learn the "language of business", if you know "the language of science"
🌴 A blueprint of the extra skills she acquired to create more opportunities for herself
🌴 How she reinvented herself (so you can do the same)
🌴 Don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter to receive practical tips on business and entrepreneurship.
EARLY INFLUENCES CAN BE LASTING INFLUENCES
“I was five years old. My dad woke me up in the middle of the night to go and gaze at the stars. And I tell people that I don’t remember what I was seeing. I don’t remember the stars. But I remember my dad’s face and expression of awe for whatever we were witnessing that night.”
To this day, Yajaira Sierra, Ph.D. remembers the impact of that night. Of course, she also watched documentaries about the first man on the moon and grew up in Puerto Rico where you can see the stars clearly at night.
All of these influences shaped her dream of going to space one day.
Yajaira: First day of school (left) and first day working at NASA (April 2020)
THE TIP JAR (Tips provided courtesy of Yajaira Sierra, Ph.D.)
STARTING OUT: “For early career scientists, scientists or… grad students… I highly recommend that they branch out.”
Sierra says Ph.D. training can be highly specialized. So she would “encourage a student to reach out to the business department at that university… Take courses in entrepreneurship.”
Note: She says a lot of universities offer entrepreneurship courses, specifically, for scientists.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION: “Let’s say they decide to stay in academia… They will need to do a lot of marketing about the work they do to try to find investors, [to] try to convince agencies to fund their research. So there are a lot of transferrable skills that can be applied, even in academia.”
STEEPED IN SKILLS (mid-career): “Don’t be afraid of reinvention.”
PRACTICAL APPLICATION: “[Get] connected with the professional network in the area that you are interested. In my case, it was space. And that’s how I landed my job at NASA. I showed up and attended a space conference in D.C.”
Hint: She attended the International Astronautical Congress
STARTING OVER: “Go for it! Don’t disqualify yourself… Try to highlight the experience or the skills that are transferrable. That’s really important.”
“It’s very important, as well, to work on how to tell your story…”
I’LL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN: “I was very curious about many other things… Something that would have been very good [would have been] to manage that curiosity very early on..."
Basically, she wishes she would've focused her curiosity on targeted opportunities that would have gotten her closer to her ultimate goal faster - of going to space.
BEST ADVICE FROM “LA CASA”/BEST “HOUSE” ADVICE: Sierra says she remembers a time when she was a student and was feeling anxious and uncertain about the future. It was at that moment that her mom told her a couple of lines from a well-known poem in Spanish by Antonio Machado:
“Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.”
TRANSLATION: "Traveler, there is no road. You make the path by walking.”
YOUR PATH DOES NOT HAVE TO BE LINEAR
Sierra, who is a materials scientist, NASA project manager and educator took an unconventional path.
And there are elements you can definitely learn from her to achieve your goals.
Sierra started as a high school chemistry teacher.
But she quickly realized, if she was going to be able to go to space one day, she’d need to go to graduate school.
The big day: Yajaira receiving her Ph.D. in Nanomaterials Chemistry from Cornell University
LEARN THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS
So she learned the language of science.
But learning the language of business is what helped her forge a path with more opportunities.
Sierra says the language of business for a scientist is “an attitude of entrepreneurship… even if you are not the founder of the startup.”
She says it’ll help you answer critical questions like the following:
“What are the market trends?”
“Where are the technologies heading?”
“What are the types of innovations [where] we should be… focusing our efforts?”
TAKE OWNERSHIP OF YOUR IDEAS
Early on, Sierra worked at two startups. At the first place, iFyber, she learned that it's important to value your contributions, in particular, in terms of intellectual property and the patent application process.
“We should not discard little ideas or innovations that we may consider not that relevant at the time...”
She says it’s an awareness of the value that your innovation brings to the table.
LEARN THE BUSINESS SIDE OF THINGS
Sierra is grateful for what she learned at both startups, iFyber and Primet Precision Materials, because she says she was not just doing research.
“I was not just leading projects, but I was also learning the business side of things and gaining other types of skill sets that scientists usually are not exposed [to] or don’t develop during their Ph.D. trainings.”
For example, she learned how to develop budgets.
THE IMPORTANCE OF "INSIDE THE BOX" THINKING
“Usually, when you are a scientist within an academic environment… the ‘outside the box’ thinking is what is highly encouraged, but… when we are working for companies that depend on a return on investment that need to deliver these type[s] of technological solutions in a timely fashion, time is important.”
She calls that “inside the box” thinking.
“You can still be innovative, but you need to learn that innovation in that context… needs to happen within constraints of budget schedules. And it’s not as open as a researcher right back in academia.”
LEVEL UP WITH PROJECT MANAGEMENT SKILLS
Those experiences helped her grow as a professional and helped her develop project management skills.
It was those skills that Sierra believes helped her land her current job working in a project management role at NASA.
Of course, Sierra still has her sights set on working in space as a researcher someday.
A NEW KIND OF SPACE ECONOMY = NEW OPPORTUNITIES
She says the opportunities are really interesting right now because of all the “companies that are coming up with commercial space stations.”
She believes, “We will have a space economy in orbit, in low-Earth orbit, and there will be lots of activities. Not just activities driven by government, but activities driven by the private sector.”
And that’s just one of the possibilities she has her sights set on to fulfill her dream of going into space.
INDUSTRY: Space
PATH TO REINVENTION:
High school teacher
Sr. Research Scientist
Project Manager - NASA Glenn Research Center
Note: She also has a sole proprietorship, Science in Space (Focus is on science and STEM-related workshops for students), registered in her name
LATINO CONNECTION: Born in Puerto Rico
Parents are Puerto Rican
EDUCATION:
Cornell University - Ph.D. & Master’s degree in Nanomaterials Chemistry
University of Puerto Rico (Mayaguez) – Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry
DREAM JOB AS A KID: “An astronaut… That has been my lifelong dream or dream job – to be able to work in space someday.”
BIGGEST GOAL YET: “Just be happy knowing that I am contributing to a purpose greater than myself.”
Science education: Yajaira says it'll always be part of her personal & professional mission
NO NEED TO GO IT ALONE
HELP ON THE OUTSIDE...because we can all use a helping hand:
Time to Network
It’s that time of the month when the Tampa Bay Women’s Business Centre is having its virtual networking event.
If you’d like to mingle virtually for FREE with other small business owners, here’s your chance. There are also Zoom break-out rooms to make the networking more meaningful.
If you can’t make this event, note it on your calendar that this group conducts this type of networking function on the last Wednesday of every month. Follow the link below for registration info.
SBA (Small Business Administration) partnering with the Tampa Bay Women’s Business Centre
"Virtual Networking"
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
1:00 p.m. EDT – 2:00 p.m. EDT
Online Event
FREE
WORKING ON THE INSIDE...because we know our culture has a hard time asking for help:
The Skills to Lead
Want to learn the three key leadership circles of developing yourself? Register for this FREE event to pinpoint and improve your strengths and tackle areas where you can grow personally to help your business also grow.
This webinar is designed with “real world” tools to help you achieve personal wellbeing and boost your leadership and organizational skills.
SBDC (Small Business Development Center) - UCF (University of Central Florida)
“Being a Better Leader: Developing Your Leadership Skills to Grow Your Business”
Thursday, July 28, 2022
10:00 a.m. EDT – 11:00 a.m. EDT
Virtual Webinar
FREE
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/1187687384668811536
INSPIRATION FOR THIS ISSUE:
I wanted to speak with Yajaira Sierra, Ph.D., not only because she is, obviously, quite accomplished as a scientist, but because of how she made an intentional goal of learning entrepreneurial principles in her scientific career.
That is so smart.
She also discussed something that I suspect we’ll be talking more about in the future – commercial space flight activity.
With, of course, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson all trying to outdo each other with their commercial space-related enterprises (Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, respectively), the opportunities for not only scientists and engineers, but people in other disciplines, will likely increase.
Sierra said there are opportunities, for example, in science communications.
And she reminds us that there are many jobs that haven’t even been created. So it’s important not to limit our vision of what’s possible and how we can contribute, even if we didn’t specifically study science, but still have a fascination with it.
To find out more about Sierra’s personal journey, career reinvention and, of course, articles she's written on popular science, I encourage you to check out her Bulletin newsletter, "From the Nanoworld to Planet Mars."
Yajaira by an engineering model of the lunar VIPER rover (Photo credit: NASA)
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