Polar Scientist: An interview with Allison Cusick
By Kath Whittey
I had the pleasure of interviewing and chatting to Allison Cusick, a polar guide and scientist. Through the interview Allison talks about her journey in STEMM and how she go to where she is now. Her story resonated with me so much and there were so many stories that I realised I have lived too. My take home message from chatting with Allison was that it’s ok to want it all!
So over to Allison, I hope many of you will feel as inspired as I do!
IG Handle: womanscientist
Allison Cusick
Hey! Tell us a bit about yourself.
My name is Allison Cusick. I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, USA and think of myself as an adventurer and a scientist.
I am currently working as an Oceanographer studying microscopic phytoplankton in Antarctica through the framework of the citizen science program I co-designed called FjordPhyto. This study contributes to my PhD dissertation work at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, California USA. Today I feel like I’m finally living my dream career blending field work with lab work, data analysis, and science communication and outreach. When I was young, I dreamt of traveling, exploring, possibly becoming a NASA astronaut, and spent time seeking answers to my curiosity about the natural world. I never actually aspired to be a marine biologist, like many ocean lovers did at a young age. My beginnings were the complete opposite: I did not like the ocean, because my mom almost drowned as a child we avoided the ocean as a family, and growing up in Washington, my perspective of the ocean was that it was cold, wet, windy, dangerous, miserable, and boring. And I get seasick.
After I earned my undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in Biology, I explored different jobs in science starting with lab work in neuroscience and immunology, then turning to field biology. I worked in remote mountains in Washington and Mexico, in the Amazon jungle in Peru, and in parks in Africa tracking animals like squirrels, songbirds, parrots, macaws, big cats, and wild dogs. I learned that I liked science if the questions were related to the environment, I liked working in the lab, with my hands running experiments, I liked genetics and ecology but I also liked going into the field for adventures!
How did you get to where you are now?
It took me a while to get to where I am now! I did not start working in the ocean world until four years after undergrad when I got hired to run ocean acidification experiments on diatoms in the lab in 2010. At that time, I was simply looking for a job in Seattle, because seasonal field biology work was not sustainable. Then by serendipity through the lab job I worked at for 3 years, in 2013, I got sent to Antarctica to work on an icebreaker for 53-days in the Ross Sea. The minute I landed at McMurdo Station and stepped out of the C-130 Hercules aircraft, I was hooked on polar science and oceanography. I could see the potential for scientists to do more than just science, to inform policy and society. I realized by studying phytoplankton I could also go between thinking about mechanisms on a fine scale, through genetics but also at the broad scale ecosystem ecology questions. In my 30s I realized I was getting older and hitting a ceiling for career growth opportunities in science, I started to think about graduate school. I wanted something that would expose me to and interdisciplinary approach. At age 33, I was accepted into a 1-year masters program at Scripps Inst of Oceanography that exposed me to policy, economics, and social issues in marine science. This is where I designed and built the idea for FjordPhyto citizen science program that would be run onboard tour vessels traveling to Antarctica. It all started as a dream and I felt like an entrepreneur making this vision baby come to life. I didn’t already know how everything would come together, I used that year 2016 - 2017 to figure it out.
During graduate school I also wanted to learn how to write grants and my advisor Dr Maria Vernet and I wrote a proposal to the National Science Foundation which received funding to start FjordPhyto. This funding also allowed me to start the PhD program at Scripps. I had never wanted to do a PhD. I am the only person in my family to go beyond High School so I felt a Bachelors was an excellent achievement (and I still think that!) but realized a PhD would help me reach further career and science goals I had developed over time. My advisor and I created something that has all the elements of what I had been dreaming I could do as a scientist: work in a lab but also go into the field, work in a team, yet be independent, learn molecular techniques and genetics yet relate it to ecology in the natural environment and also I have gained survivalist skills to work responsibility outdoors, on the water, and even under water as a Polar Guide, Boat Operator, and Rescue/Science Diver. And more importantly, to do science that I can share in with others, get people excited, and potentially shape the way people see and conserve the Southern Ocean and Antarctica! It’s exciting to see myself now as a highly trained ocean scientist, citizen science practitioner, and polar guide working in the most extreme environment on Earth.
Can you explain more about what your job entails?
I like to distinguish between “jobs” and “career”, I have many many jobs - or things I do to make ends meet and pay the bills, like being a baker and a bartender! but for my career - I’ve always considered myself a full-time scientist/biologist. I’m constantly asking myself who I am as a person, and what do I like doing with my life? It’s important for me to find out what matters to me because in science you have to compromise on some things (salary, time, flexibility, co-workers, team work, travel, etc).
At the moment I am a graduate student, I get paid a PhD student stipend through the University of California San Diego, and to make a liveable wage I also work a couple other part-time/seasonal/side-gig jobs. For instance, I am a Polar Guide where I work on tour expedition ships giving lecturers to travellers in Antarctica, and I spent 3 years during my PhD as a part-time researcher working in an algal biofuel lab. I feel like my jobs entail a whole gamut of roles and responsibilities! All of these jobs weave together to form the bigger picture of my career as a scientist specializing in polar biological oceanography.
How do you hope your voice and work as a marine educator will influence others?
I hope that through sharing of my experience in science and showing people my world through the lens of science and by just being me – that will help influence others to think science can be fun and impactful and adventurous. By being professional and rigorous, and entering the scientific spaces, policy making spaces, outreach spaces without fear of showing a little bit of my goofiness and colorfulness. Science is done by REAL people. So I hope I can use my voice to make a difference in the polar marine space through the things that make me personally light up with passion.
Why is it so important to engage the community with your work?
The community for me means the polar community, the scientific community, the Antarctic tourism community, policy maker community, and more. I think it’s important to engage with all these communities to share the work I do because you never know who will be inspired. In polar science, the community was traditionally dominated by military and men. Women were literally banned from working in Antarctica in many nations’ research stations. I hope as a woman in polar science, I represent the change that has been occurring. By engaging with various communities sharing my work and my science partnerships, I can inspire more young people to join polar and think of creative ways of protecting our planet especially our cold cryosphere regions. And most importantly to show how critically linked Antarctica is to the rest of the world even though it seems incredibly remote.
What has the most challenging part of your career been? And how did you solve this?
I have had a couple challenging parts of my career (not to mention trying to finish a PhD and work in a lab during a global pandemic, or taking 7 months to heal from a near-death car accident): The first most difficult challenge was finding out what my passion is! I felt like it took almost a decade to figure that out, I entered undergrad in 2002 having a vague idea that I liked nature and traveling. My inspiration to choose my major in Biology and Geology came from an interest in becoming a NASA astronaut, because I thought they travelled to the furthest reaches humans could go. It wasn’t until my senior year of undergrad I started working in a lab and thought about becoming a scientist. And years after graduating in 2006 I spent job after job after job trying to figure out what I liked in my work, and what mattered to me. It wasn’t until 2013 (7 years after university) that I went to Antarctica and had a eureka “THIS IS MY THING” moment. I felt like I was on another planet. I then started learning about Oceanography and polar – 2 fields I had avoided my entire life up until then. The second most challenging part came when I hit a growth ceiling in the non-profit job I worked before going to grad school. I had maxed out my ability to get a raise and to be promoted, having only a Bachelors (BS) degree. I started applying for other lab positions and on three occasions was asked by potential employers why I only had a BS. Out of frustration, I realized this problem would never go away and if I wanted to grow in my field as a scientist I would need to go to graduate school. I bitterly looked into attending short 1-year masters programs so I could “get the piece of paper” employers wanted to see on my resume, bitter that my 10 years of experience working in numerous labs and disciplines wasn’t speaking for itself. I was accepted into a Master’s program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, an interdisciplinary program on policy, economics, and social issues in marine science. The program was invigorating and launched me into where I am today. I was inspired to keep the program I had designed – FjordPhyto – running, and realized the only way to do that would be to become a graduate student in the PhD program. So this lead to my 3rd major challenge, to take a huge pay cut - for 7 years now - to go to grad school, attempting to live in one of the most expensive cities in the USA on a $33,000/year student stipend (it’s impossible, so much so in fact that 48,000 workers are on one of the largest academic strikes in US history for unfair labour practices and low wages by University of California system). So I joke (with truth to it) that going to grad school in my late-30s has been the worst financial decision of my life. I bring it up to also demonstrate, one of the reasons I felt I could make this decision was because I was single (divorced in fact!), with no children and no assets like a mortgage to pay. There is a lot of discussion as to why women leave the field or stop working or can’t go to school later in life because societally women still bear the burden of gestating, birthing, and childcare, and if in partnerships, all of which can inhibit a person’s ability to make career decisions. If I had a family or children, I don’t think I ever would have gone back to graduate school. And contemplating those things now also doesn’t seem possible because I haven’t been able to earn any money – just continue to build up more and more debt. Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder if I sacrificed personal desires for career desires and it’s a shame to feel like society doesn’t truly support women (especially in the case of raising children) to be in the workforce at the same level men have been able to operate at. Despite all these grumbles, I have grown immensely, I have had numerous other opportunities open up to me, and overall for my career growth and potential I will come out the other end with fruits of my labor in contributing to science.
Who or what do you draw your inspiration from?
I draw inspiration from numerous people, I am constantly observing the leaders I admire, colleagues I admire and in general feel inspired by those I see doing their best to be creative and embrace the world with confidence to bring their perspective to the table. I am inspired by the artistic community, the athletic community, and those who don’t conform to a norm, but embrace diversity and new ways of thinking ‘outside of the box’. I also draw inspiration from visiting old polar libraries, museums on oceanography and polar research and exploration, visiting colleagues at other research institutes doing cutting edge research, and feel inspired when I travel to other countries.
What has your experience as a woman in marine science been like?
I feel like I am slightly newer to marine science, I got into it fully in 2013 (7 years after graduating with my Bachelors degree), when I was sent to Antarctica aboard a research icebreaker Nathaniel B Palmer for 53-days at sea. I then have become obsessed with polar oceanography and phytoplankton and have had an absolute joy going into the field to Work on ships, meeting so many people in the polar community, taking up scientific and rescue diving, driving boats, and working in extreme environments. The mix of working in labs on genetics and ecology, working in Antarctica in the field and outdoors, and learning data analysis, statistics, and data visualization to write up my findings has been top of the top crème de la crème fun! It has also been important for me to tune into the conversations on women in science, equity diversity inclusion in science and really understanding what it means and what it looks like to make science a more diverse creative embracing space. Of course, I am also glad to see that national entities, like the National Science Foundation, are taking reports of harassment seriously, understanding the issues, the causes, and making new ways of operation to combat, prevent, discipline and overall make the workplaces less toxic. As a woman, working on ships, in the field, in male dominated spaces, I have definitely seen and experienced these things. And as a woman, an ambitious, field-going, woman with a desire for a partner and family and children, I often contemplate how difficult it is to “have it all” …
Whose work has influenced and inspired you?
I enjoy reading Lifes Engines by Falkowski. Naturalist by EO Wilson. My colleague Dr Cassandra Brooks influenced me to go to an interdisciplinary Masters program. All my mentors that I worked with in past jobs have influenced me. So many inspiring people have influenced me its hard to narrow it down at this point in my life! And these books.
What is one thing you wish someone had told you/taught you a long time ago?
I wish someone had told me that you are the only one who can truly believe in yourself to make things happen. There will be a lot of doubts in yourself, in your skills, not feeling like you’re “good enough” or that Imposter Syndrome. Its self-defeating and the quicker you can build your confidence up, find mentors that make you feel smart and hardworking, and support you and your mental state, emotional state, and your career ambitions, the less time you’ll waste wallowing in your own self-deprecation … many people might not see this in me, but I am very restless and have high anxiety and am a self-deprecation type mind and at some point in my 30s I just got tired of feeling that way. It’s easy to fall into the negative loops. But I started keeping a journal, looking deeper into my psyche, and after reading The Artists Way by Julia Cameron, I took every negative thing my brain says about me – I write it down, then I write the counter statement in the positive. After a while, I started to see just how demeaning I was to myself – we are often our own worst critic - before anyone else is! The mind is powerful. Thoughts and mantras are powerful. Focus on the positive confidence building ones!
Where do you go from here?
Finish the PhD before I turn 40 (one year from now)! Keep doing what I’m doing in science! How will that look? I’m not sure, it could be as a faculty, a research associate, a post-doc, a free-lance scientist, I’m not too concerned as to my “position” but more that actual balance I have to keep going into the field, doing science communication, finding funding to pursue scientific ideas, think more outside the box, have more travel adventures, which inspire me to think outside the box, and so NO to the “where do you see yourself in 5-years” as I’ve also learned in life that having a plan is a good thing, but everything can go bust at the drop of a dime.
After the interview, Allison and I had a chat about our shared experiences, women in STEMM and the struggle of facing the choice between security and adventure! I asked her, in short, whether she thinks it’s possible to “have it all?!”
In short! We both concluded that YES it is possible, and more importantly, it should be!
We can be multiple things at once. A scientist, a communicator, a field guide and be a friend and have social lives! My other take home message was that, the whole thing (career thing), is more of a process. It’s not really about achieving an end goal, it’s building up experience, trying and dabbling in different areas and continuing to learn. After our chat I felt energised to carry on, and keep going! It can be so hard when you’re in-between things, and you’re struggling to choose what to do next, or you’re endlessly applying for roles. Or you’re trying to save up money to do paid volunteer work. It’s difficult and it’s something we all likely go through at some stage. But it’s ok, that’s just part of the process.
Thank you so much Allison for your time! Looking forward to following your adventures!