00:00I think scientists all feel connected because they're all trying to work towards a greater
00:06good of helping people. There's always a pursuit to assist others. I was always very inquisitive.
00:13I was always very much interested in understanding things. Like adults, they like you to ask questions,
00:20but I guess they don't always have the answer. So you know when you can't ask too many questions,
00:24you have to go find the information. And when I found out the information are in the books,
00:29I was like, oh, so that's where the information is. I love books. My family very much valued
00:35education because that's the way of social mobility. We had a Britannica encyclopedia
00:42library that I still have. So I was always interested in science. In grade school, we had
00:48a scientist who was chemist came to the school. He was a black guy, glasses, had on a lab coat,
00:54and he just was so happy. He drew a chemical structure on the board and he was saying,
01:00people make medicines in the labs. And I thought that was pretty awesome. I wanted to help people.
01:06And the natural inquisitive for me, always wanting to get the information, that's research.
01:11My title is a senior scientist. I work in biologics and research development.
01:18Ultimately, the point is to produce good quality, reliable drugs that have been tested,
01:26tested that work, and that are what they say they are. And so with that quality, there is a certain
01:34rigor that you have to follow. Because you want to know as much as you can about a medicine before
01:38you give it to people. So it's that aspect of the research. All decisions are made based on the data
01:44you've received and whether the proper controls are there. You can't make the data say what you want
01:49it to say. It's a consensus. Precision is everything. Precision accuracy and reproducibility, that's all
01:57important. So most people, when they get a drug, they go to the pharmacy, they have their prescription,
02:03the medicine is in a box. All those boxes have an insert. The kind of work that I do is written on
02:10those inserts, which is called the label. That tells you everything about the drug.
02:14Growing up in Irvington, I kind of always wanted to live in Newark because it was right around the
02:22corner and they had all these resources and they talked about it a lot. Brick City. I'm in Newark now
02:29and I moved here after I got married and I'm actually living on the same block that my mother grew up on.
02:35It's definitely a good place to live. My children and my husband are quite funny. They like to joke
02:43around a lot. First, it's homework, of course. And then if homework's done and chores are done, then you have free time.
02:51They're into TikTok.
02:55I'm making dinner during that time. And I've always tried to encourage the children to think about the
03:01science. Cooking is actually chemistry. What is happening with the heat, like the reactions. I try to
03:08always apply the fun of it. Right now it can be fun and then they can just pick it up as they go.
03:14I feel it's important to have diversity. With pharma, there's a certain level of distrust.
03:21Even in my family, everyone knows about Tuskegee experiment, but I find scientists are very, very ethical.
03:28I never really thought of it as a job. Like I've never thought, Oh God, I gotta go in the lab. I like the lab.
03:39When we see something working, we're always so excited and work all night. When you meet people and
03:47they're taking a medicine that you help bring to market and it's really helping them and like,
03:54oh my gosh, you feel so excited and you're so happy. We know science works because the efficacy has been tested.
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