Escape from "LA LA LAnd"
Escape from "LA LA LAnd"
As an African American woman physician-scientist, Dr. Juanita Merchant started her career during the end of the "women's liberation" era, when women thought they could have it all. Unfortunately, systems and institutions are very slow to change. Plus here in the US, high quality child care is very difficult to come by unless you have a strong support network and/or have the income to pay for help. Dr. Merchant will talk about her career path, one that is still unusual given that only 3-5% of academic faculty are under-represented minorities, and the strategies she used to achieve success in the academy.
About the Speaker
In July, Dr. Juanita Merchant was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Dr. Merchant joined the faculty at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson in July 2018 as a professor of medicine in the UA Department of Medicine and chief of the UA Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Dr. Merchant earned her MD and PhD at Yale University School of Medicine (MSTP), has written or co-written more than 120 peer-reviewed research publications, and is editor or co-editor of four books and several book chapters. In 2016, she was appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Additionally, she was recently elected to the National Academy of Medicine Council. Dr. Merchant is a co-PI on the NIH-AGA FORWARD program which was developed to increase the number of academic gastroenterologists from under-represented groups. Dr. Merchant served as MSTP Associate Director at the University of Michigan and is also a member of the national advisory committee for the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program. She has remained continuously funded by NIH for her work on gastrin and neuroendocrine tumors; hedgehog signaling and gastric cancer; and transcriptional control mechanisms in colon cancer.
Sponsored by the Artemisia Leadership Initiative
