Interview with Dr. Elena Brevnova
interview
MiniBio
Dr. Elena Brevnova holds a bachelor in Radiation Physics and Ecology from the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Institute of Genetics and Selection of Industrial Microorganisms in Moscow, Russia. With postdoctoral experience at Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego, she has established herself in industry having acted at GlycoFi (Merck), Mascoma, Total New Energies (Novogy), Evelo Therapeutics and, currently, as the Senior Director of Strain Engineering at Ginkgo Bioworks. She is the author of significant scientific publications and patent applications in the fields of strain and protein engineering and a respected scientific leader in the exciting field of synthetic biology.
Tell us about yourself and what motivated you to pursue a STEM education?
I am the daughter of two scientists, an astrophysicist and a geologist, and I always imagined I would be a scientist too. I started my bachelor in physics, but that eventually led to molecular biology, which I found so much more interesting. I later got a PhD at the Institute of Genetics and Selection of Industrial Microorganisms in Moscow, Russia. I came to the US as a wife on a spouse visa that gave me no rights whatsoever, I didn’t even have a social security number or bank account and was not allowed to have a paid job. Fortunately, at the time it was relatively easier to get a postdoctoral position, which I did at Stanford. It was very stressful to get a new visa because that requires you to leave the country. I went to Vancouver for the paperwork and came back to the US with a working visa. After Stanford I took other postdoctoral positions and then started to get frustrated because it was so hard to get an industry job due the visa status. You can only change an academic visa to an industrial one once a year at a specific date. Most companies don’t have the flexibility to wait for the right month to start a position. Luckily for me and many other international PosDocs, a founder of GlycoFi, Dr. Tillman Gerngross, wanted to build an international team for his startup. He rescued many of us from academia and gave us the opportunity to get our first industry job and a green card. After GlycoFi I was able to establish myself in industry and I have worked as a scientist and project and people leader at several biotech companies. Nowadays I am a Principal Organism Engineer (Senior Director) at Ginkgo Bioworks.
What are some of the challenges that you have faced as a woman and an immigrant in STEM?
I have faced challenges as a woman my whole life. And as an immigrant, I have also faced discrimination both as a Russian and as an immigrant, which are two different things. In addition, I have faced discrimination based on my accent and also because of my short height! In fact, most people, women, and men, have a list of things they are being discriminated against.
There is huge discrimination against women in the industry that I have experienced many times over. Mostly I have felt that women are severely penalized for any mistake, you must be absolutely perfect, while men can make mistakes and oftentimes face no consequences. This creates impossible standards for women. Also, women in the industry just expect that they will be treated fairly and that recognition based on their good work will just come to them, they don't usually ask for recognition or promotion or the best projects.
On the other hand, men just take things, whether they deserve it or not, and this ends up frustrating women and eventually forces them to play by men’s rules. I have found that you can decide how to react to this situation, if you choose to be angry you will spend a lot of time being angry. It is best to accept some of these situations and try to change them from within to the best of your abilities. I do see things are getting better slowly with discrimination against women in the biotech industry. I also see younger generation women acting much more assertively and confidently than we did a couple of decades ago, which makes me feel very proud of them.
What measures do you believe are being taken, or could be taken, in your organization to increase gender diversity?
Ginkgo is the most inclusive and diversity-conscious company I have ever worked for. The most remarkable aspect is that these subjects are constantly talked about in the most transparent way. There are diversity and inclusion committees within the organization that constantly monitor the participation of females and peoples of color at all levels of the organization.
They have specific action items to increase diversity and are encouraged and inspired by Dr. Reshma Shetty, COO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. I believe this success is in large part due to Dr. Shetty actively pushing for equal opportunities for women and people of color at Ginkgo.
An additional action that companies could take to increase female diversity at all levels of the organization is to adopt equal maternity and paternity leave policies, as the Scandinavians do. In Russia what they did was to increase maternity leave to up to three years and that was a disaster; it led to open discrimination against women because how can companies afford to hire someone who may leave for up to three years?
In contrast, in Scandinavian countries parental leave can be taken by either parent, usually whoever has the lower salary, or can be split between the two. In this way, companies can’t discriminate because they cannot guess in advance who will take the parental leave.
What do you think readers of The Equality Pursuit magazine need to know to empower young girls and women in their community to pursue education and careers in STEM?
The Equality Pursuit should aim to communicate to the younger generation. This new generation is so much better than us, so they need to know that they can do anything. I actually feel much closer to this new generation than my peers. I recommend the readers to listen to Hillary Clinton’s inspiring address to young girls in her concession speech in 2016. I watched it with my daughter and we found it inspiring and uplifting.
What is one piece of advice that you would like to give to aspiring female scientists?
In addition to making noise you need to deliver good results and own them. You cannot just support causes like feminism, you actually need to deliver great scientific results and make sure you get recognition for your work.
We also aim to debunk some stereotypes associated with scientists and how science works. Would you like to share a fact about yourself that is not associated with your work?
This question is interesting. Back when I was in Russia when I told people that I was a scientist I would get instant respect. When I came to the US I also got a little respect, but sometimes I also got a little negative feedback, like maybe I was also a little weird, or creepy, or nerdy. Not all reactions were positive, and I got the feeling that it is not as great to be a scientist in the US as it was in Russia in public opinion. And this struck me and recently got me thinking that maybe scientists could take something akin to the Hippocratic Oath that medical doctors take and swear to do good for the world, the environment, and society and do no evil. Maybe this could help change some of the negative connotations I have perceived.
In the end, scientists are just regular people, we go about our daily lives just like everyone else, some of us are funny and extroverted, some of us are more serious, many of us have families and enjoy the same things everyone does.