Stories from Beyond Academia #14: Tomás Lopes da Fonseca
(PhD in Neuroscience)
If you’ve ever asked to hear about someone’s career, or had this asked of you - like the interviewees in this newsletter, the response you’ll hear will generally cover the various roles held by the responder, along with some description of how these roles fit together. And if you’ve been asked this question in a job interview context, usually you’re looking for the connection points to help you speak to progression or advancement!
It’s a story that looks backwards and ‘connects the dots’.
What about if you’re just starting out, though, and don’t have particularly many dots to connect?
Well, if you’re anything like Dr Tomás Lopes da Fonseca, you’ll be keen to try and figure out how to create some dots! Tomás’ story from beyond academia covers a path from a PhD in Neuroscience to his current role as Head of Marketing for Bayer: read on to hear how he created the dots for this career story, as well as why he believes start-ups can be an ideal first move beyond academia…
Jonathan McGuire: Hello Tomás, and thank you so much for joining me today from Berlin, Germany to talk about your PhD, and the path you've taken since you matriculated out of your graduate studies! I'd like to start with a few quick-fire questions: first, why did you pursue a PhD; second, what you did for your PhD; and third, what did you find?
Tomás Lopes da Fonseca: Hello Jonathan and thank you for the invite! I'll jump right into your question: I come from a family of doctors and I've always been passionate about healthcare, science, and in particular about the brain. Nothing against the other organs, but the brain is by far the most interesting organ to me. This amazing organ where you have chemical reactions creating abstract thoughts and memories, and controlling everything that we do. I decided to pursue my research in science, including a Masters and a PhD in neuroscience, for those reasons. I've also always been very interested in the decline of the brain. And now with the ageing population, we’re seeing Alzheimer's or Parkinson's Disease becoming more and more common. Trying to understand the mechanisms behind these diseases and how we can try to solve them to improve patient care has been one of my priorities. And that led me to studying Parkinson's Disease. More and more people are diagnosed with it, there's no cure for it. When symptoms appear, people already have a quite advanced progression of the disease. For my PhD, I was studying a specific protein - a big transmembrane protein inside the cell. And there are mutations in this protein that result in very early onset Parkinson's Disease, with symptoms displaying at 13 and 14 years of age. Now most cases of Parkinson's are environmental and we don't know the cause. So we need to rely on genetic mutations to try to understand the underlying mechanisms within the cell. And seeing that people can have Parkinson’s at 14 years old when something happens to this protein sets the stage for understanding that maybe this specific protein is the final stage of the mechanism, and that's why it has a super rapid impact on the life of the people with this mutation. And so I wanted to understand that mutation at an intercellular level for Parkinson's Disease. I started working with zebrafish in my Master’s, then I went to cells. And it was interesting to understand that cells that had that mutation experienced huge stress within the cell. We were seeing stress with the cell in a specific component, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which at the time was becoming more and more connected with Parkinson's disease. And that stress was leading to cell death, so that mutation was accelerating cell death. And again, this is one of the main hallmarks of Parkinson's - the death of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. You also could accelerate another hallmark - the formation of protein aggregates within the surviving neurons - what we were seeing is that when you had that mutation, we had more aggregates within the cell. So it was clear that this protein was a catalyst for a lot of what's happening at the intracellular level. Obviously my PhD had to end somewhere so I did not pursue additional studies on the protein, but my research set the stage for others to go a bit deeper into the overall impact of this protein in Parkinson's Disease. And I'm quite happy with that outcome, having those papers published, making sure that no matter what happens after there would always be that landmark of publications to show my contribution to the disease. It's something that no matter where I go, I'm quite happy with and proud of.
JM: I imagine it's probably quite rare that a PhD project can result in something that has such real world applicability - so in this case that you point to your PhD as providing really clear evidence that this protein is implicated, potentially in the very last stages of Parkinson’s. And then that becomes a potential target for treatment, as well. My PhD certainly didn't have any real world implications. It's wonderful to hear that some of them do!
TLF: I think that’s often a matter of luck! You try a lot of things but I think it's a kind of adding on top. I think that's the beauty of science, you innovate but you also add some background. Someone discovered the protein and the mutation before me, someone mapped out the protein and a lot of the impacts before me, so that stage was set for me. And I wanted to understand how it happens in a bit more detail, looking at specific processes within the cell. And then someone else will then take over. And I think that's the continuum, the building blocks to something for the future.
JM: Absolutely. And, as if doing a PhD in neuroscience wasn't enough, you also both worked and co-founded a business during your PhD. Can you tell us a bit about what you're working on with those projects?
TLF: I think one of the main things that I learned from my PhD was that although I love science, I didn't want to continue doing the lab work. And for me, that was very important. I'm still reading scientific papers almost every day. I'm still engaging with science. But I felt that lab life was not for me. So I found myself thinking ‘ok then, what can I do?’ And there's a fantastic commencement speech from Steve Jobs that I recommend everyone watch that talks about connecting the dots. It says that only later in your life can you understand that a lot of things that you've done in the past become connected. And my thinking was ‘well, I need to create those dots - how can I do that?’ I've always been fascinated by technology, because I think it plays a huge role in the evolution of civilisation. And related to technology, I had already gained experience as a head of community management for a website in Portugal, the biggest Portuguese forum. And I looked for what I could do on top of that, but I figured out a gap instead. I wanted to talk about Apple, a technology company. And there were a lot of websites talking about Apple in English but there was a market for talking about Apple in Portuguese. I tried it a bit at the beginning of my PhD. But later I decided this was the right time, the right opportunity to try to start this as something new. So I created this website for Portuguese-speaking people where I talked about Apple and that grew quite well. It grew quite well at first because I had the support to do it - from my girlfriend, now wife - which is very important. When you come to someone and say, ‘Hey, for the next two years, I'm going to write an article every single day. It doesn't matter if it's Christmas, New Year, it doesn't matter if I’m on vacation, I’m going to do this’. And that requires commitment and consistency, because it's very easy to start projects but it's very hard to maintain them. And that consistency and support is the most important thing. And it grew from there. It grew from seeing my mother and my wife opening the website every day on Google Analytics, then there were 100 people, then 2000 people opening the website. And then I went from writing articles to product reviews to Google advertisements and Facebook advertisements, to video reviews, and then giveaways. So it grew organically in a way that it forced me to learn everything about marketing: how to build a website, how to do LinkedIn and Facebook campaigns, how to do search engine optimisation, how to do videos, photos, everything. And I never made a lot of money with that project, but it was all about creating those dots - how can I get the skills that make me more desirable to a market outside the PhD and outside the laboratory.
And I never made a lot of money with that project, but it was all about creating those dots - how can I get the skills that make me more desirable to a market outside the PhD and outside the laboratory.
JM: Did you ever consider staying in academia, or were you always planning to transition out into other work?
TLF: I think through the PhD I decided that I wanted to leave. I think it's very important to acknowledge that many PhDs are exhausting. You can have levels of depression that are crazy. You might be going to the lab every day, knowing that you're going to fail. Because you do one thing and that didn't work, and then you try the next thing, and you do it and you do it and you do it, and you fail and you fail you fail, until it works. And then try the next step and it fails again, and then you need to figure out why it worked! So it's a roller coaster that has a lot of downs, and only some ups. And I understood that although I liked science (and I still love science!), that life was not for me. And that was not for my mental health. I've worked in many places by now and never, ever have I been in as challenging a place as my PhD. I'd say once you've done a PhD, you can do anything.
I also knew that after that PhD, it's all about grants and I never saw the possibility of building a stable career in this grant system where you just never, never know. And then you're 50 or 60 and still on grants? So I didn't see mentally a good outcome after the PhD, and I also didn't see the backbone of a system that is really there to support scientists in the long run, and offer them careers that are stable, and allow them to have real impact in science without having to worry constantly in their personal life. And that's when I thought I needed to jump out and do something a bit different.
JM: I couldn't agree more with this. I don't know the exact figures, but I think it's something like one third of PhD students will experience Clinical Depression during their candidature. The proportion is astronomically high, and clearly there's a lot of suffering associated with the process. And what you're saying about grants, I agree that it sets up these very odd incentive structures that don't incentivise long, slow, careful science that really lays the foundation of basic human knowledge. It incentivises flashy stuff that gets a lot of citations. That was a big bugbear of mine actually and part of the reason why I moved away.
TLF: Right. And then if you couple that with this rat race for scientific papers, where your success is based on citations again, where it's just all about publishing publishing publishing. I've seen laboratories publishing two different, sometimes opposite, hypotheses in a month. And so it looks like academia is a volume game, all about quantity over quality. And that's the system that's in place - about getting the PhD and publishing the papers; then getting a postdoc and publishing papers because that will determine your next grant, your next position. Seems like this is the hamster wheel we're in which is not healthy I think: not for science, but especially not for the people that are trying to build that science, and make breakthrough discoveries that have a huge impact, not just today, but in the future.
JM: Lots of good reasons there for making the switch out of academia into other jobs, which you obviously have done. Can you tell us what you've been working on since you've completed your PhD?
TLF: Yes, here's where the dots start connecting. After my PhD I joined a German start-up, they offered an electronic lab notebook for scientists. And when I joined the company, my title was Community Content and Accounts Manager - it covered a bit of everything. So I picked up my background as a community manager from that Portuguese website. I picked up my experience in building content with my current project, and I was also connected with science. I could merge all these thoughts into one position, which was fantastic. And I had luck here - and of course you cannot control luck at all, but you can facilitate it if you invest in yourself and diversify who you are (which is something that a lot of people are not doing) then I think that increases the chance of being lucky in certain situations. So I found the start-up that invested in me, someone within science, invited me to help them build their website from scratch and do sales and do everything that you need to do as a start-up. And that was a stepping stone, probably the most important one to make the change from academia to a different ecosystem for me. And in that startup, I did all sorts of things that were needed. Might be cold calls at 10pm. If I were creating the website, I had to learn how to program for the website. And I worked a lot with all my team members and that then allowed me to grow. I had opportunities to do a lot of things. Then I became head of marketing, leading a team of scientists. That kind of thing would be like the perfect position for a lot of scientists - still being science, but outside of it. And we grew that business quite successfully, we got the financing round and I spent some more time there after the financing round but I thought that after five years, I didn't have much more to tell or to write about. I thought I've scaled that enough and then a new opportunity appeared which was Bayer, coming up with new AI software for radiology. I had the possibility to jump to that position two years ago, which is where I am now and it's also a tremendous opportunity. I think I'm actually reading more scientific papers now, because I'm so involved again, in the neuro part of the radiology. And so there's always been this backbone of science no matter where I go. When I'm talking with scientists and with doctors, when I'm reading, there's always this backbone of science, it's still my mission. So I still find that I'm helping scientists, but I'm not in the lab anymore. And that's something that makes me happy.
JM: I'm really interested in that first job that you transitioned over to, and that start-up culture. In a start-up, as you mentioned, you don't necessarily have a narrowly or neatly defined role you're jumping into - it sounds like yours was between some web development, some strategy, some cold calls, figuring out the project management. It's a bit all over the place, and to me I think there's a bit of a parallel there with what it's like to do a PhD. When you've got to go from literature reviews to doing the admin side to doing the recruitment to developing a stimulus or a battery of tests. And then you need to go and write a grant application, again a bit all over the place and needing to be a Jack or Jill of all trades. Do you think there was sort of a carry over there or am I reading too much into it?
TLF: There is, I think - with two to three main aspects. The main one is that startups are quite ideal for that first move, because let's be honest, you probably really don't know what you want to do and you do not know what you're good at outside academia. So an ecosystem that allows you to do a lot is perfect, because you're able to discover yourself outside the laboratory. And I think you're right that every PhD is like MacGyver. You're doing 10 different things, solving 10 different problems, usually switching from thing to thing, dealing with last minute things that need to be solved at the door. And so going to a start-up where you're doing all of that too can fit quite well - allowing you to apply all of these soft skills that you'll have learned but in a different ecosystem, and also having the bandwidth to discover who you are outside the laboratory and what are your strengths and your weaknesses outside that environment. And then you can follow a path from there. It's much easier to do that than trying to start on a path when you don't know if you're going to be good at it or not.
…every PhD is like MacGyver. You're doing 10 different things, solving 10 different problems, usually switching from thing to thing, dealing with last minute things that need to be solved at the door. And so going to a start-up where you're doing all of that too can fit quite well - allowing you to apply all of these soft skills that you'll have learned but in a different ecosystem, and also having the bandwidth to discover who you are outside the laboratory and what are your strengths and your weaknesses outside that environment. And then you can follow a path from there. It's much easier to do that than trying to start on a path when you don't know if you're going to be good at it or not.
JM: That seems like a wonderful bit of advice - taking a generalist role, where you're doing a bit of everything, can be a great way to identify that a particular set of work tasks or aspect of a role really appeals and really fits with my skills and my interests. And from there you can narrow in on that. You mentioned the carryover of those soft skills into this generalist kind of role - I'm wondering are there particular skills or knowledge or experiences you had during your PhD that have really strongly carried over into the work you've done since?
TLF: Yes, tremendously, there are several. First, I think PhD students are fantastic at underselling themselves. Because what happens I think is the PhD and us become one. We are our PhD, we are that protein we’re researching, we’re not able to separate the two. But we are much more than that: every PhD is a marketeer. Marketing nowadays, and what I’m doing, is A/B testing and multivariate testing. I'm looking at graphs every day to decide what I'm going to do later. So every PhD is comfortable with a big part of modern marketing. On top of that, they know how to write content, so they can also be content marketeers. Every PhD is a project manager, like a multi-project manager, you can handle dozens of projects and you can do it with success. And every PhD is a salesperson, that’s what you do when you go to a conference or you present at a lab meeting: you're there selling your PhD, you're selling your protein, you're selling your hypothesis, you're showing the data that validates it. So I think there's a lot that you can do that is super beneficial. You might want to develop those soft skills a bit more to differentiate yourself, but the backbone is there. You can do all of these things already, and you just need to make sure that you are able then to translate these skills and you can - in this context it doesn't matter if you're looking at a graph related to cell death or a graph about the amount of website conversions. It's still a graph and you can draw conclusions from graphs, you can make decisions from data. And that's so important in our digital world. And these are just some of the things: invest in them, keep developing them, learn how to sell them - because these skills open so many avenues, you can easily translate them to any job, especially in start-ups. Move beyond thinking of yourself as ATP 32 or a particular genetic mutation you study or whatever that might be. That's not what people are buying - people are buying everything else that you have to offer from your PhD.
JM: I think a lot of PhD graduates do really struggle with identifying and describing themselves as something more than ‘I'm the person who knows a lot about this protein’ or ‘I'm the person who figured out this way to assess this particular type of material’ or whatever it is. I think we tend to focus on the content area in which we have developed expertise, and ignore all of the skills that are surrounding that in this wonderful constellation of competence that actually allows you to become an expert in that content area.
TLF: Exactly right, and that's 100% what I see - a lot of underselling of soft skills when those soft skills are much more important than knowing how to run a Western Blot. A Western Blot is a technique, and you can teach techniques to everyone. But it’s the knowledge that you get from soft skills that is unbeatable.
JM: Now you're in quite a senior role as Head of Marketing, and I imagine that you would have had to do a bit of recruiting in your time and also lead teams of people. Have you ever hired people with PhDs or lead teams that have people with PhDs in them?
TLF: Yes! Yes, I have and I love it. Mainly in my old company, because again our offering was software for scientists, and I was doing marketing and sales, and I wanted people that were scientists because it's much easier to have a one to one conversation when you know the pain points. So we were actually most of the time hiring scientists, people with PhDs. And it was a winning situation, because it's a lot about mentality like I was saying before - I can teach any marketing process or any sales process, that's teachable. What I cannot teach easily is the mentality: it’s that MacGyver-ing, that resilience, that never giving up. For example, in my old team I hired a PhD, and she is now Head of Marketing at another company. She was outstanding, and no matter what we were facing, if it was a sales thing, or CSS or JavaScript, or building a new website, we would tackle that and make it a success. And so much of that came down to having that mentality of trying and trying and trying and you fail and you try again, and then you solve it. That's such an important attribute, that capacity of being able to accept that you're going to make mistakes but understanding that those mistakes are solvable and you can just try again. And then there's even a bigger benefit of non-academic work, and this was one of the worst things in my research, which is that when something went wrong, you wasted sometimes a month or more of work. If you fail something in the code for a website, you have 10 seconds to pull it down and try again. So the failure cycles are much faster and the solution rate is so much easier to get because you don't need to start an experiment again from scratch. All that goes away and you're solving problems faster. And that's also very interesting for scientists, because they are in the business of solving problems. And so doing it at a much faster cycle rate is much more rewarding, they can see effects much easier and much faster than in a typical laboratory.
JM: When I moved from academia, my new boss told me I’d have to get used to a faster pace of work. And that was given as a warning, but you're saying that it’s a real benefit, and a point of interest for people coming over from academia?
TLF: I think that nothing will be more stressful than your PhD, when you’re working on the weekends, you working on vacations, if you’re not in the lab then you're reading papers. It becomes your life, and the PhD becomes your success and your failures, you embody that. Outside academia that's not the case anymore. There's a detachment between what you're doing and who you are. And even the fast pace, yes there is a fast pace but I remember when I moved to the start-up I got to the first weekend, and me and my wife were like, ‘Oh, we have a weekend now. What do we do with a weekend?’ I just had all this free time. It was fast paced, yes. But it was much more healthy and much more sustainable in the long term and that allows you to keep that fast pace with no problem. There's a distinction between you and your work, and there’s more acceptable working hours overall.
JM: You spoke really passionately there about the skills and the mindset of PhDs and the value that brings to organisations. Having led a bunch of PhDs now, are there any common areas for development you see in people coming over that you would say this is something to focus on if you’re looking to make that transition?
TLF: Maybe they cannot be applied universally, but I think I would go back to soft skills and how to strengthen your soft skills. I’d also recommend, and I cannot voice this more, that PhDs need to separate themselves from their PhD and need to invest in themselves during the PhD. If you have a hobby, you can focus on that hobby and look to make something out of it. It's really not about making money out of it, it doesn't have to be that. But how can I have a second track of my life? I think all of us have other interests - not just science. If you like knitting, start knitting. If you like music, start a website on music. Start something, because if you start something in your PhD, you're bringing value to you, it’s not just you as your PhD. And the more you change this mentality, the more you say you want to invest in yourself. And that will help you to understand what you’re good at, what you like, and what you don't like. Maybe you like marketing, but you don't like writing content, so maybe website writing is not for you, but maybe something else is. And nowadays, there's so many sources that you can learn from, there's so many things that you can do. And that's the point I mainly want to make is that you need to invest in yourself while you're in your PhD, and you need to separate yourself from it. Spend time on you, enriching who you are, identifying what are your strengths in terms of soft skills that you want to pursue after your PhD.
JM: I think that’s useful advice for any PhD candidate, but certainly for people who are looking at transitioning out of academia! As we wrap up, is there any additional advice you'd want to give to anyone who's considering a career switch out of academia?
TLF: I think the most important thing is to look after yourself. There are more options outside academia than there are in academia. And just because you made a decision - do a Master's, a PhD, a postdoc - that doesn't mean you need to continue on that. There's a lot of soft skills, there’s a lot of knowledge that’s interchangeable to other positions. And don't be afraid - yes, you're going to get rejections, there's no doubt about it. It's not going to be a totally smooth transition for most of the people from academia to non-academia. Is it going to be a battle? Many times, yes. But don't just stay on a path of unhappiness because it's the easy path or because you decided 10 years ago. If we’re happy to change our preferences of music year to year, then why are we binding ourselves to a career decision that we made 10 years ago?
Also be confident that you have value outside your PhD. You have a lot of value outside of it: invest in yourself, focus on yourself, and reach out to people. Don't be afraid of sending emails to connect with people in industry. The way I got my first job: that company went to do a presentation to another company next door to our laboratory and my wife went to assist with that presentation and heard they were hiring and my wife talked to them and told them ‘Hey, I think I have the person for you’. And that was the CEO there, and she got their card, and I made contact and got the job following a two- or three-step interview. If they were not there doing that training, if my wife had not spoken to them, then I wouldn’t be here now. But I also wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been thinking about the dots, because then I’d have had nothing that would differentiate me.
If you're happy with your PhD and want to continue, it's fine. If you're not happy and you want to change, it's also fine. There's no failure in not pursuing an academic career, you can still have a lot of impact, you can still change science - in fact, I do believe that I had more impact in science outside the laboratory, there are absolutely non-academic careers that allow you stay in touch with science and keep having that impact.
And with that we thank Tomás for sharing his story with us, and for the reminder that we are not our PhDs. We can invest in our PhDs and, separately, in ourselves!
If you are a PhD who has moved beyond academia and you are interested in sharing your story, please get in touch with us via our LinkedIn pages - Sequitur Consulting, Sam, Jonathan - we’d love to hear from you.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by persons interviewed in this series are solely that of the persons interviewed and do not reflect the views, opinions, or position of Sam, Jonathan or Sequitur Consulting.