Stories from Beyond Academia #17: Celia Torres-Villanueva
(PhD in Biomedical Sciences)
Every now and then someone will confess to us that they’re worried about having to choose a ‘career for life’ when they transition out of academia. Well, let today’s guest be a counterexample to that concern!
Celia Torres-Villanueva has been a principal investigator, University Vice-Chancellor, lawyer, Board chair, manager, mentor, and entrepreneur. She’s had one heck of a portfolio career, and we were blown away by the energy and passion she brings to her work.
From researching DNA vaccines in her PhD all the way through to being Head of Commercial at Leidos, Celia’s story demonstrates the benefits of putting yourself out there and jumping on opportunities as they present themselves. Read right through to the end for her practical tips on how to break into the business world and develop yourself as a leader!
Jonathan McGuire: Hello, Celia. Welcome, thanks for joining us today, and let me start by saying how much I’m looking forward to hearing about your incredible portfolio career! We talk about portfolio careers quite a bit, but you look like someone who’ll have plenty to add to those discussions – you’ve been a scientist, you've been a lawyer, you've worked in management, as the chair of a board, as an entrepreneur. But to kick things off, let’s start by talking about your PhD: what field were you in, what were you researching, what were your findings?
Celia Torres-Villanueva: Hi, and thanks for having me! Okay, so I did my undergrad in the Philippines, focused on molecular biology and biotechnology and then I went to the US for my PhD. I went straight to the PhD from my undergrad, the program didn't require you to have a master's first which was really good. I started out at University of Texas in Austin then went to the University of Massachusetts because I saw a full-page feature article in the New York Times about DNA vaccines, and DNA vaccines at the time were really new and they were just beginning to be seen as credible and legitimate. The first DNA vaccine scientists – one of whom became my PhD supervisor – were considered crackpots: the immunologists at the time were saying there’s no way you can inject DNA into an animal or human and generate immune responses. But by the time I joined her lab, we were considered legitimate scientists and they were getting published and presenting, but yes I had the good fortune of working with one of the DNA vaccine pioneers and inventors and the first patent holders on DNA vaccines. And my PhD was trying to elucidate the molecular immunology basis of how the DNA is able to generate immune responses when conventional microbiology immunology would tell you that that's impossible – that you need bits and pieces of viruses, bacteria, other pathogens to generate an immune response.
So that was really exciting, and I was attracted to this work partly because of my little intellectual rebellious or unconventional streak and partly because, even though I was doing my PhD in the US, I had every intention of going back to the Philippines to apply what I learned. And the promise of DNA vaccines was they don’t require refrigeration - you can transport it freeze-dried as a tiny, micro vial of powder and then reconstitute it in saline. But just saline, no special buffer needed. If you were in a developing country, and all you had access to was a bag, a syringe and saline, then that's all you’d need to vaccinate. You wouldn’t need coolers and liquid nitrogen, like we saw in COVID for the mRNA vaccines, actually. In fact, mRNA vaccines would never have been developed if DNA vaccines weren't developed. So that was my PhD. My husband and I are both Filipino, so we were dating already before we moved to the States, but we had our first son while we were in the States. And then we went back to the Philippines, instead of doing the postdoctoral fellow career path, we went straight home to the Philippines and I set up my own DNA vaccine lab at the University of the Philippines. I was able to set up the lab through a World Health Organisation (WHO) scheme for fresh grads who wanted to set up their own labs and WHO were, obviously, keen on supporting those in developing countries or less developed countries like the Philippines. I renovated a container van and set up my own little mouse lab because at that time there was no dedicated mouse lab that I could use. And then for 10 years I was teaching undergraduate molecular biology and business school, I supervised a lot of undergraduate thesis students (Honours students) as well Master’s and PhD thesis students.
JM: I can see why you were so interested in DNA vaccines – I mean, you could just post a vaccine! That really lowers that barrier to vaccination in places where infrastructure for refrigeration and that whole cold chain doesn’t exist.
CTV: And if you’re wondering why the Philippines – well, aside from being an economically-disadvantaged country, it's also a system of islands so to transport vaccines across mountains and islands you needed the cold chain to be robust, and that just wasn't working. My sister, who was a doctor in community medicine at the time, was saying that by the time they got to these far-flung areas, climbing mountains, going on boats, they knew that a high percentage of the vaccines that they had with them were already deactivated. So when I saw that technology – a vaccine that you could literally put it in your pocket to transport and then reconstitute it right then and there right before injecting, you didn't have to warm it up or get it to room temperature before injecting, you could inject hundreds of people in a day.
JM: It’s an incredible idea that someone with a backpack can go to an otherwise completely inaccessible area and, with just having enough stuff in their backpack, could provide medical care to however many people. The other thing that just blows my mind is finishing up a PhD and then setting up your own lab. That's quite a jump! What was it like going from PhD student to being a PI in your own lab?
CTV: Now that you mention it, I guess it was maybe a bit reckless of me, or (I like to think) bold maybe. But it was really exciting. The WHO grant was a big part of that, but the university was happy to support me even without the grant because that was my alma mater. I went back to where I got my bachelor's degree and I’m part of one of the first cohorts to graduate with a molecular biology and biotechnology degree and they were really trying to get the graduates back. They were happy for us to go out into the world and get our PhDs because there weren't many PhDs available just yet in the Philippines to teach graduate students and they were really happy for us to come back and start building the next critical mass of molecular biologists in the Philippines. So they would have been happy to support me setting up my lab anyway. But getting the WHO grant made a big difference because it allowed me to hire a research assistant. Otherwise I would have to do it all on my own: the university didn't have the funds to pay for a research assistant or if they did then that would have been less funding for other things, and as you can imagine, molecular biology is just so expensive. All our agents, enzymes, peptides, nucleic acids were all imported, and it was just so expensive to get anything done. So it was a huge help to have a grant to get a research assistant so I wasn't doing all of it alone, they could help with the logistics, coordinating and project managing the renovation of that container van – the van was donated, and we needed to renovate it to have insulation, plumbing, a sink, air conditioning, climate control for the mice because the mice live there and we didn't want them to die from the heat! It was a huge challenge, but it was really exciting for me at that stage.
JM: I happen to know that you were doing a few other things at the same time. Do tell.
CTV: This probably gives you a glimpse of how I like to multitask, I think. But yes, while I was setting up my lab and teaching the subjects and supervising thesis students, I had two more kids, two daughters. I think one of my colleagues mentioned at one point “Celia every time I see you, you're pregnant”.
Then, when I had my third daughter, I had just started evening law school, at the same university where I was teaching. I was on parental leave from teaching, but I kept going with my evening law classes. And I got a call from the Dean of the College of Science where I was teaching. Her assistant called me and said the Dean wants you to come and see her at her office on this day. And I was so nervous. I thought she was going to say what are you doing working full time and going to law school, so I was really prepared to cop it. And then when I came in, she said “I heard you're going to law school”. And I started telling her about all the necessary approvals I had, and she said “That's good. I'm looking for an Associate Dean for Students and Public Affairs and we have many legal issues there like misconduct and disciplinary issues and I need someone with a legal background”. And she made me Associate Dean!
It's interesting when things happen like that, and things fall into place. I had thought what I was doing might be in conflict with my job, but… then the penny dropped and I realised that actually what I'm doing is helping me do my job and presented this opportunity to do an even more challenging job...
It's interesting when things happen like that, and things fall into place. I had thought what I was doing might be in conflict with my job, but when she said that then the penny dropped and I realised that actually what I'm doing is helping me do my job and presented this opportunity to do an even more challenging job that I can really sink my teeth into. So I became Associate Dean for four years and then just before I was going to start my practical legal training, I talked to her about resigning because it was quite a lot of work to be Associate Dean, as you might imagine, and I needed to do my practical legal training. But the Chancellor at that time, equivalent to a Vice-Chancellor here, saw me at a random event, I think it was ribbon cutting or something, and he called me to his office. And I was convinced there was a conflict of interest somewhere or something. But he said, “I saw you at the College of Law and I need a Vice Chancellor for Research and Development and we want to completely overhaul the IP policy”. He figured I was going into law school and must know something about IP. So again, another opportunity from the stars aligning. I accepted, but I told them I was doing my practical legal training now, I'm taking six months off to study for the bar exams – the bar exams in the Philippines are a huge thing, they happen over four Sundays, entire Sundays with nothing but exams. And so I said it’s going to take me six months to properly prepare for these four Sundays of exams so you'll have me for a year, that's all I can commit to. And I did that. The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development at that time was very new, maybe two years old, and I was the youngest Vice Chancellor (equivalent to a Deputy Vice Chancellor here, like a Deputy Vice Chancellor Research). The Chancellor was also very young, and working with the Chancellor we did a lot of new things like instituting a new open grant that promoted and facilitated multidisciplinary research. I don't think other universities in the Philippines were doing it at the time, to start getting scientists working with economists working with engineers. And the more disciplines in a proposal, the better your chances of getting it. And of course, I reviewed the IP policy too.
JM: I am just imagining you surviving on one hour of sleep at night, for years on end.
CTV: I had eyebags up to here, my hair greyed overnight. My mother also worked in the university, and at one point someone went to her and told her she looked younger than me! It’s probably true – evening law school and three kids under the age of four by that time. Yeah, I looked terrible.
JM: I'm not often at a loss for words, but I think I am now! I’ll just regather my thoughts…
JM: So after reaching such lofty heights within the university sector and studying for the bar and getting through what I can only assume was four terrible Sundays, what happens next? Where did you go from there? At what point did you say I'm going to move out of the sector entirely?
CTV: Yes, so at that point, my career was going really well. I did the bar exam, and it takes a long time before the results are released – maybe six months or something like that. So I’d taken a sabbatical to prepare for the bar exam and then I repaid the sabbatical through service in the University. I then left university and became the Executive Director of the Intellectual Property Research and Training Institute at the Intellectual Property Office again – and again this fell in my lap because they'd heard that I finished law and was interested in leaving the university.
Anyway, things were going well and I actually already had a plan to progress. But the global financial crisis was already beginning, this was 2007. My husband was initially keen on going back to the States, but the GFC hit the States really badly, so instead we decided to come to Australia because my sister-in-law, my husband's younger sister, lives in Sydney. I actually came here with my two daughters for a visit, looked around and I could imagine myself living here and moving here. So we moved in 2008.
JM: So since leaving the academic sector, you've worked in a number of other roles – you’ve worked in management, in the private sector, and right now you run a mentoring service for people who are undergoing changes or disruptions in their careers. I'm wondering what sort of things people come to you with?
CTV: I've previously done a lot of mentoring for established professionals in their home country, like they’re already lawyers or judges or accountants in Colombia or Afghanistan or Hong Kong, who are trying to crack into the career market here in Australia. But what I’m doing now is the next level of that – they’re already here, they've already gotten jobs in Australia, and they now want to progress into leadership roles or directorship roles. So those are the kinds of people who are coming to me, and one or two of them are specifically wanting to shift into a different sector. One has been working in international agencies in the government sector, and she's worked in other countries as well as Australia, but she now wants to go into the private sector. Intentional career disruptions are what I call them - sometimes we have no choice but to disrupt our careers because they've been disrupted for us, but I like to think of this as intentional career disruptions. There are still external forces that might be forcing you to change, but you're doing it in such a way that becomes intentional, you’re planning it out. I'm a big planner, as you can imagine.
…sometimes we have no choice but to disrupt our careers because they've been disrupted for us, but I like to think of this as intentional career disruptions. There are still external forces that might be forcing you to change, but you're doing it in such a way that becomes intentional, you’re planning it out.
JM: You'd have to be, I think! I really love that phrasing and if you don't mind, I might borrow it. Because I think that's something that would benefit our readers who are looking to transition out of academia. I hope it would resonate with them, to reframe that away from some of the stigma and away from some of the sense of disappointment or whatever, to instead be an intentional act of disruption for their career.
CTV: Sure!
JM: Now thinking about the executive director role, or the various roles you've had since, do you think there are skills or knowledge or experience that you got from your academic work and your PhD that carried over into those different contexts?
CTV: Absolutely. Absolutely. I also look at this as a hiring manager, if I'm hiring someone who has a PhD or has come from academia, but I think the biggest thing about PhDs is we develop really robust critical thinking and just a way of thinking. Of course this may vary in specifics for the different disciplines, whether it's a PhD from the arts or engineering or the sciences, but essentially there's an analytical form of thinking that is really useful, extremely transferable and in some sectors very rare.
I wouldn’t say completely absent, I wouldn’t say that in places I’ve worked that no one has analytical skills, but just the way that we've honed it in doing a PhD is really something that provides a lot of value. I think the same thing if I'm hiring for a specific position, I might think how the position would really benefit from someone who can look into a problem and have lateral thinking skills and data-driven, evidence-based decision-making.
JM: I think there's a tendency for people who are ensconced within the academic culture to not realise how rare that mindset is. There’s a skill set and a related set of cultural norms - you hone the skill set of being able to deconstruct a really complex problem, and the cultural norm is to do a really thorough job of that. That’s not the case everywhere.
CTV: It's a very good point. And I don’t know if this is just my unique experience but what I like about working in corporate is that the corporate organisations promote a culture of diversity in how to problem solve, how to take a problem and solve it from different angles. And they have all different sorts of training like social styles training and training in how to manage people with very different types of work styles (like you'd have the analytical person; the person who could completely jump into something and just work on it; the people who like to simmer and think about it for days on end before they make a decision) and how to work with all those different people. And I’ve had sort of training in three different corporate jobs, so it’s really inclusive in that sense. Because you might have really different kinds of people working together in a team, and the manager has to be trained to work with all of those styles.
JM: I've done some training like that recently myself and recognising the different default thinking styles of yourself and others is actually super interesting. You kind of predicted my next question too - as a senior leader you obviously would be recruiting or managing people who are recruiting, and you mentioned some of the strengths that people with PhDs can bring to corporate organisations. I'm wondering about how people with PhDs come into the corporate workforce, from simple things like how they present at interview, to culture shock when they enter a corporate setting. What’s been your experience with that?
CTV: One thing that's important, especially for those who have been in academia for a long time, is that the level of detail and data that you’re used to try and build your case should depend on the audience – so in a meeting the senior leaders are going to want succinct, high-level points, and a recommendation of what the decision should be. And I think in academia there can be a tendency of having to dwell in the weeds or try to justify everything, provide evidence and reference everything, provide your bibliography. In the corporate world, there are avenues to do that, but more often than not, they'll trust you, that you've done your homework, that you know what you're talking about and therefore just tell me what I need to do. A senior leader will say ‘What are you recommending? Tell me what to approve. What exactly is it that you need for me?’ So that's a level of succinctness and directness that needs to be developed.
Next, and this isn't of course true for most of us, there will be some academics who think they're the smartest people in the room. Because I'm a PhD, and I come from a particular university, and I spent 15 years there or whatever, and they'll come into the room thinking they're the smartest people in that room. But in the corporate world everyone has their own expertise that a PhD would not even have a clue about. As is true for everywhere else, and everyone else, respect, modesty and a certain level of humility and self-awareness of your limits, will all be extremely useful. You need to know what you don't know, and you need to know who you can find out what you don't know from. It’s good to figure out who knows what, who you need to know, and who you can ask questions of to learn more about what you don't know.
JM: For sure. You might have noticed me laughing a little in the first half of that response because just today I was reviewing a document where someone had reported a dollar amount that was in the 10s of millions down to the cents. You can probably just round it to millions. 44 cents are probably not make or break. That advice might be a bit of a cultural difference or something a little bit unexpected for people coming out of academia into corporate. In academia, if you want to know about something you open up your preferred database and start searching for the research literature. Whereas in a lot of other sectors, it's about building those relationships and having those conversations and knowing the right people. So that might be an important difference there, actually.
CTV: That brings me to another idea - in academia, we're very ready to work by ourselves within the confines of our lab. We feel like everything that we need is there. Of course, we occasionally collaborate with other labs, but we’re mostly self-sustaining. But in a corporate world, it's really important to have an internal network within the company. Because you need to be able to influence across the company to do your job well – across HR and finance and other areas.
JM: And for people with PhDs, if they haven’t had much experience collaborating and working that way, that’s something that they can really seek out as they prepare to transition out of academia. Are there any other things that you'd recommend people who are looking to make the switch out of academia could do to prepare for making the transition, and doing so with success?
CTV: If we're speaking specifically about corporate or private sector roles then I think it’s really to just start developing some basic commercial acumen. And of course, as you want to progress into more senior roles, then this would be more than just basic, it would be more strategic and sophisticated commercial acumen. And I think to do that you need to understand that there's an ecology. In academia and as a scientist, I would have just focused on the science, I probably would never have looked really into the impact of economics (although I did for DNA vaccines), but generally you don't think about the impact of economics or politics on what you're doing in the lab. But if you're doing private sector work you need to. Even working for not-for-profits, if you're going into working for the Red Cross or for one of the aged care providers or clinical services providers that are not-for-profit, they all exist in an economic and political and environment space. So you have to be aware of how all these external factors can impact the business or the organisation. I think that's something where, just from a potentially more inward-looking perspective, you have to move to a more outward looking one and really be aware of all the little things that can happen that can affect the business and your work and your job.
JM: If someone is reading that advice and going ‘what’s commercial acumen?’, where would you recommend someone start to learn about those concepts and start thinking that way?
CTV: There'll be Coursera and Open Universities subjects for instance, and scientists and academics love formal training – short courses, bring them on! But for non-formal training, I would suggest even just opening up Harvard Business Review, The Economist. Or even if you're going to a store, your local pharmacy, maybe strike up a conversation; if you have friends who work in the commercial space, ask what things they're looking at. I think it's just an awareness that there's more to it than just crunching numbers and selling. There's a lot that goes into the commercial space. They’re complex machines, commercial companies.
JM: It’s a really good point, the salespeople comprise a small number of most organisations! Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground now, but I always check – anything we missed?
CTV: Actually, one thing relating back to my work in IP, and actually a real point of pride for me, I drafted a Bill that became a law in the Philippines! I was with the Intellectual Property Office and the Department of Science and Technology hired me as a consultant to draft the Technology Transfer Bill. I drafted the Bill, I was on the working committee for a few months at the House of Representatives as we were refining it, and it became a law after I left. The takeaway point for me with this is when you're a PhD and an expert in something, you need to always be open to opportunities, and opportunities for applying that expertise in completely off the wall applications. If someone had told me I’d be doing that when I was a scientist - wow! I mean I was a scientist and a lawyer by then, so I guess that makes a bit more sense, but also we were consulting scientists - scientists who weren’t scientists and lawyers. So anytime someone comes to you to lend your expertise to something that's not purely within your field, think about taking it on because it can lead to a lot of learning but also potential career opportunities!
JM: And I can imagine when you were doing that consultation with the scientists, you could speak the language of science, so you were bridging these two skill sets, two domains. I think your story is a wonderful demonstration of how the scientific side and the law side worked synergistically to put you in quite a unique position to be able to do some of this work because you kind of speak both languages and understand both sides.
CTV: Absolutely – my first four or five roles here in Australia were specifically about that. Like when I was working in CSIRO, that was really about bridging that gap between the lawyers and the scientists and the engineers, and speaking the language and shifting my language every time I'm placed in different areas.
JM: I think some people will read this and think ‘we’ll I'm just a scientist, I’m not a scientist and a lawyer’. But most people are a scientist and something: you might be a scientist and a very passionate hiker, or a scientist and a yoga instructor or whatever. I think it's often those intersections that put you in quite a unique position. For me, I had this intersection of clinical work in psychiatric hospitals and data work. And my first job was data analysis in the mental health space, which is exactly where those two things meet. I think that can be where the opportunity is.
CTV: Absolutely, that was the nexus and there was an opportunity there!
And with that, we thank Celia for sharing this action-packed career story and such practical tips for helping to navigate the transition out of academia.
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.