At the orientation for Rashada Alexander’s 2009 class of AAAS Science & Technology Policy fellows, there were some participants who were more curious than certain about a future career in science policy. But not Alexander, as she recalled.
“I thought, this is what I’m doing,” she said. “I just need to understand more about how to do it effectively.”
Now as the new program director of the fellowships, Alexander will bring an extensive career in science policy back to the association, hoping to extend the program’s influence on the eve of its 50th anniversary. The fellowships place scientists and engineers in year-long assignments in the federal government to learn first-hand about policy-making and contribute their knowledge and analytical skills in the policy realm.
The program produces a network of researchers that has contributed significantly to policy-making, but it also produces a set of skills and knowledge that could be usefully shared with “scientists whether they go into science policy or not,” Alexander said. “I would like to optimize the reach of both of those things.”
“Dr. Alexander is a thoughtful, creative, and articulate leader with the ability to pair strategic thinking with practical implementation. I am excited that she will be at the helm of such a complex and beloved program,” said Julia MacKenzie, chief program officer at AAAS.
Alexander, the former operations and impact director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, began her new role at AAAS on 26 July. Previously, she was a program director in the Division for Research Capacity Building at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences within the National Institutes of Health, where she managed a portfolio of grants focused on building research infrastructure.
Rashada Alexander began science policy work at the National Institutes of Health.
PHOTO: NIH
Prior to her work as a program director, she worked as the special assistant to the NIH’s principal deputy director, where she led efforts supporting sexual and gender minority health research and the reproducibility and rigor of research findings.
“It is heartening to know that the program will be led by Dr. Alexander, who is an enormously talented and dedicated thought leader in science policy,” said Lawrence Tabak, NIH principal deputy director. “She will bring unparalleled energy and creativity to this role and will catalyze even greater accomplishments by the fellows.”
Alexander’s path into the sciences began as a child, when “I always wanted to understand the way things worked, and why they work the way they work,” she said. A high school teacher who threw a chunk of sodium into water—with the expected but explosive results—guided her toward chemistry, in particular. She earned her PhD in chemistry from the University of Kentucky and completed postdoctoral work at Kentucky as well as the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
During her graduate and postgraduate years, she began to realize “that I operated best when I was engaged [both] in the laboratory and outside of it,” she said. She served on the Graduate and Black Graduate and Professional Student Associations at her schools and the National Postdoctoral Association, “and it got me thinking about what are the levers, what are the things that inform what happens to me as a postdoc, and what are the levers that informed the things I’ve worked on when they are applied outside of the lab.”
“At that point I knew that I wanted to continue to benefit science,” she added, “but I did not feel that the most effective way to do that was to continue on in a research career.”
As a S&T Policy fellow, Alexander worked as a health science policy analyst in the NIH Office of Extramural Research. The fellows, she said, “are the most boldly pragmatic people I’ve ever met. Those coming in will want to do big things, they want to do hard things, but they want to do them in real, actual spaces.”
The “program builds a cadre of people who can step into a complex problem and figure out processes that can help solve it, and work together to figure out what is sustainable and how to get stakeholders on board,” said Alexander. These alumni are valuable in and out of government, she added, “but the lessons that fellows learn about science policy also should be leveraged for training scientists outside of the program.”
Every fellow learns about federal policy, coalition building, and how to communicate effectively, and about half of them stay in policy jobs after the fellowship. For the rest, taking those skills “back to your institution is invaluable, not just in academia but in consulting, business, and development spaces,” Alexander said. “STPF has a wealth of benefits that are continuing to be explored and that can be further shared.”
One of the hallmarks of the fellowships is science communication, which fits well with a growing public interest in science and its impacts. The popular landscape of science has changed in the past decade, from the Bill Nye the Science Guy shows Alexander grew up with, she said, to a proliferation of YouTube channels for science enthusiasts and advocacy groups for issues from climate change to public health.
“It seems people are much more capable of absorbing the importance of science in a lot more spaces,” Alexander noted, “and that continues to make it a more permeable space for science to inform policy, because people are interested in how it can.”
As with all AAAS programs, the fellowships will also be taking a closer look at how to minimize systemic inequities in their processes. “I try to be very candid with people about the body that I walk in this world with as a Black woman, and how that influences my thinking about things like diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Alexander said.
The goal is to “not leave excellence on the table,” she added. “You need as many paths to success as possible, ensuring that people who have been underrepresented, less seen, less engaged, not always thought about—they should be part of the conversation.”