Blog Post
Q: Though you’re Canadian, you’ve spent a significant portion of your career in the United States. What led you back to Canada and to accept the job at the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA)?
A: It’s true that I did my graduate work in the United States in the early 1980s and then spent much of the past two decades there, but Canada has never been far away. More than a third of my publications address Canadian issues, I regularly collaborated with Canadian colleagues on my research, and I have been a member of many committees and panels for the CIHR, Stem Cell Network, and Genome Canada. After studying and working in the United States, I felt that the time was right to come home to see how I might apply my experiences to work in this science policy environment. It’s an overused phrase to say that you “want to make a difference” but at this point in my career, I found myself wanting to apply what I’ve learned in the service of better public policy and decision-making. The coincidence of a new government that has expressed a strong interest in using science in policy made it all the more attractive.
Q: You have an extensive and varied background, from academic research to advisor to domestic and international organizations. How do you see this influencing your leadership of the CCA?
A: I’ve had a non-linear career, moving between university positions where I could delve deeply into the ethical and policy issues in health and science, and several administrative and leadership positions where I had a more concrete impact on policy. The combination has, for me, been the perfect blend of theory and practice. As a university researcher dependent on grants, contracts, and philanthropy to support my own work and those of the teams and centres I’ve led, I developed a profound appreciation for how important the funding of science is for the academic world, and for the value of interdisciplinary science in particular. In fact, my own area of research – bioethics – has always had to struggle with finding support, so I had to learn to become creative. As a program director at the NIH leading the Human Genome Project’s extramural bioethics ELSI program, I saw the other side of the coin: where tough decisions had to be made to prioritize some projects over others in the interest of public good. And as the Executive Director of Bill Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission, I gained a perspective on the “politics of policy” and how science plays a necessary but not sufficient role in helping legislators and policy-makers do their jobs well. I hope each of these experiences has taught me something about leadership.
Q: How do you hope to build on the CCA’s previous 10 years? What is your longer-term vision for the organization (e.g., what do the next 10 years look like)?
A: The CCA has enjoyed considerable respect for the high quality of its reports over the past decade on important policy topics. Some of them have been “go-to” resources; in fact, in some cases there is a straight line from a report’s findings and conclusions to actions taken by not only the sponsors that originally requested them, but others who found them useful, objective, and evidence-laden. This is an important legacy of success on which to build. For example, the expert panel assessments that the CCA is best known for generally take between 18-24 months; I can see a growing demand for assessments that may be needed more quickly, or that are shorter and more responsive to the needs of diverse sponsors. While I can’t predict the future, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that over the next five years we’ll see more federal requests for more data, more information, more evidence, and more input to help untangle tough questions. But I fully expect we’ll see provinces, regions, municipalities, and cities also needing this input – not to mention the private sector, philanthropic organizations, and NGOs. Even if the CCA can’t meet each request, I see it becoming a more nimble organization better able to adapt to different needs, better known for its work by more groups, and better integrated into a made-in-Canada science policy advice ecosystem with other key groups.
Q: What informed your own interest in science policy?
A: My interest was informed by issues, mentors, and opportunities. I’ve always been interested in the intersection of science and society, especially from a moral and political perspective. My background is in the humanities – philosophy and ethics in particular – so that was the lens through which I looked at science, and especially health and medical science. Early in high school in Toronto my biology teacher asked us to think about the ethical issues arising from a single topic: I chose IVF and then watched as my topic came to life with the birth of the world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Brown. My undergraduate years at York University trained me to apply moral and political philosophy to the life sciences through some powerful case studies: end-of-life decision-making, organ transplantation, and research with human subjects. I got to hone my research and policy skills during my PhD at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where my dissertation on the ethics of risk assessment still informs much of my thinking today. It was during this same period that I was fortunate to be given a number of opportunities to try out my knowledge of theory in the real world, first in the NIH Office for Protection from Research Risks (the U.S. Government’s regulatory office for the oversight of human subjects research), and then staffing the human and animal research policy advisory committees for the American Psychological Association for two years ― all before I completed my PhD. It was hard not to be bitten by the science policy bug after spending all that time “inside the beltway” on these issues, especially as many of them played out at the NIH and the U.S. Congress. In later years my interest has only grown through my work with international organizations, foreign governments, and research institutions. I see science policy as a way that countries can demonstrate their commitment to acquiring and using knowledge for the public good.
Q: What are your reflections so far on the CCA’s place in Canada’s S&T ecosystem?
A: These are early days for me of course, but it’s pretty clear that there is already a rich set of resources in Canada to provide the entire lifecycle necessary to advise the country on science policy: there are excellent researchers who study science and science policy; experts who provide detailed analyses of the gaps in knowledge and needs; practitioners who can translate that information into useful chunks for effective deliberation; and skilled evaluators who can assess the impact and outcomes. My sense is that the CCA fits well into that ecosystem by providing key information to inform decision-making, but that it is still a little bit of an unknown to most people and to the organizations who might use it more. Our problem in Canada is not that we don’t have enough S&T expertise but that it could be organized more effectively. This is why I’m especially hopeful that the Government will deliver on its commitment to establish a Chief Science Officer, who will hold a portfolio that the CCA could help in many ways. One thing I do know: we can’t do it alone. We can take a page from other countries who have organizations similar to ours and try to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Q: Is there anything you missed about living in Canada that you’re looking most forward to now that you’re back?
A: I wish I could say I missed Canadian winters, but I don’t! I’m reluctant to admit this since it may sound predictable, but I grew up with Hockey Night in Canada so it will be nice to have a few more options to watch Canada’s game than what we were often given on the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, which were almost always the Blackhawks or the Red Wings.