Sarah Boon

Sarah Boon (PhD, FRCGS) is a science writer and editor. Her articles have appeared in Nature, Science, Water Canada, Hakai Magazine, iPolitics, and CBC’s The Nature of Things. Sarah is a co-founder and serves on the Board of Science Borealis.

Women in Science: Dr. Geneviève Ali

May 22, 2018 | 5 minute read

Early in her career, Geneviève Ali worried that, to find work, she’d have to deal with a triple threat of biases. Not only is she a woman, she’s also young and African-American.

“My parents were instrumental in helping me frame this triple bias as a triple opportunity,” she says. “Being a woman has given me the tremendous responsibility of nurturing new women scientists and contributing to better female representation in STEM. Being African-American gives me a voice to promote diversity and inclusiveness. And being in my early thirties gives me a unique perspective on work-life balance issues, especially when it comes to advocating for the importance of a social life and hobbies for young academics, and understanding the time it takes to commit to a life partner and starting a family.”

 

Ali is now an Assistant Professor of hydrology at the University of Manitoba, and is the Junior Chair of the University’s Watershed Systems Research Program. She works mainly in the Lake Winnipeg watershed, using a variety of tools to quantify the movement of water and its constituents (i.e., sediments, chemicals, organisms). “I tie this knowledge to environmental issues that have societal significance, such [as] floods, droughts, and water pollution,” she says. “I’m particularly interested in engineered landscapes, where natural water movement is altered by surface drainage, farms, dams, and other human landscape modifications.”

She’s come a long way from Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa, where she lived from age 1 to 15 and was raised as a native French speaker, before her family moved back to Montreal. Her parents supported the pursuit of both scientific and literary careers, as her mother was a translator and her father an electrical engineer. “When my parents worked late, my sisters and I would play music or spend time exploring the confines of libraries and bookstores,” she recalls. “But as long as I can remember, I’d wanted to be a volcanologist, as I’d seen a volcanic eruption on TV and was absolutely fascinated.” Her mother thought she could find something less dangerous than hot lava to work with, and in the end Ali chose geography, as there was no volcanology specialization at Université de Montréal. She hasn’t looked back since.

“Geography gave me the opportunity to do science while also dealing with the human side of things, and I wasn’t forced to choose a specialization right away,” she explains. Ali was fascinated by many aspects of geography, including remote sensing and cartography. Then she turned her interest to natural disasters and water. “I asked the department hydrologist, Dr. André Roy, for some book suggestions, and he offered me an undergrad summer job studying tributaries of the St. Lawrence River,” she says. “I guess that’s how my hydrology career started.”

After her BSc (2005), Ali transferred directly into Université de Montréal’s PhD program in environmental geography. Following her PhD (2010), she did a 16-month postdoc at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. During her postdoc she worked with some of the big names in hydrology, such as Jeff McDonnell, Doerthe Tetzlaff, and Chris Soulsby. This not only helped her career development, but gave her a chance to work and live abroad. “I remember getting the postdoc offer and being too shell-shocked to respond right away. I hung up the phone and jumped up and down with excitement, which unfortunately resulted in a major knee sprain,” she laughs.

While she gets excited about her research, Ali is practical about the challenges that face academics. “It’s a tough world out there,” she says. “I realize there are situations where, given the high level of competition, hard work isn’t enough. In these situations, it needs to be accompanied by unwavering determination, supportive colleagues, a supportive partner and/or family at home, and a little dose of luck.”

That said, she tries to see setbacks as something she can learn from and improve upon. She also admits that some of her setbacks were self-inflicted. “Like many women in science, I’ve found myself in situations where I didn’t sell myself enough in competitive situations,” she recalls. “Especially early in my career, I often downplayed my accomplishments or potential, or even stepped aside in favour of more experienced colleagues, sometimes without even being pressured to do so. It was all about self-confidence, really.”

When it comes to work-life balance, Ali has become highly proactive at protecting her personal time, which she plans using the same strict constraints she uses to plan her work time. “Vacations are sacred,” she says. “Hobbies and community volunteering are entered in my calendar to force me to do them. Mentally, these non-work activities balance me out, pun intended.”

She feels that making time for non-science activities makes her a better role model for her students, women in particular. “Some of my female students have told me that they don’t envision an academic career for many different reasons,” she says. “Notably, they don’t want to work weekends and nights to reach what they called ‘a level of success comparable to mine.’”

Ali hopes that she sets a good example for these scientists-in-training and finds it rewarding to mentor female students. “I’ve successfully steered female mentees away from some of the pitfalls I experienced,” she says. “When my past female students tell me that they got through an interview because of the pep talk I gave them, or when they’re employed as my government scientist counterparts, I feel like things are improving for women. And when I work with a female student to identify the unique character traits that serve as her  ‘weapons of choice’ for a scientific career, and she experiences an ‘aha’ moment? That’s priceless.”

One of the biggest challenges Ali often faces is that of people expecting her to treat them differently because she’s a woman. “Some students expect me to grant favours more easily or expect my grading to be more lenient,” she explains. “It might seem trivial, but it’s a tricky balance to achieve. I’ve decided that I won’t change to fit people’s expectations—I just have to be myself.”

Also, in the field, Ali’s male students are often mistaken as the professor. “When I go in the field and talk to members of the public, 9 times out of 10 I’m mistaken for an assistant while one of my male students—regardless of how young he looks—is asked: “So when did you start working as a professor at the university?” she says. “These episodes of mistaken identity are good icebreakers, though. My students usually shake their heads in horror and point to me as the prof. The questioner apologizes profusely. And then the real reason for the mistaken identity comes up, when they ask ‘It’s so great to see a woman in this job… but…how did you end up doing it?’”

Ali knows that things can be tough for women in science fields, but she recommends four things: 1) If you enjoy science, go for it; 2) Don’t look for a “normal” path. The best path is the one that fits you best; 3) Surround yourself with like-minded people so that you can seek advice or just commiserate when needed; and 4) Make sure that stressful periods do not lead you to lose yourself along the way.

Sarah Boon

Sarah Boon (PhD, FRCGS) is a science writer and editor. Her articles have appeared in Nature, Science, Water Canada, Hakai Magazine, iPolitics, and CBC’s The Nature of Things. Sarah is a co-founder and serves on the Board of Science Borealis.