As an immigrant to the US coming over from Poland with my family as a child, one might think that my chances of succeeding in STEM or in any field might be limited. At the time my family left, the Berlin Wall still stood and we were under Soviet occupation, with food and essential supplies rationed. My father was a Mathematics professor (PhD in Mathematics) and my mother a Physics teacher (Masters degree in Physics), so STEM topics were the ingredients of most everyday conversations. In short, my brother and I were doomed to find ourselves drawn toward those fields, and my mother gave me the most amazing role model I could have in what it means to be a successful woman in STEM. She had taught for 13 years in Poland and then came to the US, went through additional schooling and became licensed to teach here. All the way, she overcame great personal challenges through tremendous self-sacrifice and just plain grit. To this day, in her 70s now, she still teaches Physics and still has that same fire in her soul.
One thing I have definitely experienced is that many have a general distrust of intelligent women who have education and data supporting their arguments. They can be seen as "nasty" or "contrary" or "loud" when they present an idea that might diverge from the norm established by others, even if they are reasonable, consistent and data-driven. One thing that having my mother as a role model and growing up in a home whose very existence was based on speaking out against Soviet oppression has taught me is that doing the right thing is often hard. It is difficult to speak the truth when people do not want to hear it. It is difficult to express concerns over a situation when women are often seen as "underlings'' or "subordinates''. When women often do not have a seat at the table and if they do, they often feel silenced, it is difficult to navigate. But just because something is difficult doesn't mean it is not the right thing to do. Maintaining a grounding in something other than myself - in my case, God - has helped me to make the difficult choices when I have had to make them. Believe in your training and in what you know to be true, and that path will lead you exactly to where you ought to be. Thanks to my mom for showing me the way.
-Dr. Marta Guron, Assistant Professor of Biology at Villanova University
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