Bridging Science and Community: Leading Change in STEM for Equity and Inclusion

In this episode of the EDII Catalyst, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Josephine Tsang, Executive Director of the Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC) and a proud Queen’s University alumna.

Dr. Tsang shares her journey through STEM, the pivotal mentors who shaped her path, and how she uses her platform to foster inclusion and drive change in Canada’s scientific landscape.

Transcript begins below video.

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Today, we’re very excited to have Dr. Josephine Tsang, who is currently the Executive Director of the Chemical Institute of Canada and a Queen's alumna. We are honoured to have you here today to join us for the conversation and tell us a little bit about your experiences in chemistry and how you got to where you are today.

Thank you so very much for the warm welcome, and thank you so much for taking the time to have me on this podcast. Really excited about it.

As always, we like to start off by asking our guests to tell us a little more about yourself and your journey in STEM. How did you get to where you are today?

Before I begin, I would like to share that my pronouns are she/her, my home is Calgary, Alberta, and Calgary is also called Moh\'kinstsis by the Indigenous peoples of the land of which I currently live.

A little bit about myself: my parents sent me from Hong Kong, a population of six million people, to a very tiny farming community with a population of about two thousand people in Canada, on my own when I was thirteen years old. So essentially, I lived without my parents ever since I was thirteen. This really has had a huge impact on the way I think, on the way I live, on the way I see the world, and how I solve problems.

In terms of how I got into chemistry: I have a deep gratitude to my high school science teacher, Mr. Hurley, as he taught chemistry—in the past, it would have been more of a boys-only subject—with such passion that I couldn't help but to fall in love with chemistry. (And my husband, Dexter, is totally aware that I fell in love with chemistry even before I met him, and he's definitely okay with that!) I wanted to have a chemical reaction named after me, like the J.T. reaction or the Tsang reaction mechanism or something like that... That hasn't happened yet, and maybe I'll look to all of you to give me a hand to get that one day.

 All jokes aside, I went on to pursue my doctorate degree in physical organic chemistry, specialized in decontamination of chemical warfare agents under the guidance of Professor Sam Brown at Queen's University. I worked really hard. We received four postdoctoral fellowships during my postdoc. Yet I left what was—at the time—a very promising academic research career and pursued a career in in the oil and gas industry in Calgary, worked as an environmental scientist and R&D manager, and also spent some time doing some business development.

As my career progressed, I wanted to share science in a more impactful way, by making, advanced science topics a little bit more accessible, relatable, and relevant. I was very fortunate that I got a chance to talk liberal arts at a local university, developed my own curriculum based on current events and what one would find on Globe and Mail at that time. I thought that was such a cool thing, and then I realized how much work there was to do that—but it was very rewarding.

I would say I also spent a number of years working at a local science centre, talking about climate emergency to an audience filled with grandparents all the way to young children. Just before COVID, I was hired as the CEO for a charity to support newcomers, so during the pandemic, my staff and I helped new Canadians from at-risk socioeconomic backgrounds build capacity to find meaningful employment, combat isolation, and finding ways to care for their families. At the same time, I also led a full-scale brand and strategic renewal and aligned the organization's goals and missions with the seventeen UN SDGs.

Looking back, I would say that was probably one of the toughest positions that I've ever held: helping folks, helping newcomers, managing COVID with language barriers, with financial barriers, all the barriers… I think that was the most humbling experience that I've ever had. It was tough, yet very rewarding.

Fast forward to today, I have the immense privilege of being the executive director and leading the Chemical Institute of Canada, a national organization that supports us chemists, chemical technologists and chemical engineers all across Canada. At the heart of the organization are our members—students, early career researchers, educators, professionals, and professionals in for profit and/or not for profit. Our members are really shaping the future of our field.

That's who I am in a nutshell. I can’t forget my puppy—well, she's not really a puppy anymore; she's four years old and still napping right now. My husband and I and our puppy spend a lot of time together.

Josephine, you have such an amazing resume from the path you’ve created. At one point, you mentioned that your high school teacher, Mr. Hurley, played a big part in your role. How did you approach being thirteen years old, coming to Canada and then setting up this very successful career for yourself? What were the challenges and what helped you remain positive and optimistic through that time?

Going back to my high school days when I first moved to Canada at thirteen years old, English was really my second language. Chemistry—all the chemical equations, chemical formulas—made more sense to me than English.

I am forever grateful to my high school teacher; when I first moved to Canada, I lived with my host parents. My host father was also a chemist, and so I had two really, really strong male mentors growing up. I just didn't know anything else other than falling in love with chemistry.

Provost is such a tight knit community—it's only two thousand people. I'm going to date myself a little bit: back in the day when I first moved to Canada, we didn't have Google, we didn't have electronic dictionaries. At that time, I think electronic dictionaries had just started coming out, so it was so expensive at the time to get one. Instead, I used to carry an Oxford dictionary. You know, I wasn't—and still am not—very tall. I would carry this Oxford dictionary in my backpack and walk to school.

I think the Provost community really came together to help me thrive and succeed. If I didn't know how to spell community when I was thirteen years old, I definitely felt what community means. I am grateful and fortunate that I can carry this forward. Many years later, I still hold community near and dear to my heart, and I bring it to work at CIC. All the members of our community have the passion and responsibility to make the Institute as rewarding and as inclusive as possible.

Community is a really important aspect of EDII; in research groups, having that support system in place—whether it be your research group, your university, your institute—is really important to everyone's success. Based on your career path and our discussion on mentors who influenced you, how have you used your experiences to help support the next generation of diverse scientists?

There are different aspects to consider. I recognize that I'm very fortunate to be in a position that I can help move things forward, and I recognize that I don't know everything. I lean on my team and the community to provide suggestions and guidance to me.

I'm in a fortunate position where if there are certain projects and/or initiatives that folks want to try out, I will try my very best to make sure that these initiatives can be seen through. Of course, there may be different perspectives to consider, such as whether the organization or the team can provide adequate support financially. At the end of the day, I would like to think that as long as [the initiative] is an advancement in making the community more inclusive and diverse, I would like to say yes. It could be that it might not be a yes or it might be that we can’t do it right away, but we always try to find ways to make things happen. I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to do so.

As Executive Director of CIC, you have a platform capable of helping to shape the conversations and science around EDII. Can you talk about some of the initiatives that you’ve helped promote to the scientific community through your position with CIC?

Starting internally, on the CIC national team we continue to find ways to make sure our policies are as up to date as possible. We are in the process of finalizing workplace safety, anti-bullying and anti-harassment policy so that everyone—whether it's someone working on the national team or whether it would be volunteers, board members, or general members—we want to ensure that everyone feels that they're safe whenever they interact with the organization, internally and externally. I’m working closely with the board members on this initiative, and I’m grateful that the board members are very on board on this.

On the community level, the national team continues to work with the WIDE (Working for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity) group to advance initiatives related to EDII. Working alongside experts in the field, we have put accessibility policy in place for conferences on the CIC side, and we'll continue to work with our counterpart on the chemical engineering side.

 I'm proud to say that we have a pride group established on CIC, and there's also going to be another group that will be coming online fairly shortly. It's still under works, however I'm excited to share that we have folks putting up their hand and saying they want to be involved. My job is very easy: to make sure we have resources in place and to provide as much support as possible.

An important aspect of leadership—in both science and EDII—is tailoring your message to different groups of people. Throughout your career, you've been a postdoc, then you worked in industry, done some charity work, and now work with the CIC. What are some of the strategies you've used throughout your career to tailor your message to different stakeholders, whether they be policymakers, the general public or underrepresented groups in STEM?

I'm very fortunate to have had a fairly diverse professional background. It really depends on who you're talking to, who your audience might be, and how you can capture their attention in the first fifteen to thirty seconds of your conversation.

I had my fair share of practice of this when I was in my oil and gas days, being a PhD chemist and having the opportunity to go to the field wearing hard hats and all the safety gear and everything. I spoke with with field staff directly and had the opportunity to ask them, ‘what are you looking for?’ ‘What do you need in terms of products?’ It really gave me a different perspective. You know, they might not really care about what the half-life is. They just need to know that it's going to work at 5PM tomorrow and that it's going to take fifteen minutes to finish their job.

It’s about learning to appreciate how you should frame your question. Sometimes it's not about asking detailed questions; sometimes it's about asking open ended questions so that they will share their opportunities and challenges. It's up to us as scientists to figure out what that really means on the lab side of things and communicate that back to them. Again, it's really knowing your audience.

Another component that I learned to appreciate is that back in 2019, I put up my hand and ran for public office. I ran in Alberta for a political party that isn’t quite as popular in Alberta. When I got a chance to canvass with volunteers, door knocking, as soon as I opened the door, I had maybe five to ten seconds or so to really decide on the message that I wanted to share. If I knew that we might not be aligned on the political component, [the question] became ‘how do I use the remaining time to find common ground?’ That really put my communication to the test.

If I didn’t know how to do [tailor my message] before that, I definitely needed to know how to do it at the door and continue to be diplomatic and presentable. That has taught me huge lessons. I’m forever grateful for that experience.

Part of that lesson is listening to what people are saying and needing and then being able to translate that into what you need to do for them. That's a necessity for making inclusive research environments: listen to individuals who are struggling, find what they’re struggling with, and then work to make those changes. The ability to actually listen and take that information and make good, positive change is an important skill.

What is your final message or key takeaway that you'd like to leave our listeners with today?

I will borrow a quote from Michelle Obama, one of my idols; she said, “when all of us have worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity… we do not slam that door behind us. We reach back to help our friends, and we reach back to help everyone around us.” I try to keep that as my North Star.

As a second takeaway: life is more than just chemistry, more than chemical engineering. Your mental wellbeing really, really matters at the end of the day.

Audience Question: You mentioned that had transitioned out of chemistry into charity work for a period. What was the biggest change going from working in that charity sphere and then returning to the field of chemistry? What was the largest shift for you making that transition back?

[The biggest adjustment I had to face was] what defines our success or what might be defined as impact. That requires a little bit of soul searching internally on my side. On the work side, that looks like understanding the expectations and reality of what I as an individual or we as a team can deliver and support the community. [That shift was] more so about figuring out, ‘what does success look like for myself and for the team?’

Another takeaway our listeners might want to remember is to take opportunities as they come. Don't be afraid to step a little bit out of your comfort zone; if it's something you enjoy and are passionate about, then it's always a good direction to go in.

Audience Question: Thank you so much for visiting us and sharing your story and experience with us. Based on your knowledge, how we can better take advantage of the resources available at the CIC level? On a more active level, how we can leverage these resources and work together to build them?

Sometimes there's so many initiatives that have happened or are ongoing. I would say, if there's an opportunity [to get involved] with individuals who might be a part of those community groups, start that conversation there and see how you can get involved.

That's just one aspect, and I'm sure there are many other avenues to explore. Everyone has a wealth of knowledge that we can definitely tap into or share, and it's about finding the platform that best fits you—there’s no right or wrong there.

We always like to end with our fun question: what is your favorite chemical element or molecule and why?

I’m a [Dr.] Stan Brown student, so I would have to say lanthanum all the way! Anything related to lanthanides.

…And you know, I know it’s not a chemical element, but I would say tea is definitely another chemical I would say that I cannot live without!

That is a great choice. Thank you so much, Josephine, for spending some time with us here today to share your story. We're very fortunate to be able to have you on. Thank you everyone for listening.

Thanks so much, everyone. Good to see you all.