Jesse Shanahan
[Image Description]: Jesse has short blonde hair and is wearing a pink shirt. They are standing in front of a whiteboard with physics equations.
[Image Description]: Jesse smiles proudly while taking a selfie in front of a research poster presentation.
[Image Description]: Jesse Shanahan rocks bright green hair in a short cut. They smile at someone off camera.
Meet Jesse Shanahan (they/them), someone trying their best in the chaos!
Tell us about your STEM?
I’ve had a bit of a long journey with many abrupt turns. I started out in linguistics, and then I moved to astrophysics, where I did my graduate education and then some post graduate research work. When I decided to leave academia fully, I transitioned to being in data science, machine learning development, and software development/ programming etc. Right now, I am the CTO of a health tech company, which I’m super passionate about.
Tell us about your work as CTO at Another Round!
When I was doing some of the preliminary research on framing our product, one of the things that came up repeatedly was that the leading cause of global mortality is preventable, non-communicable diseases. Preventable as in getting appropriate exercise, eating nutritious food, drinking less, and smoking less. The WHO found that those lifestyle changes made a massive impact on reducing global mortality. But it’s not as simple as just ‘go move more!’, because people have stressful lives, and don’t have time. Nutritious food, depending on where you live, is connected to income and socioeconomic status. Or you could have disabilities. There are many things that can prevent you from being able to say ‘check, check, check! I’ve met all these factors’.
In particular, the idea of fitness. When we say that word and we close our eyes and have an image in our head - it’s probably white, thin, able bodied, and probably someone wearing really nice gym clothes. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about helping people to access something that prevents, or at least minimizes the risk, of mortality globally. And so how do we do that?
I’m looking at building a tool for online personal training that will make it more affordable, and accessible. And I mean accessibility both in terms of digital accessibility, but also - how do you train someone in a wheelchair? How do you train someone with ADHD? How do you train someone with medication resistant depression, when even just getting out of bed is a victory some days? How do you train someone with hypermobility, or with chronic pain? How do you train people who menstruate? There’s a wide range of different things that can impact someone’s ability to enjoy, access, or even just move their body.. My vision is to have this product be something that can allow anyone to connect with somebody with the expertise and tools to be able to help them move in a way that decreases this risk of disease.
Right now we’re in very early phases, lots of testing, lots of research, and lots of interesting partnerships and relationships, especially when it comes to accessibility. For example, there’s a group called Accessercise that was founded by paralympian Ali Jawad. There’s so many videos on the internet right now on how to do something like a bicep curl. But what happens if you have a limb difference? How do you do this particular motion if you’re in a wheelchair, or if you need to make use of a crutch? How do you train? His group is creating information, videos, and resources around a variety of different people with disabilities, trying to cover as many different disabilities as possible. How do you do these movements? What changes can we make to gym equipment to make it more accessible?
There are also people in our executive team, myself included, who have eating disorders. One of the big things for me is that I don't want anything related to diet culture. We can talk about nutrition when it’s relevant to someone’s training, and when they opt into it. I’m a user of our product myself (I test it!), and I was very upfront. I do not weigh myself. I will not count or measure my food. That sends me into the bad place. How do we work with that when I’m trying to train for a marathon and am weight lifting? (Those are very aspirational goals given my illness, but I’m sticking with them!) How do we make sure I’m eating enough? Or eating enough of the ‘right’ thing, so that I don’t exhaust or potentially injure myself. It’s been interesting looking at the standard guidance for your typical fitness person who wants to go to the gym - it’s so informed by diet culture. It assumes everyone wants to lose weight. It assumes everyone has aesthetic goals, and we don’t want to contribute to that. It’s frustrating, but the whole industry feels like it’s steeped in this perspective. The mental illnesses with the highest rate of mortality are eating disorders. And we have an entire industry that makes money off of it, that makes me so angry! It’s not just ableist, but it’s also literally killing people when its whole message is health. I’m hoping that we can do better.
What do you love about being in STEM?
For me, the thing that excites me the most about STEM is that it is an area where my curiosity is never satisfied. When you do STEM research, even if you make a discovery, or unlock some piece of the puzzle, it comes with a whole slew of new curiosities. The natural world is the incredibly complex, amazing, infuriating environment that we exist in, and science gives us a methodology that we can explore it with. It feels like when you watch a historical fiction TV show, and you see explorers with maps that are only half filled in, and there’s this yearning- what’s on the other side of this map? Science taps into this very primal human need to explore, and to be curious, and that’s what I love the most about it.
What accommodations allow you to thrive?
This depends on what phase of my career I’ve been in. One of the top things is the flexibility to be remote. For example, video conferencing as a tool. As someone with a chronic illness that comes with flares and fluctuations, I need a lot of flexibility with my schedule. I’ve poured money and time into creating an accessible and comfortable workspace for myself, far more than any university or company is going to do for me. Everything around me is largely here to support my focus and me doing my best work in a way that helps with my ADHD, helps with my EDS. That would have been so impactful for me if I had been able to get quality education remotely. Quality! The same quality of education given to me as my peers, just remotely. I started my graduate career before the pandemic, so remote was just not an option. The best I could do was get a professor to record their lecture. But for theoretical physics classes, to just hear a lecture (without pictures of the board), is not the most amazing way to learn.
The idea that you need to be there in person, or that being there physically is more valuable. That excludes a lot of people with many different disabilities.
There are a lot of other things that have helped me, as far as tools go. I have a weighted blanket on my bed to help with sleep. I have a very flexible schedule, so I can largely (with the exception of meetings), set my own hours. Part of chronic pain and ADHD and mental illness is that sleep is this fleetingly precious thing that rarely visits me, and most of the time it’s a battle. Mornings are always going to be a challenge. I’m very up front with my colleagues that meetings are not going to happen in the morning (unless there are no other options). I’ve been able to respect my weird sleep schedule, and I’ve been able to respect my body's needs that might change from day to day. There may be days when I’m able to get up a little earlier and do work, but there’s also going to be days where I need a lot of time. The myth that ‘the early bird gets the worm’ is toxic productivity that hurts a lot of people.
Flexible work schedules are also something that I can extend to my employees - I give them the same flexibility that I ask for. Someone thanked me because they’re a night owl and write their best code in the middle of the night. Lots of businesses ask you to work during hours where you might not complete your best work. All I want is for you to be healthy and have work-life balance - but I also want, when you are working, for you to be able to do your best work. And if you need the middle of the night for that, then I will support you as best I can.
In grad school I would have asked for the same things, but they just weren’t possible, or at least I was told they weren’t possible. Having extensions for things was a big accommodation that I needed. With ADHD and chronic pain, every day is going to be a roll of the dice. That doesn’t mean that I’m a bad scientist, it just means that my work is going to look different in terms of its frequency and intensity than it might in someone else.
What would help you to better thrive in the STEM world?
We need to normalize people showing up in the way that they need. Maybe that’s people showing up to meetings from bed. Maybe that’s being able to say you’re having a bad pain day. Able bodied people do this (‘I didn’t sleep well last night’, ‘I have a bit of a headache), but they don’t seem to deal with the same level of guilt that disabled people do. Let’s be as flexible as we can - there will be times that we can’t, of course - but let’s make the times that we need to push through a rarity. Let’s allow people to be their best selves and do their best work. That means respecting that that’s going to look different for every person.
Also, let people turn off their cameras. Zoom fatigue is a real thing. As someone with ADHD, I often find myself so focussed during business meetings on making sure that I’m looking focussed that I’m not actually focussed. Oh no, I’m doodling - someone might think that I”m not paying attention. But some of my best meetings have been the ones with my team when I don’t have the camera on and I’m taking a walk, or when I’ve been able to move. I would wish that for everyone, though depending on the meeting I can’t always do so myself. That’s something that people should get used to: it’s ok to not see someone, let them fidget! Or, if you insist that people are on camera, you have to be really comfortable with people looking not neurotypically focussed.
In grad school, I could have really succeeded if real, proper pedagogy was part of the classes. There’s just this massive focus on your grade, or someone is just reading to you out of a textbook, or reading off slides. If I’m going to put myself through the effort it takes to get my things together, dress appropriately (often in clothes that aren’t accessible to me, or are uncomfortable), then try to find an accessible way into the building, then sit in uncomfortable classroom chairs, and then desperately try to pay attention, then I don’t want to listen to have someone monotonously read from a set of slides. If classes had been truly based around the acquisition of knowledge and understanding the material, I would have gone a lot farther. It’s a process that selects for a very specific kind of person, and that person is not neurodivergent, or mentally ill, or disabled. It’s a factory designed to take the parts that society believes are wrong and remove them from the conveyor belt. It breaks my heart that there are so many disabled scientists I’ve met who feel like they are failures because they left. But they were in a system that wasn't designed for them. You were a scientist from the start, but the system is there to make sure that a certain kind of scientist succeeds. I wish we could just tear it all down. It was designed for a society that we have largely outgrown.
What do you want people to know about being disabled in STEM? What advice would you give to someone with a disability looking to enter the STEM world?
First, you can be a scientist, and not be in academia!
I don’t think this is discussed enough, and it’s viewed as being a failure. You’re leaving the academy and you’re going somewhere else, so you’re not a real scientist. I’ve published just as much since leaving academia as I did when I was in academia. You can publish. You can do laboratory research. You can do cutting edge research. And it’s not just selling your soul to some mega corporation or doing something unethical, I promise! That's often how industry jobs are presented - you’re selling out for the money. No! When I was in industry, I had a really great work-life balance, great health insurance, far more strict disability inclusion, and I’d been paid a living wage for the first time in my adult life. And I was still a scientist!
You can still do that level and quality of research outside of academia and often the benefits and the environment and the protections you have are a lot higher. There are still plenty of issues in industry, but for me it was a massive step up from academia, and a lot of this was because I could afford things! That is a big consideration, when graduate programs assume a small stipend is good enough for you. But my living costs are far more than the able bodied graduate student sitting next to me. I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my medicine, my physical therapy, or my mobility aids just to get an education.
For people who are earlier in their academic journeys, with just a bachelors, can often find funding while in an industry job to pursue further education. I’ve worked with people who did their PhDs with full industry salaries and benefits.
Also, don’t feel like a failure for not succeeding in a system that was literally designed to fail you. We need to redefine success. Academia tells us there is this very rigid view of what success is, and we absorb that. Get my degree, publish this amount, get this number of citations, work at an R1 university - and the list never stops. I think each person should do their best to let go of that internalized definition of success, and find a definition that works for you. It doesn’t mean you have to do everything as fast as those around you, it doesn’t mean you have to have the same degree, or pursue it in the same way. Happiness and being comfortable with where you are in your life comes from not letting other people dictate what the definition of success is.
The other thing to remember, whether you are in industry or academia, is that we have this very goal driven and metric driven approach to success - and those goal posts are always moving. You’re never going to get there. By all definitions, I should have gotten there. I’m in a position I never would have dreamed of, and I still find myself sitting here thinking that I could have done more. People always ask, what’s your three year goal, what’s your five year goal? Why do I need those? Why do I always have to be striving for the next thing? I think that leads us to always be dissatisfied, because we’re not there yet. I would be a much happier person if I could take my own advice, and just say I’ve done enough/ I’m still going to be chasing my passion, but I don’t need to chase some sort of metric to feel like I’m a real scientist.
To the people reading this: Do the things I could not do! Be smarter than me, be better, don’t fall into these traps. They really can hurt you. Disabled people have enough on their plates dealing with all the extra baggage that society puts on us for not being able bodied. It's really important to know that you do not have to disclose, or you can get accommodations without disclosing. And you should keep your mouth shut until you’re hired. That might sound sketchy, but that’s how the world works: discrimination is absolutely a thing. I have been very public - anyone googling me can very quickly find out I have a disability, and that's something I have sacrificed to be an advocate publicly. But if you don’t have that kind of choice, then you should consider waiting to disclose until you’ve been accepted or gotten an offer letter. But once you’re in, there’s lots of accommodations out there.
There are a lot of possibilities. I wish there was a crowd sourced database where you could put in a disability and see what other people have asked for by way of accommodations. When I first asked for my accommodations, I was still trying to figure out what my new reality was. They asked me what accommodations I wanted. Well, what are my options? What am I allowed to ask for? What are the possibilities?
What are your thoughts on priorities, whether about STEM, health, or otherwise?
There was a moment in grad school where I sat down with my doctor. She pointed out that I was under so much pressure and so much stress that she could tell where I was in the semester based on my blood pressure. And this was going to have long term effects on my health if I didn’t start taking it seriously. I understood where she was coming from, but many years later, I feel for past me. Because I thought at the time that there was something wrong with me. I thought I was doing something wrong. If I wasn’t taking my health seriously enough, then that’s something else I just wasn’t doing enough of. The problem is really the system that’s only designed for a certain kind of person to succeed in. That person typically doesn’t have a disability.
It’s not a disabled scientists’ fault if they don’t finish their degree, or if they have to leave, or if they have to prioritize their health. The system hurts everyone - even able bodied people. But for disabled people, we don’t really have a choice. We can’t not choose our health, because a lot of times our risks are far greater. But instead of thinking about how the system is broken, we tend to focus on how we as individuals need to change. You need to prioritize your health? Why don’t you meditate? Why don’t you do yoga? But no amount of meditation or yoga is going to change a system. It’s not going to change the way academia is built to weed anyone out who isn’t a specific type of person. The science is there (and has been for decades), that this doesn’t make for good scientists. It doesn’t make for good engineers, but it is the way that we’ve ‘always done it’. That’s one of the reasons why I feel like I fell out of love with science when I was in academia. There was this sense of ‘we’re going to teach the way we’ve always taught’, even if an entire scientific field of pedagogy tells us that this isn’t helpful, this isn’t how people learn, and that this isn’t going to create good scientists. But we keep doing it this way, because this is how we’ve always done it. And then we throw in a healthy dose of pressure, hazing, and ableism, and then expect people to succeed.
Wikipedia: wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Shanahan
