Julianne McCall
Julianne McCall received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Heidelberg where she studied neuroregeneration and spinal cord injury. She has combined skills gained from her scientific training with her passion for public service to build a career in science policy, and is currently Co-Director of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine in the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR). Among her notable achievements, Julianne is a Fulbright Research Fellow, a Science & Technology Policy Fellow with California Council on Science and Technology (CCST), Director of multiple World Championships for the “Brain Bee” International Neuroscience Olympiad, and Co-Founder & Lead Curator for TEDxFulbright.
Can you describe your academic and professional background? What path led you to pursue this field?
My path into neuroscience is not uncommon: my kid sister was diagnosed with all sorts of medical challenges, including neurological, so I spent most of my older childhood and teenage years in and around hospitals for appointments, surgeries, and emergencies. To say the least, it was difficult to see my sister under constant threat of unthinkable pain, so I naturally gravitated toward careers to help make such medical hardships a thing of the past. Already in high school, I had the good fortune of volunteer coaching the soccer-playing kindergartener of the then-Chief Neurosurgeon of the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Marc Mayberg continues to be an inspiration, as my summer internships with him and his research team sparked an insatiable curiosity to learn all I could about the biomedical pipeline, from scientific research to neurosurgical application.
In addition to majoring in Neuroscience in college, I also led a handful of organizations, including a group of 120 trained volunteers who provided free behavioral therapy to 22 low-income children with autism. Afterward, I lucked into a Fulbright grant to do neuroscience research in Lund, Sweden, as part of an international team studying blindness disorders. Living for over a year in such a progressive society left a mark. I'm embarrassed to share this, but I had never closely followed politics up to that point. It turns out that STEM undergrads are among the least likely to vote, so I was sadly not alone in my academic community. As a Fulbrighter, I gained some civic and political awareness from formal encounters with ambassadors and other leaders, but it was through constant pressing from much-more-informed international friends and lab mates to answer for U.S. policies and activities that my eyes were opened to how important government was, and the need to be involved.
Three years after starting my PhD at UCSD in 2007, my PI Dr. Armin Blesch was recruited to Heidelberg University in Germany (UCSD recently won him back). It was a struggle to establish a new lab, especially when construction was delayed, our frozen cell lines and virus stocks thawed while held in customs, and all animal protocols needed to be translated into German! But watching how my PI maneuvered institutional systems and forged new collaborations within and outside of our department was practically as educational as coursework and lab experiments. I came to the realization that I was happiest in grad school when I was coordinating and preparing for in-depth strategy sessions and meetings about how to advance the science toward societal benefit. In time, I started recognizing the many players that compose the pipeline between research and clinical implementation. That's when Science Policy turned up on my radar.
How did you find your current position with the California Governor's Office of Planning & Research?
I love attending big-picture conferences and seminars that attract folks from across disciplines and sectors. So during grad school, when I had the chance to participate in the World Science Forum in Budapest as part of a Fulbright delegation, I jumped at the opportunity. There, I met Dr. Rush Holt, former member of Congress and then-CEO of AAAS, who told me about the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship for PhD scientists to experience and learn about policymaking. Wanting to move closer to family in California, I found a similar program in the California Legislature run by the California Council on Science and Technology. From day one, I knew I'd found my people! I spent the year working in the Senate Office of Research, focusing on public health, developmental disabilities, and research policy, and continued on as an employee for another year. During that time, I wrote briefs and reports about gauging the impact of publicly funded research programs, health impacts of climate change, and other topics. Those public reports plus my background in genetics helped my current employer identify me as a candidate for my current position: I received an email out of the blue exploring my interest in helping lead the state's precision medicine research program, housed in the Governor's Office of Planning & Research, which is directed by the Governor's Senior Advisor on Climate, Kate Gordon. Due to planned travel the next day, I interviewed within about four hours of that email! I was offered the job via a phone call I took from a cafe in Tokyo a few days later, and it only took a couple of weeks for Governor Newsom to formally appoint me to the position.
Can you tell us about your current responsibilities? What is a typical day or week like in your role?
Like in research, the days and weeks can look very different depending on the project, time of year, and societal conditions (like during a pandemic!). Overall, I co-manage a team of five to seven people, mostly scientists, to 1. Distribute state funds for research through an NIH-like selections process (rigorous and fair) and ARPA-E-like oversight role (highly engaged); 2. Coordinate cross-sector experts from academia, industry, community organizations, venture capital, health systems, and government to advise on significant topics and shepherd pilot projects to inform policy making and regulation; 3. Attend conferences to keep up with the science, expand my program's network, and enhance awareness of the state initiative; and 4. Support fellow agencies within Governor Newsom's Administration through scientific advice and participation on project teams, such as writing the first-ever California Surgeon General's Report and serving on the Governor's COVID-19 Testing Task Force. On any given day, you would find me 1. Running and attending several meetings with internal team members or external collaborators to further our projects or dream up new solutions; 2. Drafting a policy brief, RFP guidance, action plan, email follow-up, newsletter or website article, or Tweet; and 3. Googling like a champion for the latest news, to learn about a scientific concept, or to understand everything I can about a potential new partner or project.
What do you most enjoy about your current job and work environment?
I love working with and among colleagues who are passionate about public service, who also have the creativity needed to develop and advance the type of bold ideas that are needed for measurable, positive change. As a die-hard philomath, it's a joy to be exposed to diverse approaches and draw unexpected inspiration from projects and fields so different from my own. Before I leaped into this career, I didn't grasp the difference between policy and politics; I thought they were one and the same. Indeed, they are vastly different. Both are infinitely complex, but politics is inherently tied to quick responses, short news cycles, and competition. Constituents want to see their representatives responding in real time to whatever's happening in their neighborhood. In policy, I revel in taking the requisite time to translate scientific principles and knowledge into actionable, evidence-based steps, engaging stakeholders on a timescale that allows everyone to participate, and following through with intentional and thorough evaluation to inform the next challenge. That type of slow, deliberate information-gathering and transparent application is not always what defines policy work, but it's an ever-present goal.
Do you have any professional plans for the future? What are some future career paths that could open up for someone in your position, 5-10 years down the road?
In an office whose explicit mission is to bridge disciplines and sectors, there is so much I can do in my current role that I haven't felt the need to consider what follows. For example, I recently established partnerships among eighteen state agencies and non-state, statewide associations to advance health equity through increased participation of underrepresented groups in biomedical and clinical research, including people of color, people with disabilities, rural residents, older adults, and those identifying as LGBTQ+. There is so much untapped potential in partnerships across sectors and fields that I could work endlessly without exhausting opportunities for creative solutions and fresh collaborations.
Individuals who have previously stood in my role have continued making strides in impactful positions, including as Specialist Leader for Health Care and Life Science Strategy at Deloitte, Senior Advisor to the NIH Vision and Pathways Working Group, Senior Vice President of Be the Match, Director of Industry Partnership at UCSF's Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, and Biomedical Sciences Program Officer of the UC Office of the President Research Grants Program Office.
What’s changing in your industry? Are there any future trends we should be aware of?
The State of California recognizes the need for data tools to support data-driven decision-making, so recent years have seen the develop of numerous interactive and information-rich platforms and databases, over 4,500 of which are currently available through the California Open Data Portal. For the pandemic response alone, there is a suite of databases and platforms available to the public, exhibiting location-based testing, vaccinations, PPE distribution, and more to inform local government, industry, and individual actions. Data platforms can be hyper specific, ranging from CalEnviroScreen, which identifies pollution burden across California communities, to Cal-Adapt, which projects impacts of climate change based on scenarios, down to the resolution of individual addresses!
A PhD in Neuroscience or any scientific field nearly guarantees a certain comfort level with data, regardless of the source. I was surprised at first by the ease with which I could interpret large policy datasets using my previous experience in basic genomic analysis, for example, to understand racial disparities among service provisions to the 300,000 Californians with developmental disabilities. The ability to apply and interpret data will only grow in importance in the policy arena, like so many other areas of modern life.
What activities, internships, or organizations would you recommend someone get involved with to help them break into science policy?
I care so much about bringing more scientifically trained people into the policy world that I roped two friends into helping write a Science Policy Career Guide, which was unveiled at AAAS last year. The guide provides a long list of internships and fellowships, profiles of diverse science policy professionals, and activities you can begin today to help prepare you for a policy career.
Is it common for people in your field to have a scientific/academic background (i.e. have PhDs)? Can you think of any advantages or disadvantages someone with a PhD might experience in your field?
California Senator Alex Padilla got it right: he transitioned from MIT Engineering to policy after witnessing challenges in his hometown in the San Fernando Valley. He highlighted the common thread between policy and STEM: "the goal of each is solving problems." Of course, in-depth knowledge of your specific scientific area is crucial, but the skills you're applying to answer those questions are what will serve you throughout your lifetime, whether you remain in bench research or use your scientific mindset elsewhere.
In the closing minutes of my thesis defense in Heidelberg, one of my committee members asked what I planned to do next. I expressed my interest in science policy, and he responded, "So, you're leaving science?" I clarified that policy is as necessary as bench research in furthering the goals of science, but he repeated himself with the exact same question, "So, you're leaving science?" I would encourage everyone to examine all the steps scientific knowledge must navigate to be applied to the real world, what's called the scientific pipeline; it's not the simple, linear arrow you may see in textbooks. For example, in California, we're an international powerhouse of science and technology. Yet, there are still hundreds of thousands of Californians without reliable clean drinking water in their homes. The science is age-old, and yet so many people, mostly in communities of color, continue to deal with preventable gastrointestinal disease and other disorders because we haven't finished translating research to action, in policy and elsewhere. Especially in the pursuit of equity for racially diverse and low-income Californians who have been historically and persistently marginalized, science has a long way to go, and policy is one of many avenues to make a difference.
