Lauren Harte-Hargrove is Associate Director of Research at CURE Epilepsy, a non-profit committed to promoting and funding patient-focused research, where she supports the organization’s research funding initiatives and provides scientific and management support to research teams around the globe. She completed her PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and did a postdoc at NYU. Then, she transitioned away from the bench by becoming the Project Manager for the AES/ILAE Translational Research Task Force, before landing her current position. Lauren discusses how she made it into project management and her experience working at non-profit organizations.

What is your current position? What are your main responsibilities?

I'm an Associate Research Director at CURE Epilepsy, a non-profit that, among other things, offers grants to fund investigators and teams trying to cure different forms of epilepsy. My position is a lot of project management. I manage a lot of epilepsy-related grants, including a particular grant which is a team science initiative, for which we have assembled several teams of scientists from across the US and internationally, all studying post-traumatic epilepsy. I also do a number of other things like scientific communication for the lay public and for our community, and we also have educational programs, like webinars and seminars.

Can you describe your academic and professional background? What path led you to pursue this field?

I did my PhD in neuroscience, and I loved a lot of things about doing research, but I knew I didn’t want to stay in academia and become a PI. I wanted to explore other avenues for utilizing my PhD and my neuroscience background, like being able to influence the science from a higher level.

During my postdoc at NYU, my family moved to Texas because of my husband's job. As I was traveling back and forth finishing up papers and research, my PI, who knew that I did not want to stay in academia, found out about a job posting with the International League Against Epilepsy. I got that job as the project manager of a translational research task force with around 100 members around the world. I kind of call that my stepping-stone job because it was a part time position, and even though it was project management, it wasn’t at the level I’m at now as an associate research director. Through that position I learned some additional project management skills that helped me to transition into my current position.

I got my current position basically through networking, by knowing somebody who knew about the opening. Then I talked to the person who used to have this position to find out more about it, and so I was able to build a lot of important relationships and learn about what it takes to be successful in this role.

Now I'm still in Houston, I've been working remotely for the past eight years, and I really enjoy what I'm doing!

What were the requirements for your positions? Did you do any internships or join any other organizations to get into this field?

The main requirement was a background in science. They wanted you to have at least a Master's, but a PhD was preferred. Other than that, they wanted somebody who had demonstrated a strong work ethic, time management skills, and the ability to communicate. They were interested in the candidate’s presentations and publications, even if they weren’t directly related to epilepsy, as a means to demonstrate productivity.

Since they were looking for people with PhDs, do you think it's required or helpful to do a postdoc?

If you knew already as a graduate student that you didn't want to stay in academia, I don't think you necessarily need to do a postdoc before pursuing a different career path. However, for this particular position, completing a postdoc provided me with more scientific experience and opportunities to publish, likely enhancing my chances as a candidate. I would explore what else is out there and have conversations with people about the level of experience that they're looking for; you might take an entry level position or even the stepping-stone position that I had.

Before working with patient advocacy groups, did you ever do translational research?

I was on a translational research training grant as a postdoc, but it was more preclinical/basic science than translational. It was hard to understand how to transition out of this very basic research space, where I was in the lab studying synaptic plasticity, to something more administrative and based on project management skills.

What I think helped was that, as a researcher, you actually are learning a lot of the skills that that you use in this nonprofit space. You learn to write papers and grants, time management and project management, working interdependently with others---all really essential in my current role. And then of course you’re building a strong scientific background.

I will say that my PI was very helpful in guiding the process and so I think making strong connections, networking, and learning about opportunities from them is also really important in order to be able to step outside of research.

What was the hiring process like for this position?

There were several rounds of interviews. First an informational interview with our Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), and I do think that it helped that I had been in contact with some individuals at the organization to learn more about it and the position. Then there was another round of interviews where I went out to the organization, presented my work from both grad school and my postdoc, and interviewed with some team members and our CEO. After that I got an offer.

What's a typical day or week like in your job?

I might read scientific reports and compile them; I just finished writing a report to the Department of Defense, which provides some funding for the post-traumatic epilepsy group. This is a team science initiative so I frequently run meetings where we get the teams together, listen to each team present updates, and then do troubleshooting if there are issues. Later I might reach out to teams to offer more support on issues with the science.

We're also doing some strategic planning, figuring out what are the next steps, how do we want to continue this research in the future in order to actually find a way to prevent post traumatic epilepsy. That's also a big part of what I do and it's really interesting because it's not only supporting our current scientists but also thinking ahead to the future.

I also work on translating our scientific results into something that people who are not necessarily scientists understand. I'm not writing papers anymore, but I'm still writing.

Our organization doesn't only deal with post traumatic epilepsy, we also have scientists studying all different kinds of epilepsy, so we're in close contact with other patient advocacy groups. We have partnered and co-funded grants with, for example, the American Epilepsy Society. We attend conferences with other patient advocacy groups and talk to a group called the rare epilepsy network to understand how can we address needs of individuals that have rare types of epilepsy. It's a nice community where we're trying to work together to cure all these different kinds of epilepsy.

What I said parts about your job or work environment that you enjoy or find challenging?

What I liked about entering into this nonprofit space was that even though it’s focused on the day-to-day project management, I could still use my scientific background. I read the scientific reports that our grantees send in, and when we go through the grant application cycles, I get to read all this really interesting science that's going on and help decide where to invest the funding. I'm still doing science but I like that it's at a higher level and more top down---you're really driving the agenda, something that you might not be able to do in the same way if you're working in a lab.

Through our educational programs I get to actually interact with people affected by epilepsy. For example, I put together a monthly newsletter that covers progress in research; being able to communicate the science to people that are impacted by epilepsy has been really positive. That's also something that you don't always get if you're working in the lab.

Let's see, challenges. In general for a nonprofit, you need to fundraise to be able to fund researchers, which is always a challenge. There’s a whole development office that handles fundraising, but the research team also works with them on that. Another challenge is that we’re trying to drive the agenda---to push towards cures---on a broad level, but getting large groups of scientists to agree upon a direction is easier said than done.

Is there anything you wish you'd known about this field or working with nonprofits?

I really was not that familiar with the ins and outs of working at a nonprofit. We’ve encouraged graduate students and postdocs to help out as volunteers and get a flavor of working in a nonprofit. That's something that would have been nice to do, just to understand more what working in nonprofit is like. It's always great to do an internship, learn more about the field. Something else that I did not realize about nonprofits was just how dependent it is on the fundraising.

What kinds of positions or professional plans might come in the future on this career track?

Right now I'm an Associate Research Director, so the next step up would be a Research Director, and then eventually it’d be the CSO. Our CSO oversees all the people on our research team: myself, another Associate Research Director, the Grants Manager. We provide input but at that higher level you are really making those strategic planning decisions for the science of the organization and what should we focus on, obviously with information from people like the board or the CEO. It would be doing more of the real planning and setting the scientific vision for the organization.