The PERLA of our GeoLatinas' communityBy Lina C. Pérez Angel, Danielle P. Santiago Ramos, Rocío Caballero-Gill Edited by Angelique Rosa Marín The beginning of PERLA Our initiative called PERLA (Professional Exchange for Resilience Leadership and Advancement) was launched in January 2020 to directly support two items in the GeoLatinas mission: to empower and promote members of our community. Here, we summarize the first 6 PERLAs in 2020. “The feeling of empowerment can sometimes come from others, but we must also invest time to grow as people and professionals to truly feel that power and inspire others along the way. With that in mind, the professional and personal development committee met early 2019, where all of us expressed the wish to create a series of webinars, workshops, resources for professional development. Late 2019, I contacted experts in my network to cover themes of interest as expressed by our community and involved members in choosing a name, an important step as it made this initiative feel it truly belonged to us, and so PERLA was born...” -Rocío Caballero-Gill, GeoLatinas Leader and PERLA Founder Danielle Santiago Ramos and Lina Pérez-Ángel stepped up as leaders (completing our dream team) and together with Rocío, we formed the original group of PERLA facilitators. All three of us have been able to work really well together, supporting each other, aligning our own interests with the PERLAs we lead so that the labor in putting that event together serves as a truly learning experience and deeper expansion of our passions, curiosities, interests and network. In GeoLatinas, many of us rarely follow a linear path in our fields, thus this season of PERLA covered topics to both support our personal and professional growth as well as help a transition across job sectors. Our most recent PERLAs Our first PERLA webinar was about one of the most popular questions in academia -how to write fundable proposals for the National Science Foundation (NSF)-. Dr. Nicole Gasparini provided certain guidelines and tips both for postdoctoral fellowships and Principal Investigators (PIs) proposals in Earth and Planetary Sciences. In our second PERLA, Dr. Rehemat Bathia talked about one of the steps that many of us take after a PhD program -switching to jobs outside academia-. During this presentation we learned about several skills we developed during the course of graduate school and how these skills can be transferable to any kind of job. Some of the feedback provided by GeoLatinas members and participants of the PERLA was: “I attended the transferable skills PERLA by Rehemat and I was totally inspired. I guess I always knew that I was gaining skills in my PhD but I never realized how my skills were so useful to careers outside of academia. After this talk I felt so empowered and I shared Rehemat’s message with so many friends… we ARE capable of SO much!” - Julia Cisneros Our March webinar addressed a very common problem most of us face as academics - how to avoid having your entire day, week, sometimes even weekends, taken over by work commitments? Dr. Cathy Mazak delivered a PERLA providing invaluable tips on how to manage time and set boundaries between life and work, which will help us to avoid feeling overwhelmed and burnout. There are so many layers to the job search, from defining your goals to thinking about your personal brand. Dr. Clairet Guerra discussed a range of topics including resume tailoring, networking hacks, and how to best make use of digital resources for your job hunt. A must-see for those looking to transition from academia and are looking for some guidance on how to start. PERLA’s June meeting was born from the need to engage in the timely discussions on race and racism following the death of George Floyd. We held a brave space for our members to reflect on their unconscious biases and envision strategies to address them. We discussed topics such as structural racism, afro-latinidad, and anti-racism. An example of our members reflections: "In June, I attended the PERLA entitled "exploring our unconscious biases in a brave space" and found myself surprised at just how brave one could be in a PERLA. The event required participants to take the Harvard unconscious bias test, and we not only discussed our biases results, but also the validity of the questions and design of the test. The discussion we had emboldened us to deeply examine our own experiences and biases, and share insights of their origins, and the potential harm that comes when they continue unexamined." -Aída Guhlincozzi Finally, regardless of our professional career stage, communicating our science effectively is a skill that we all need to develop. In July, Mónica Feliú-Mójer shared with us how to better communicate science to a broader audience, how to make an impact on the people we are talking to, find our own voice, and the opportunities we have to keep improving our science communication. Thoughts from our members shows our useful this PERLA was: "I enjoyed this PERLA talk about Effective Communication in Science very much. I realized how important it is to understand your audience and yourself as a communicator to engage with them. I also learned about some resources to improve my message (e.g., Half-Life Your Message) to deliver more effectively an idea that has value to my audience." -Jorge San Juan What are the next steps for PERLA? Looking back, our team of facilitators has gone above and beyond any original expectations any of us had and we cannot wait to share what we will do in the next PERLA season, as we add facilitators from local teams (shout out to L. Fernanda Triviño Serrato and Carolina Morales!) and focus on more content in Spanish - stay tuned for our Portugues season!. We are always looking for leaders who want to join us, to continue making PERLA an important GeoLatinas vehicle for change.
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Editors-In-ChiefsAngelique Rosa Marín Archives
June 2021
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