Andrea Miyahira: Hi. I'm Andrea Miyahira here at the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Joining me today for a very special women-in-science discussion is Dr. Mary-Ellen Taplin. She's a professor at Harvard Medical School and a GU medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Taplin, thanks for joining us today.

Mary-Ellen Taplin: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Andrea Miyahira: So you've been a leader in our field for a really long time and an inspiration for so many. So tell us about your career path.

Mary-Ellen Taplin: Oh, I'm happy to. So, I went to medical school at University of Massachusetts. I was the first in my family to go to college, actually, so I didn't have a lot of role models in medicine. And I went through medical school with a very open mind of what I actually liked and what resonated with me.

And I ended up loving internal medicine, I think, because I liked all the systems of the body and thinking about it, and then decided to specialize in oncology, medical oncology, for a very similar reason. I liked to think about the body as an integrated system, and cancer affects every part of the body. And so did a medical oncology fellowship at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. And as part of the fellowship, the last two years you've been doing research. And I chose to work in a basic research lab.

And interestingly, and for your listeners, at the time, I wanted to do hematology. I was not interested in medical oncology. I chose a molecular immunology lab that was studying lymphocyte biology. And partway through my time in the lab, as a sign of the times, the principal investigator was thinking of getting into prostate cancer because there was a lot of funding going into prostate cancer at the time.

Michael Milken had started CaPCURE around that time, and the Department of Defense was starting to fund prostate cancer research. So he and I designed a project around the androgen receptor. And we had the hypothesis that changes in the androgen receptor would account for transition to castration-resistant disease. This was back in 1991, so it was a long time ago. And that work was seminal in terms of being published in the New England Journal of Medicine because we found mutations in the androgen receptor that changed the functional aspects of the receptor.

So from then on, I became a prostate cancer investigator. So I always say, I didn't choose prostate cancer. It chose me. And that would be a word of advice that I would have to my colleagues coming up is, to have an open mind of what's going on around you. And sometimes what you think you might be setting out to do might change for reasons that are somewhat out of your control, I guess. But I've loved prostate cancer. I loved the field. I loved my colleagues, and it's been very gratifying.

Andrea Miyahira: Thank you. So you've held quite a few leadership positions over the years. So tell us about some of those positions and what you've learned about being a leader and any advice you'd have for the next generation and how to be a leader, how to develop leaders, especially among women.

Mary-Ellen Taplin: Yeah, it's a very important question. I didn't set out to be a leader, to be honest with you. My personality is more of a rank and file, do my project, to do my work, what's around me. But I had a lot of leadership positions come my way. And my GU director, Phil Kantoff, at the time, asked me to be the director of GU Clinical Research at Dana-Farber. And I said, OK. I'll lean into that. And it was an undefined position, really, and it was a fairly small group at the time.

And then over the next 10 or 12 years, I really was able to think about it strategically, what do we do well, what are the challenges for us, and to build the group in terms of the work we were doing and the people, but also in terms of efficiency and having-- operating procedures for things and having goals. And I wasn't sure I was even going to like it. I had no experience being a director of clinical research. But I had done a lot of clinical research and I had strong ideas of things that took too much time in terms of getting a protocol open and so forth.

And so that position was-- I really liked and felt like I had made some innovations. And then that led to another institution-wide leadership position in clinical research as a chairperson of a committee, the executive committee for clinical research, which reports into the president and placed me on an executive leadership committee at the Dana-Farber. And similarly, I've been involved in operational efficiencies for clinical research across the whole Institute, so not just in GU.

So, that one position led to another. And I think that that's, again, a good message that if you take a position and you're serious about it and do a good job, there's a very high likelihood that it will lead to a next thing, a next position that might even have more responsibility. I think if you take a position and slow walk it. It's a title. You go to a meeting, turn off your camera and walk away from the screen--

I wouldn't advise that people just add committees or things that they do to pad their CV or whatever. Your time is limited. And I think it's important to take on roles that you believe in, that you're going to believe that you're going to make a difference, not just keep things status quo. And I've liked that part of it, building and interacting and finding best practices has been rewarding for me.

Andrea Miyahira: Well, thanks. And talk about leadership. You're one of the first women in your field. So have you ever been mentored by a woman? And when you think about mentorship and mentoring women, either a male or a female mentor, what have you learned as both a mentee and as a mentor?

Mary-Ellen Taplin: I have never been mentored by a woman. I think at my level and GU medical academic, GU medical oncology there are maybe five of us all spread across different institutions, really across the country. So, most of my mentorship has been with males in my orbit. And I honestly don't really think it matters too much in terms of gender if you have a good mentor who advocates for you.

I had some really super role models, though, who are women in the field that are well-known to you, like Karen Knudsen. Just watching her career progress has been amazing. And a woman, Lynn Seely, who was instrumental in developing enzalutamide and subsequently relugolix, she's just a phenomenal role model in her world, which has touched our world, drug development in GU.

And so I think you can have-- they're not classic mentors, but you can have role models that, from afar, can be meaningful. You see what they're doing and you're like, wow, if they can do that, I can do what's challenging for me in this particular time. And the second part of your question, I forget, was.

Andrea Miyahira: Oh, advice for mentoring the younger generation of women.

Mary-Ellen Taplin: Yeah, and I have two daughters who are both-- one's a physician and one's a PhD. And I've learned watching them. And I think a big part of mentoring is sitting back and listening, because, I think, especially when you get to my stage, you have a lot of preconceived notions and how it was when I went. But 30, 40 years later, things have changed and people's worlds are different than it was in the 1990s, for say.

So I think being a good mentor, a lot of it is like listening, taking stock, thinking of a person as an individual, what are their challenges, what are their needs, how can I make their life a little bit easier by an introduction or a consideration, a collaboration, providing resources?

I've hired a writer for our group and a pathologist for our group. And these people do a little bit of work for me, but 90% of their effort is for the others in the group. So, I think there's no one answer, obviously, to your question, but I think really just taking the time to understand what might make a difference for a person who's in an early stage of their career.

Andrea Miyahira: Thank you. And talk about work-life balance. What have you learned throughout the years, and do you have any tips for how to achieve a better work-life balance?

Mary-Ellen Taplin: Yeah. Work-life balance is challenging. And I think the first thing for an individual is to really thoughtfully ask yourself what you want your work-life balance to be. Because for some person, there's a huge continuum of what will make them happy. Somebody might be most happy working a lot, and someone else might need more time away from work. But figuring that out for yourself, I think, is the first step.

I would, over the years, literally every year, every six months be like, think about it. Are you happy with your work-life balance? If you're not, what do you want to change? Think of it as a task, to be honest with you. Because if you just let the work take control, there's never any end to the work. So then you might end up depressed or sick or stressed because your work-life balance is out of sync with what you want for yourself.

So I don't think there's any one right answer to what a work-life balance should be. But I think it's your job, not your institution's job or your boss's job, to think about what you might want for your work life balance. And then there's a reality of time. There might be trade offs that you have to make.

I was a single mother from when my kids were 12 and 15 till-- and had a long commute to work. So I would say, for me, I had to prioritize things during that time. And my promotion probably took a few years longer than it would have otherwise. But you know what? OK. My career output and happiness in the field it was not affected by that.

But I would just say that your career is not a race, and it's better to be thoughtful about your work-life balance and understand there might be trade offs at different points in time in your career. But you can't ignore it or else it will snowball on you, I think, in terms of problems.

Andrea Miyahira: Thank you. And are there any other tips that you would give to younger women who want to follow in your footsteps?

Mary-Ellen Taplin: The biggest tip I would give is to believe in yourself. Recently, I had a young woman presenting at my executive committee and every other sentence she was apologizing for-- but she's fantastic. And I wanted to say to her, you have nothing to apologize for. Your work is wonderful. So, I guess, I'm just saying, just believe in yourself. Believe in your work.

We all go through dips in terms of our careers and of productivity or happiness or feeling like it's going to work out or when is the next good project going to show up? Go with the flow. There will be ups, and there'll be downs. And it's a long, hopefully, a long career in life as an academic investigator. But just believe in yourself. Trust in yourself, and things will work out.

Andrea Miyahira: Yeah. I think imposter syndrome is actually a problem for a lot of people. But what I've learned is, talk to other people and you realize that they're people too. And everyone deals with these things in their own way, and many people find solutions. And it's wonderful to hear your tips. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Mary-Ellen Taplin: You're welcome. My pleasure. It was fun.