IgEquity (Formerly ImmunoXX+)

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IgEquity: Immunologists for Gender Equity

A note on our recent name change and rebranding:

Our organization began three years ago when our founders, during their first year as graduate students at UCSF, acknowledged that there were very few women in leadership and mentoring positions within the Immunology Department at UCSF. While the number of women in science bachelors and PhD programs has increased over the years, this increase in representation at early levels of training has not translated to an increase in representation at the higher levels of scientific careers and advancements. Our founders thus created ImmunoXX+, a student-led organization that recognized disparities in gender representation across academia, and aimed t provide programming, peer and career networks, as well as financial resources to help highlight, connect, and support successful female immunologists.

In the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black people, our country is grappling with its complicity in systemic racism. The re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the national spotlight has stirred many of us to action, while also causing us to acknowledge our past of silence and complicity. As an organization, we recognized the need to step back, and critically assess whether our organization and mission is fully serving our community to dismantle systems of racial and gender-based discrimination. We are excited to stand alongside the newly formed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advocacy group ImmunoDiverse, which seeks to create an anti-racist and welcoming environment for people from underrepresented minorities (URM) recognizing that these barriers primarily disenfranchises individual of Black, LatinX and Native American descent. We have also acknowledged that our previous mission and actions – to highlight, connect, and support women in Immunology – lacked the intersectionality and inclusion necessary to create gender equity within our department and throughout professional science careers. Importantly, our organization's previous name, ImmunoXX+, was exclusionary and not representative of our support for the many trans and non-binary individuals who face gender discrimination every day. It is for this reason that we have adopted a new name, IgEquity – Immunologists for Gender Equity – and a revitalized mission statement.

We are pleased to be part of ImmunoSpectrum, the new umbrella program within ImmunoX that will provide support for both ImmunoDiverse and IgEquity. We look forward to working alongside ImmunoDiverse to support their mission and programs as we collectively seek racial and gender equity in science

Mission Statement

Our goal is to address and remove the barriers and biases standing in the way of gender equity in Immunology. We recognize that intersectionality is vital for building an inclusive and empowering environment, which is why we are committed to centering the needs and voices of women and non-binary underrepresented minorities (URM). Over time, we believe our mission and values will create equal opportunity and representation across all academic levels in immunology research and science.

Pledge of Support

In recent months, many of our colleagues at UCSF have written open letters and calls to action addressing the issues of systemic racism present within the UCSF community. The members of IgEquity fully support these calls to action, and the demands outlined in these letters linked here: Graduate Student Petition, Humans of UCSF Petition

We are encouraged by the response of the UCSF administration to these calls to action but acknowledged that continued support and demands for change are required. See the full response to these letters here: https://graduate.ucsf.edu/petition-response

Leadership Committee

Camillia Azimi Co-Founder, Director BMS, Roybal Lab, 3rd Year Synthetic Immunology, Autoimmunity, Cancer Immunology	Tara McIntyre Co-Founder, Director BMS, Erlebacher Lab, 3rd Year Fetal-Maternal Tolerance	Casey Burnett Co-Founder, Director BMS, Spitzer and Roybal Labs, 3rd Year Synthetic Immunology, Systems Immunology
Erin Huiting Deputy Director BMS, Rotating, 1st Year Host-pathogen interactions, microbiology, synthetic immunology	Rachel DeBarge Deputy Director BMS, Spitzer Lab, 2nd Year Cancer Immunology, Systems Immunology	Julie Garcia Deputy Director BMS, Roybal Lab, 2nd Year Synthetic Biology/Immunology

Trainee Leadership Team

Breanna Allen BMS, Spitzer Lab, 4th Year Systems Cancer Immunology	Casey Beppler BMS, Krummel Lab, 5th Year Tumor Immunology, Synthetic Immunology	Jessica Cortez BMS, Marson Lab, 5th Year Autoimmunity, Cancer Immunology, Gene Engineering
Sophia Guldberg BMS, Spitzer Lab, 2nd Year Computational Systems Immunology	Lisiena Hysenaj, PhD Post-doctoral Scholar, Roose Lab Organoids, Organoid D2B, T Cell Therapy, Infectious Disease	Gabi Reeder BMS, First Year Student Immune Receptor-Ligand Interactions, Signaling, and Immunotherapeutics
Jennifer Umhoefer BMS, Marson Lab, 3rd Year Immunogenetics, Transcriptional Regulation in T Cells

Key Initiatives

BUILDING COMMUNITY
Develop communities that support, empower, and elevate voices of women and non-binary scientists while fostering connections between faculty, fellows, and trainees.

Actionable Initiatives and Commitments:

Host an annual Women in Immunology Symposium
Host local networking/social hours and luncheons
Facilitate Restorative Justice Community Circles and Drop-in Calls
Assist in organization and provide financial support a DEI event during BMS recruitment with other student-led DEI organizations

ADVOCACY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Advocate for and hold ourselves accountable to supporting opportunities and policies that dismantle gender-based discrimination and biases.

Actionable Initiatives and Commitments:

Host an annual Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy Session
Work with experts to provide access to or facilitate trainings on Addressing Biases and Understanding Insectional Identity and Privilege.
Work with ImmunoDiverse to curate and publish an ImmunoX Consensus and Annual Progress Report. This report will allow us to better understand the gender and racial representation in our community, and the outstanding needs of our community.
Advocate and support the development of a Path to Postdoc within the ImmunoX Department.
Our directors sand deputy directors commit to joining one other DEI organization to provide support to the larger UCSF community.
Evaluate IgEquity events to ensure full representation of BIPOC women and hold ourselves accountable to inviting diverse speakers.
Evaluate IgEquity events to determine how we can incorporate other student-led DEI organizations.
Meet annually with the Gender Equity Task Force to better understand resources and changes at the administration level of the UCSF Graduate Division.
Advocate for a full-time administrator who receives intensive dedicated training in DEI to relieve the administrative pressure on Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows to become experts within this area. This administrator should be responsible for designing and leading annual training on (I) how to be an effective mentor and active ally and (ii) unconscious bias, diversity and inclusion, and bystander intervention. These will be required for all faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in ImmunoX. See Graduate Student Petition, action items, 6, 7, and 9.
Work with ImmunoDiverse and ImmunoX to establish a model for providing course credit or compensation to students who substantially contribute time and effort to DEI efforts.

MENTORING AND OUTREACH
Connect with local schools, organizations, and academic institutions across the Bay Area to provide mentoring and outreach for women and non-binary scientists interested in pursuing immunology research.

Actionable Initiatives and Commitments:

Launch a virtual IgEquity Mentorship Program that prioritizes support and resources for predominantly URM high schools' students, undergrads, and post-grads.
Facilitate mentorship of UCSF trainees and fellows through the UCSF Connect online community.
Continue outreach efforts at the Bay Area Science Festival Discovery Day
Expand outreach for recruitment of BIPOC students and commit to fostering a more diverse applicant pool for the UCSF BMS graduate program and others.
Provide up to date mentoring resources on the IgEquity website to provide information to our community about currently established and active mentoring programs.

Getting Involved

UCSF COMMUNITY MEMBERS

IgEquity Community: Anyone with a vested interest in learning about, participating in, and/or supporting our initiatives, please sign up with our listserv to receive regular updates and invitations to our community meetings.

IgEquity Trainee Leadership Team: Members of our community who have taken on responsibilities of ideating, spearheading, and communicating initiatives. These members include postdocs, graduate students, technicians, and research associates. Members are expected to attend at least 50% of community and leadership meetings.

IgEquity Deputy Directors: Members of our trainee Leadership team that have taken on a two year commitment as the leaders of IgEquity. The first year of this commitment requires shadowing current Directors, the second year of this commitment requires taking on a full directorship role.

IgEquity Directors: IgEquity Directors commit to one year of executive leadership, directing the vision, mission and overall initiatives of IgEquity. Directors additionally commit to training a class of new deputy directors. Members of our trainee Leadership can become Directors after completing one year as a Deputy Director.

IgEquity Faculty Leadership Team: ImmunoX and other UCSF Faculty that commit to providing one or more years of advising to the IgEquity leadership team. Faculty leaders meet with the Directors and Deputy Directors twice a year to provide direction, counseling, and support to IgEquity Initiatives.

Please email us at immunoxxplus@ucsf.edu, to sign up for our listserv and become a member of our community.

CURRENT AND FUTURE INDUSTRY PARTNERS

Are you part of a biotech industry within the Bay Area? Are you interested in advancing gender equity within science? Would you or your company like to support or be involved in IgEquity initiatives? We would love to partner with you! Please reach out to igequity@ucsf.edu to get in touch with one of our directors.

Annual Women in Immunology Symposium

Event Summary:

The Annual Women in Immunology Symposium was founded in 2018 to highlight exceptional female researchers in the immunology community at UCSF. We designed the symposium to incorporate both established faculty members as well as trainees who are earlier in their career to demonstrate the breadth of female run labs and the depth and quality of training in immunology at UCSF. We hope that the symposium will provide a scientific platform as well as catalyze discussion on gender disparity in our community. The inaugural event last year had an overwhelming positive response, attracting over 200 attendees throughout the day and prompting the department to suggest it be an annual event. Additionally, the department has provided financial and administrative support to develop a Women in Immunology group to expand events and resources catering to the unique needs of women in the community. With that in mind, we now have a group of nine women who are working to develop not only the symposium, but additional career development panels, small group dinners, and networking resources. Additionally, we are developing small fellowships sponsored by our industry partners to help support trainees in our community.

2019's symposium will extend networking opportunities throughout the day by including an option for an organized small group lunch with the speakers and faculty members. We also received positive feedback about including industry members, recruiters, and alternative career scientist at the networking reception at the end of the event so we will continue the work to expand the industry partnerships to build a productive space for UCSF members to connect with the broader Bay Area biotech community. We are thrilled that a number of high-profile companies partnered with us in 2019 including Lyell, Amgen, 10x Genomics, and Arsenal Biosciences.

Interested in getting involved in organizing the event? We are always looking to expand the leadership team to help organize the symposium and future events. Email us at i gequity@ucsf.edu.Want to become an industry partner? Contact us to see how your company can get involved in supporting the symposium and future events.

Check out this article about 2018's symposium

Events

Future Events:

Past Events:

COVID-19 Virtual Symposium
June 4th, 2020 2-4pm PST

Event Details: Guided by our mission to highlight, connect and support female scientists, ImmunoXX+ is hosting a COVID-19 Mini Symposium to showcase the current COVID-19 research efforts of 4 incredible female scientists. We will hear presentations from Drs. Carina Marquez, Ruby Yu, Kizzmekia Corbett, and Carolyn Calfee about topics ranging from viral transmission, to the current state of antibody testing. The symposium will conclude with a 20-minute Q&A session. Throughout this event we are encouraging participants to donate to our sponsored partner, the Woman’s Global Empowerment Fund, who is working to prepare and equip local communities in Uganda to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Donate to the Woman’s Global Empowerment Fund: https://wgefund.org/

Couldn't attend? Click here for the recording of this event.

How to Network with UCSF Connect
May 26, 2020

Event Details: In order to facilitate community and mentorship between women in science across career trajectories and industries, ImmunoXX+ has partnered with UCSF OCPD to create an ImmunoXX+ group on the networking platform UCSF Connect. We hope that this tool will help build connections between current UCSF scientists and alumni. During this two-part workshop, we will be going over the UCSF Connect platform, features of the ImmunoXX+ group, and strategies on how to best use UCSF Connect to expand your network. Join us for one or both parts of the session.

5-5:30pm Sara Ayazi, Office of Career and Professional Development: This part will discuss strategies on how to use UCSF Connect to expand your network, advance your career, and stay connected with the rest of the UCSF community. We will define the purpose of networking and articulating your goals, and recognize various methods to find and approach professionals in your field using UCSF Connect.
5:30-6pm Katie Maloney, Alumni Relations: This part will provide an overview of UCSF Connect and how to use it to send messages and connect with the network, as well as the features of the ImmunoXX+ group.

Can't make it? Check back here after the symposium for a link to the recording of this event.

Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy Meeting
December 11, 2019

Event Details: ImmunoXX+ presents a Gender, Diversity and Inclusion strategy meeting featuring guest speakers Dr. Tiffany Scharschmidt, Dr. D'Anne Duncan, and Dr. Lisa Butterfield. Our speakers have extensive experience in promoting gender equity at UCSF, and previous institutions. We have invited them to share their experiences, and to discuss the gender equity initiatives currently ongoing at UCSF. We welcome students, postdocs, technicians, faculty, and staff to attend, listen and ask questions about how UCSF is approaching gender equity issues. As a second aim, we will ask our pane speakers about about how ImmunoXX+ can provide resources, support, and awareness t issues of gender equity in ways that compliment the current university wide and departmental programs.

Outcome/Meeting Note: Thank you to everyone that came to our Gender, Diversity, and Inclusion Strategy meeting! ImmunoXX+ leadership members Casey Burnett and Julie Garcia led us through a discussion with our panel, and subsequent discussion with our attendees.

Dr. Butterfield spoke about her time leading a Women's Task Force at Pitt. This task force employed a data-driven approach to bring transparency to salaries, grant awards, speaker invitations, and more. This data motivated the University of Pittsburgh to implement policies to ensure equity in hiring and salary decisions, as well as improving policies that affect the day to day work environment for faculty.
Dr. Tiffany Scharschmidt, a member of ImmunoX leadership, discussed initiatives aimed at both increasing gender and under-represented minority diversity within the ImmunoX program. Some initiatives include parental support programs, community building events and equity in scientific studies.
Dr. D'Anne Duncan spoke about initiatives to increase diversity at a university wide level and encouraged recruiting programs to attend conferences hosted by organizations such as Sacnas and ABRCMS to reach under-represented minorities. Additionally, D'Anne spoke about the diversity statement requirements for faculty applicants at UCSF. D'Anne also discussed programs to support and build community, such as the IMSD and Path to Postdoc programs.

Discovery Day @ Bay Area Science Festival
November 2, 2019

Event Details: Check out our smartphone microscopes, dress up like a scientist and have your picture taken with some of our very own ImmunoXX+ leadership team scientists. Join us as we show students of all ages realize what a scientist looks like!

Second Annual Women in Immunology Symposium
October 25th, 2019

Event Details: Please join us for our annual Women in Immunology Symposium, where we provide a platform for female immunologists from all training and career levels to present their work. We are pleased to host Dr. Zena Werb as our UCSF Internal Keynote Speaker, and Dr. Shannon Turley from Genentech as our External Keynote Speaker. In addition to a full day of presentations, we will host a networking luncheon where trainees can meet and eat with faculty in a casual, small group setting. Please sign up ahead of time to secure a seat at our networking luncheon. Finally, join us at the conclusion of our symposium for a networking social hour, where our sponsors, speakers and participants are encouraged to connect over drinks and appetizers.

Please use this link to access the program: https://ucsf.app.box.com/s/u0wdltx2o7z961u57pbcvcjhdbd0uixg

First Annual Women in Immunology Symposium
October 22, 2018

Event Details: The first annual Women in Immunology Symposium hosted by ImmunoXX+ was the event that launched our organization. This event included 12 incredible presentations by faculty, postdocs and graduate students. In addition to these speakers, we were pleased to host Dr. Crystal Mackall for our keynote address. This first symposium received an overwhelmingly positive response from the scientific community at UCSF, with no more than 200 attendees throughout the day. The success of this event and the conversations that were started encouraged our founders to commit to hosting an annual symposium, as well as smaller events throughout the year. We are thankful for the continuous support from the scientific community at UCSF, ImmunoX, and our sponsorship partners.

International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women’s Day, an important day to celebrate women's achievements and to advocate for equity and equality in all spheres of our lives. This year the theme for International Woman’s Day is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world."

This pandemic has highlighted both the centrality of women’s contributions and the obstacles that women encounter. Here we present portrait of three women in Immunology that were at the front of the ImmunoX COVID-19 research response. These researchers were mobilized at the beginning of the pandemic, becoming involved with two collaborative ImmunoX scientific projects that sought to understand and find cures for COVID-19 disease.

Lauren, can you tell us about yourself and your role within ImmunoX?
I am a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) specialist and I manage the CoLabs-supported BSL-3 facility at Parnassus. This lab is where we can handle aerosol pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2. I collaborate with labs on their COVID-19-related projects and execute the experiments requiring the live virus.

Lauren, as a BSL-3 specialist in ImmunoX I guess you have worked very hard in 2020. What are some reflections you have about this past year? How has the pandemic affected you both professionally and personally?
The last year has gone by very fast for me. There has been so much work to do which was been both exciting and tiring. I spent the entirety of my graduate career working in a BSL-3 facility so it has been really rewarding to be able to put those skills to good use. I think the biggest impact this work has had on my personal life is that it needs to be a conscious decision for me to disconnect when I get home. Pre-pandemic I had a very full social life so now it’s easy for me to work all the time because I can’t have that social life right now. I realize that I cannot maintain this intense working lifestyle forever so I’m getting better at letting my brain take a break when I get home.
Have you experienced barriers or challenges as a woman in science? How have you overcome those challenges?
I have felt barriers for being a Mexican American woman scientist. Many times, I would second guess myself and think maybe I was just checking off a diversity box. Unfortunately, that little voice doubting myself is still in the back of my head sometimes but now I override that doubt by acknowledging my hard work that has put me in my current position.
What is one message you would like to share with women scientists?
One thing that I have been trying to get better at is avoiding saying things are ok when they are not. I notice that I do it to avoid an uncomfortable situation but it doesn’t solve anything. For example, when people assume I am not a PhD-level scientist because my arms are covered in tattoos, that is an outdated assumption and I should let them know instead of just saying “oh it’s ok”. My message to other women in science is that it is ok to acknowledge when someone has said something hurtful.

Michelle, can you tell us about yourself and your role within ImmunoX?
I am the middle child of an African American mother and a Nigerian father and I grew up in Riverside, CA. I received my Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in Integrative Biology and my Master’s degree from SFSU in MCB. My earliest science interests centered on human anatomy and physiology. As a young child when asked what I wanted to do when I grow up. My response was ‘I want to cure cancer.’ Looking closely at the body’s structures and being able to perform dissections in high school biology helped me hone my early interest for science. That interest was transformed while doing an internship after my undergraduate studies in Dr. Mina Bissell’s lab at LBNL, where I took part in a project involving how the tissue microenvironment impacts mammary gland development.

Today I am the lead of the Organoid D2B core where I develop 3D cell culture to broadly study cellular interactions and cell signaling pathways that govern cancer progression and drug responses. Another goal of the Organoid D2B Core is to build a living organoid biobank to serve as a platform for collaborative research at UCSF. A lot of the early work that I have done has centered on maintaining the stem cell niche in these organoid cultures by modulating growth factors and ECM stiffness allowing for unlimited passaging of the 3D cultures in our biobank.
2020 has been a difficult year for many of us, what are some reflections you have about this past year? How has the pandemic affected you both professionally and personally?
The last year has definitely been difficult because there were so many uncertainties. However, I consider myself to be fortunate as we were considered essential workers and I didn’t suffer any financial burdens. I was able to come in to work and continue to process samples that added to our biobank and research in a large way, including a COVID project in the Roose lab. Personally, it has been hard not being able to travel to see my parents, but knowing that they are safe and self-isolating was calming. My oldest sister is an Emergency Medicine resident physician at a hospital in Manhattan. New York was the epicenter for the corona virus early in the pandemic and her daily frontline contact was unsettling. We made sure to stay in constant communication.
How have you coped with difficult or challenging moments in your career?
I have been fortunate to have very strong science mentors (Dr. Jamie Bascom, Dr. Alissa Myrick and Dr. Kessiena Gbenedio) that have left a large impression on me and continue to guide me in my professional development. Their support and tangible suggestions have helped propel me through obstacles to ultimately reach my scientific goals.
What is one message you would like to share with women scientists?
Do not allow anyone to dictate your success. Once you have found your passion move towards it, because the satisfaction is endless. There are so many areas of science that need to be explored and you can add to that.

Gabriela, can you tell us about yourself and your role within ImmunoX?
I am junior faculty in the Department of Medicine and the ImmunoX program, and director of the Data Science CoLab. Our lab studies immunity at the systems-level using single-cell approaches. We are also developing the UCSF Data Library with ImmunoX to house, curate, and explore high-dimensional data generated at UCSF.
Have you experienced barriers or challenges as a woman in science? How have your overcome those challenges?
The lab where I trained as a PhD student was majority male, and was a large lab where it was easy to get lost in the shuffle if you weren’t confidently pushing forward your ideas. This can be a difficult environment for a trainee, and it was hard for me at first as I was trying to develop my computational skills. I fortunately had a computational mentor in the lab, a female postdoc who not only helped train me and cultivate my confidence, but also served as an example to me of a brilliant, successful woman in science at a later career stage. This representation issue is exacerbated at the faculty level, and seeking out mentors has been really helpful in navigating this.
What is one message you would like to share with women scientists?
It can feel intimidating to pursue a career in science for anyone, and can be especially challenging for women. My advice: give it a try. You know it won’t happen if you don’t try it, and you may surprise yourself at how capable you are at tackling new areas of research and striving for the next career stage. In addition, seek out the help, support, and guidance of your peers and mentors. We are a community at UCSF and in science, and I’ve found most people are willing to help you just need to ask.

View pdf of their interviews here.

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