My training took seven years. I didn’t learn how to make sushi for the first three years. I only got two days off a month, and slept on the restaurant floor. But I loved the job. I’d go to the fish market every morning. I got to open the restaurant and see the customers. I’d watch my mentor making sushi and would copy him under the table, practising with my fingers.
The Observer / The Guardian, 12 April 2025 source ↗
In the whole of my career, there were very few training sessions that I missed. Even when I was pregnant, I trained all the way through. I was back training when my daughter was two weeks old. You've got to commit to this, because it can be really easy to walk away from the track, convince yourself, "Oh, well, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll catch up". You can't and what I say is it's all pennies in the bank. When I say that to my daughter, she rolls her eyes at me, but you put a couple of pennies in every day and when it matters, then you've got this bank to call on, as opposed to you can't stick them all in two weeks before.
And like most nurses, I found myself running into certain frustrations. I started to look for ways to make a better argument, to advocate more convincingly for the people under my care. That led me to read up on civil law and produce a few research papers, and then I did a master’s degree in health science and also an MBA. All of that allowed me to see other sides of the problem. It also showed me how issues affecting nurses could be elevated by approaching ministers and other people in power with sound, evidence-based arguments.
They win the respect, the deserved trust, of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust. And so the way to get it is to deliver what you’d want to buy if the circumstances were reversed.
My science family came from all over the world, and members were of varied backgrounds, cultures, and abilities. The diversity in this "small world" I worked in daily provided the most stimulating environment, with many challenges and much optimism. Over the years, my research group has had close to 150 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting associates. Many of them are now in leading academic, industrial and governmental positions. Working with such minds in a village of science has been the most rewarding experience – Caltech was the right place for me.
I moved to Argentina, then back to Tokyo and then to Anchorage, in Alaska, where I ran a restaurant. After 50 days the restaurant burnt down – an electrical fire. I lost my dream. I lost my money. I lost my passion. I thought about suicide, but thinking of my family and my kids made me realise I had to wake up.
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Óscar Arias Sánchez, Mellody Hobson, Yaa Gyasi, Lewis Hamilton, Malala Yousafzai
Search the directory for somebody in particular.