An increasing number of successful mid-career scientists grapple with the difficult decision to leave academia for greener pastures, with almost 50% percent leaving within ten years of publishing their first paper. Universities are losing their top talent as scientists confront waning motivation, misaligned ideals, workplace toxicity, inequalities, poor work-life balance, clinical burnout, and mental health deterioration. For some, the process out of the ivory tower is long, arduous and fraught with guilt. For others, it is a natural career trajectory towards new measures of success and growth opportunities.
Falling Out of Tune in Academia
Greg Tietjen, chief executive officer of Revalia Bio, lives life like a jazz musician, riffing off opportunities that bridge the many facets of his existence. Tietjen, who also happens to be a jazz guitarist, is a biophysicist/biomedical engineer with a faculty position at Yale University until recently. “I grew up with a deep love and passion for science. I loved space and astrophysics; it was like a bridge to a world beyond the one I was in,” Tietjen said. After high school, he completed an English degree and considered becoming a writer so that he could translate the complexities of the human experience.
Tietjen also played guitar in college, a passion that intensified after graduating, but a physical impairment prevented him from pursuing a musical career. “I was at my wit’s end and starting to think about what I should do with my life when fate intervened.” A fall while playing soccer changed the trajectory of his life. One shattered elbow and several surgeries later, he was told he may never hold a guitar again, let alone earn a living from it. He described receiving the news as “a huge relief.” He recalled lying in his hospital bed contemplating his next move: “I will turn the page; I’m not giving up, but I have to do something different.” He revisited his childhood love of science and mapped out the path to a scientific academic career, starting with an undergraduate degree in physics, followed by a graduate degree in biophysics and eventually a faculty position.
Tietjen pursued a career in translational science, intent on using his skills and knowledge to help patients. He joined a clinical department at Yale University and excelled at the challenges of establishing and growing his lab, including securing National Institutes of Health funding and other milestones of professorship. “It was amazing. The plan I had laid out for myself in the hospital bed came true. It was really profound.”
As Tietjen climbed the academic ranks, he felt a dissonance between his identity as a professor and his inner sense of purpose. The rigors and monotony of academic responsibilities dampened the sparks of passion and inspiration. Working in an academic setting also limited the type of translational research that interested Tietjen. He began to feel that leaving academia would put him in a better position to derive more immediate satisfaction from his work and to align more closely with his identity and world view. Driven strongly by the need to feel happy and fulfilled in his work, Tietjen soon began considering alternative career paths.
Fear keeps people in this loop of dissatisfaction. It’s scary to prioritise happiness over certainty and make a choice to walk away from it all to create something even better. – Greg Tietjen, Revalia Bio
After 10 years as a postdoctoral fellow and faculty member, Tietjen left academia in the same way he entered, with a jazz performer’s knack for fearlessly traversing the next improvisational bridge towards self-discovery. “I wouldn’t say that I got burned out. Part of what has allowed me to jump through different fields is this intuition around realizing my full potential,” Tietjen said.
He saw burnout often among his colleagues and attributes this to a disconnect between what academics would like to achieve and what they can accomplish when their energy is distributed in many different directions. “I’m not one to judge or demonize the institutions I’ve been a part of which have unlocked so much potential for me, but I think what can happen in these large organisations is that things become harder than they need to be. Friction builds up over time and people get tired of losing that energy to the environment instead of seeing the forward momentum [of their research].”
Tietjen co-founded Revalia Bio, a start-up that builds on his academic work. Free from the constraints of pursuing translational research in an academic environment, he was able to align more closely with the scientific passions that motivated him. His company runs human organ trials using resuscitated donor organs, which are sustained outside the body with perfusion machines like those used in clinical settings. “It’s like a reinvented version of a first-in-human clinical trial. Now you can do experiments that you could never do in any other setting, on the real human system,” Tietjen said. He hopes this work will transform patient care and create a profoundly impactful legacy for organ donors and their families. Tietjen described the immediacy of this work as deeply satisfying. “We receive this incredibly precious gift of a human organ. My promise to that donor family and to every physician that has enabled this is that we’re going to drive massive impact, not just write papers and win awards and grants. It has to change the experience of patients and care providers.”
Facing Workplace Toxicity
Mental health is the elephant in the bright halls of academia. A former tenured bio-geochemist, who wishes to stay unidentified, at a small liberal arts college, never imagined that a toxic workplace culture would catalyse her mental health deterioration and precipitate the decision to leave her dream job.
“I don’t like to think of myself as leaving academia because I was burned out. I was bullied out.”
When first offered the position, she was ecstatic and was thrilled to have the opportunity to combine her passions for environmental science and mentoring. “At the beginning, it was pretty good, but there were things that seemed amiss, like I hadn’t been told the whole truth when I was being recruited, specifically around facilities.” Her first year was one of the most successful in her academic career. “I got two NSF grants and had two high profile publications. It meant that I got a lot of attention in my first year and was on the [departmental] website a lot,” she said, recalling that this attention was not well received by all her colleagues.
She multi-tasked the mammoth responsibilities of academic science and continued to push through challenges, focusing on the things she loved most about her job, such mentoring students. “I loved the ability to have this huge impact on their lives, much in the same way that I had the privilege of having when I was younger. “I had all these amazing students. I loved my classes, I loved my research and I loved most of my colleagues. It’s like when you get course evaluations. Most of them are positive, but it’s really hard not to focus on those few negative ones.”
This highly talented female scientist travelled the long and winding road towards the academic exit ramp amid what she felt was an insidious drip of toxicity consisting of backhanded remarks, gender biases, gas lighting, minimising accomplishments and bullying. “Little by little I felt less wanted. Resources were withheld from me. I ended up paying for things for my classes out of my research budget and start-up,” she recalled. She also sat on various committees and voiced her opinions during meetings. As a junior faculty member at the time, she noticed the inherent power dynamics between junior and tenured faculty. “I really didn’t read the room correctly. I didn’t recognize that ‘we want to hear from everyone’ wasn’t true.”
Over time, her mental health declined and she realised that tenure would not solve her workplace challenges. Her therapist expressed deep concern for her well-being and facilitated medical leave. The tipping point came after her department underwent an external evaluation. She was pulled aside by two of the evaluators who suggested that she explore other job opportunities because it was unlikely she would find the support she sought in her current environment. “That was what led to me applying for jobs, it was the validation I needed. Things had gotten progressively worse,” she said.
By that time, she was the sixth woman in STEM to leave her small liberal arts college, all for some combination of personal and work-life balance reasons. “My closest colleague [left] the year after me, and I don’t have a single professor friend who didn’t feel some level of burnout,” she said. Exhausted before leaving academia, her workload made her less able to cope with workplace negativity.
Embracing change is never easy. The hills and valleys of life are often defining moments, serving as a catapult for growth. In academia, like all other aspects of life, course correction takes courage. An increasing number of successful mid-career scientists grapple with the difficult decision to leave academia for greener pastures and eventually transitioned to the science policy space. As a scientist, activist and educator, she continues to apply her passion for advocacy to broaden participation and increase equity, inclusivity and justice in science.
