On January 28, 2025, despite the biting cold, IDIGH trainees gathered at the McGill University Faculty Club to discuss career paths. As usual, program co-leader Ciro Piccirillo was the first to arrive to welcome the participants. Soon after, the organizing team Rojine McVea, Cal Koger-Pease, Andressa Brito Lira, Sanya Kapoor, Maysaloun Mokaddam, Vicky Barrera, and Eric Béliveau joined to finalize the preparations for a busy day ahead.
This full-day retreat was designed to allow master's, PhD, and postdoctoral trainees to explore various career paths and make informed decisions about their futures. This initiative was a direct response to feedback received from students through a recent survey. It is also thanks to this survey that the content of the retreat was carefully tailored to ensure the workshops met the community's expressed needs. This was made possible with funding from the Tremplin Consortium and financial support from the IDIGH Program.
Rojine McVea, a master's student and member of the organizing committee, opened the event and welcomed participants in front of an almost-full room, which was to become a full one a few moments later. Ciro Piccirillo then took over, emphasizing the importance of student involvement.
The main program began with Emily Bell and Amélie Bourdiec introducing the career development services available at the Institute, through Tremplin and the Desjardins Centre for Advanced Training (DCAT), and also shared their own career paths. This was followed by a panel of students from the Institute (Lydia Labrie, Eva Michaud, Gabriel Blanco Gomez, and Dhruv Mehrotra), moderated by Yichun Sun, who discussed training opportunities they had taken advantage of, including those through Tremplin and DCAT. After a short break, Marilyn Ahun (Junior Scientist), Janet Prince (Senior Industry Liaison Officer), Brian Ward (Senior Scientist), Nadim Tawil (Project Manager), and David Fong (Data Analytics &
Strategy Lead) took their seats for a career perspectives panel moderated by Rojine McVea and Cal Koger-Pease. The morning session concluded with a presentation by Leah Dolgoy (Local Wellness Advisor for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) on imposter syndrome during the job search. This interactive presentation generated numerous questions and testimonials from participants and may have made many realize they were not alone in their struggles.
During lunch, which was undoubtedly the busiest time of the day, many panelists and participants from both the morning and afternoon sessions had the opportunity to get to know each other and exchange a few words. Following this, a workshop was held by Adoc Talent Management on various strategies for finding and applying for a job. To ensure all participants could fully benefit from the advice, particularly on how to create a polished LinkedIn profile, the IDIGH Program hired a professional photographer so that each participant could have a high-quality, recent profile headshot.
The day concluded with a cocktail reception, where many professionals and representatives from resources available to McGill students were invited. Some of the exclusive attendees for the cocktail were Lucy Kim (Programming, Planning, and Research Officer - Cree Health Council), Nadia Gonzalez Dominguez (Project Coordinator, Lady Davis Institute), Melissa Grant (Clinical Trials Coordinator - Merck Canada), Cynthia Horth (Laboratory Coordinator, McGill University), Andy Garnier (Associate Scientist, Lab Operation, IQVIA), LeeAnn Ramsay (Medical Writer, JSS Medical Research), and Damien Montamat-Sicotte (Scientific Business Director, CellCarta). In the end, it was the cut-off time for our reservation at the McGill University Club that put an end to discussions that would undoubtedly have lasted longer.
Photos of the event are available here (by Eric Béliveau, Vicky Barrera, and Cal Koger-Pease).
