Speaker 1: This is On the Job, a podcast about finding your
Speaker 1: life's work. On the job, is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. This season, we're bringing you stories of
Speaker 1: folks following their passion to carve their own career path.
Speaker 1: Lab work and science tech jobs are some of the
Speaker 1: many unsung heroes of the pandemic. The problem with awesome
Speaker 1: unsung jobs like this people don't know about them and
Speaker 1: might be missing out on occupations they love working on.
Speaker 1: Today we talk about those jobs as someone who loves
Speaker 1: working in their field and is trying to make it
Speaker 1: just a little bit more accessible for everyone. This season
Speaker 1: on the show, we're talking to a lot of people
Speaker 1: who work behind the scenes in tech, people who honestly
Speaker 1: shape the way that we all live by doing jobs
Speaker 1: that most of us might not understand. Right. Um, so
Speaker 1: hi to me. Jay Gardner is one of those people.
Speaker 1: Jay Gardner, I am thirty one years old. I am
Speaker 1: currently a post doctoral researcher at the Fox Chase Cancer
Speaker 1: Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Okay, so what does that mean? Okay,
Speaker 1: it's on the most basic level. I'm kind of trying
Speaker 1: to study the biology of cancer and understand what makes
Speaker 1: it tick. Jay does a lot of complicated, fascinating things,
Speaker 1: as you're going to hear in the show. But what
Speaker 1: she's exceptionally good at kind of her whole thing is
Speaker 1: explaining it. So to start, she specializes in pancreatic cancer,
Speaker 1: one of the worst because it usually gets caught so late.
Speaker 1: But what's kind of unique about what I do and
Speaker 1: what I study is that instead of studying the tumor
Speaker 1: cells themselves, so the cells that are growing uncontrollably, I'm
Speaker 1: actually studying the cells that are in its environment. So
Speaker 1: if you think of it like a plant, right, the
Speaker 1: tumor cell itself can be the seed that's oil around
Speaker 1: it that gives it the support, is what I'm studying.
Speaker 1: So when our bodies are healthy, it's more like an
Speaker 1: aerage soil that stops that can tank or a seed
Speaker 1: from growing into a destructive plant, versus when you do
Speaker 1: have cancer, it's super fertile and rich and has all
Speaker 1: of the nutrients to give life and support to that seed.
Speaker 1: And so I'm trying to figure out what's happening when
Speaker 1: it's in that fertile state and how we can turn
Speaker 1: it back into an ariage state. You have definitely described
Speaker 1: that before, that was amazing. Thank you, just you just
Speaker 1: made something so confusing makes sense. Talking with Jay, she
Speaker 1: immediately feels like that science teacher you really wish you
Speaker 1: had in high school. And I think what makes her
Speaker 1: so good at teaching is how enamored she is with learning,
Speaker 1: because that is her job. Yeah, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: great when I think about it, because how much I
Speaker 1: wanted to go to school and just what I'm doing now,
Speaker 1: I just found a way to in school for forever,
Speaker 1: except now you get paid for it. Yes, now I
Speaker 1: get paid for it. Her obsession with school started early.
Speaker 1: She was a first generation kid raised in Chicago. Both
Speaker 1: of her parents are from Belize in Central America. Her
Speaker 1: brother is nine years older than her, and even as
Speaker 1: a little kid, Jay got super jealous every time she
Speaker 1: watched him leave for school. I didn't start school until
Speaker 1: I was five, but then before that, I would like
Speaker 1: every day put on my mini mouse backpack and pretend
Speaker 1: like I wanted to go to school, and I go
Speaker 1: by mom, I'm going to school now, and pantomime opening
Speaker 1: and shutting the door, and like to go to this
Speaker 1: school that I definitely didn't know where it was or
Speaker 1: how to get to or even really have an idea
Speaker 1: of what school was like. It was just something that
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do. She eventually did go to school,
Speaker 1: and unsurprisingly, she loved it and was immediately drawn to science.
Speaker 1: I loved the puzzle aspect of it because I really
Speaker 1: like puzzles, even just like reading. I love mystery books
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out who the culprit is or
Speaker 1: who did it before I reached the end of the book.
Speaker 1: So it's all very much on brand for me to
Speaker 1: do science now. It was also at this young age
Speaker 1: that her eventual studies and cancer got put into motion
Speaker 1: after she lost an uncle to call in cancer and
Speaker 1: watched another uncle and her father survived prostate cancer. So
Speaker 1: I started to kind of not fully understand what cancer was,
Speaker 1: but know that it was a bad thing, and start
Speaker 1: to have these questions like I have an older brother
Speaker 1: and my dad and his brother's got cancer, Like does
Speaker 1: that mean that my brother could get cancer? And those
Speaker 1: sort of questions started to keep pushing me to figure
Speaker 1: out who done it. Into high school, she was interested
Speaker 1: in pretty much everything. She was even so into art
Speaker 1: and anime and comics. She almost went to college for it,
Speaker 1: but her early fascination in viruses landed her at McAllister College,
Speaker 1: where she majored in biology and minored in chemistry. What
Speaker 1: was it about viruses that was It was such a
Speaker 1: pull for you. Just how something so tiny and microscopic
Speaker 1: and can't survive on its own just find the way
Speaker 1: to rewire things in the human body for their own purposes.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really grabbed her and blew
Speaker 1: my mind is that cancer cells are not technically living things,
Speaker 1: but are also not technically dead because they can't do
Speaker 1: things on their own. They require a host, but they
Speaker 1: do things that living things do, like reproduce and use
Speaker 1: energy and things like that. Wait, wait, how how can
Speaker 1: something be not alive or dead? It probably comes down
Speaker 1: to what characteristics that define life are the most important
Speaker 1: to you, maybe, like if you go completely philosophical, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so so also the way you talk about them, you're
Speaker 1: you're obviously fascinated by them. Yeah, do you ever find
Speaker 1: yourself rooting for viruses? Not rooting, but almost in a
Speaker 1: voyeuristic way, just like, what are you doing? It's like,
Speaker 1: tell me more. We'll get back to our story in
Speaker 1: a second. First, a word from Express Employment professionals, a
Speaker 1: strong work ethic, takes pride in a job well done.
Speaker 1: This is you. But to get an honest day's work,
Speaker 1: you need a callback. You need a job. Express Employment
Speaker 1: Professionals can help. We'll connect you to the right company.
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Speaker 1: or on the Express Jobs app. Now back to on
Speaker 1: the job. So while she's objectively fascinated by cancer, she's
Speaker 1: still trying to defeat it. In her way of figuring
Speaker 1: out how to is to look at it differently, studying
Speaker 1: the micro environment around pancreatic cancer. You know that seed
Speaker 1: and soil analogy from earlier. The micro environment is super
Speaker 1: super important. If you were to cut out a tumor
Speaker 1: mass from a patient, the majority of it would be
Speaker 1: that soil and hardly any of the plant. Jay's focus
Speaker 1: on the environment of pancreatic cancer is still pretty new,
Speaker 1: but she was deeply inspired by an advisor she had
Speaker 1: going into a PhD, Dr Patty Keeley. She revolutionized how
Speaker 1: doctors think of the micro environment of breast cancer. But
Speaker 1: for her story, she had breast cancer at one point
Speaker 1: in her life as well, and that I think, you know,
Speaker 1: motivated her to studying that. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are involved in cancer research probably have
Speaker 1: a similar sort of stories too. They have a stake
Speaker 1: in the game. Yeah. Well, Jay already had a stake
Speaker 1: in the game watching cancer affect or family as a kid.
Speaker 1: It got even more real when Dr Keeley, after surviving
Speaker 1: breast cancer, was eventually taken by pancreatic cancer. It's it's
Speaker 1: almost like a badge of honor that I'm one of
Speaker 1: the final pH d students that kind of she put
Speaker 1: her seal of approval on to say, yep, you can
Speaker 1: get a pH d like go forth and and do
Speaker 1: something like with that passing the torch. Yeah yeah, that
Speaker 1: like I also get to do that and then research
Speaker 1: the thing that ended up claiming her life too, as
Speaker 1: in a field that she revolutionized. So sort of like
Speaker 1: in an homage to her as well, this idea of
Speaker 1: passing the torch and paying homage to scientists you might
Speaker 1: not know about, that's the driving idea behind another part
Speaker 1: of Jay's work that you probably wouldn't expect. Okay, so
Speaker 1: could you explain what you're showing me. What I'm showing
Speaker 1: first right now is one that I made just this
Speaker 1: last month for UM Black History Month, and it's an
Speaker 1: illustration that I made of Gerald Jerry Lawson. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what she's showing me is a comic strip that she
Speaker 1: did with a couple of friends. The comic strip is
Speaker 1: this wonderful little cartoon of a big, jolly guy, Jerry
Speaker 1: Lawson holding a gaming console. You may not have known this,
Speaker 1: but the person that that created our ability to change
Speaker 1: games in your home gaming system. So the little cartridges
Speaker 1: that you have that you can switch out and play
Speaker 1: whatever game you want, as opposed to buying a device
Speaker 1: and only having that one game that you can play
Speaker 1: that's hardwired in. That's all thanks to Jerry Lawson. The
Speaker 1: comic is five panels and reads kind of like a
Speaker 1: Superhero origin story. Jerry was a black man in the
Speaker 1: seventies working as an engineer, and his free time, he
Speaker 1: developed the first cartridge gaming system in his garage. It
Speaker 1: was called the Channel F and it went on to
Speaker 1: inspire Atari and every single gaming system that came after it.
Speaker 1: But probably the most important panel is Jay's illustration of
Speaker 1: young Jerry in a first grade classroom next to a
Speaker 1: poster of George Washington Carver, so probably the most prominent
Speaker 1: black man scientists that every child is taught about um
Speaker 1: with a teacher saying this could be you write a
Speaker 1: teacher that encouraged him to saying like, hey, like you
Speaker 1: want to be a scientist? Like yeah, like you go
Speaker 1: be a scientist. This is the idea that these comics
Speaker 1: kind of came from. Jay channeled her high school love
Speaker 1: for art and teamed up with a couple of friends
Speaker 1: to create jk X Comics, comic about science as a
Speaker 1: way to make it more accessible to people, so changing
Speaker 1: the language so that it's not overly complicated so that
Speaker 1: people that aren't in science can understand it. The comics
Speaker 1: do this not only by using relatable language, but by
Speaker 1: featuring relatable living scientists that aren't just stereotypical images of
Speaker 1: scientists that we might have in our heads, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe Albert Einstein in a basement by himself yelling Eureka.
Speaker 1: There are people that are actively doing this and that
Speaker 1: don't all look like Albert Einstein, you know, like you
Speaker 1: can't see on the zoom call because this is a podcast.
Speaker 1: But I am not a white man with like crazy
Speaker 1: looking hair. Right. There are people from all walks of
Speaker 1: life that do this, People like the women at NASA
Speaker 1: featured in the movie Hidden Figures, whose calculations got humans
Speaker 1: to and from space. People like kids Mikia Corbett, the
Speaker 1: thirty five year old African American scientists, who's a huge
Speaker 1: reason we can get a COVID vaccination more effectively quickly
Speaker 1: than any time in history. Yeah, and there's so many
Speaker 1: people in history that are like this. Yeah, So do
Speaker 1: you believe there have been many a young scientist or
Speaker 1: a cancer doctor out there who never really found that
Speaker 1: that's what they were because the industry itself or the
Speaker 1: profession just didn't make sense to them. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't know to ask about it, because how can
Speaker 1: you ask about what you don't know? Now, six years
Speaker 1: after its founding, jk X Comics launched a successful Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaign and will be a real thing in print. The
Speaker 1: heroes in the comics are PhD students and scientists working
Speaker 1: and breaking ground today, like the young scientists uncovering how
Speaker 1: micro and a squirrels gut is how they survive hibernation.
Speaker 1: Who thought that's where Jay is now uncovering the unknown
Speaker 1: day in and day out, whether she's in the lab
Speaker 1: or making comics, she's asking the same question she did
Speaker 1: when she was a kid who done it, but maybe
Speaker 1: more importantly about everything she does. Her real pioneering is
Speaker 1: how she makes all the insane things that she's learning
Speaker 1: and doing easy to understand. Yeah, well, I mean like communication,
Speaker 1: if you're going into sciences or chemistry, is not a
Speaker 1: big part of the education or the learning process, and
Speaker 1: you're saying it it kind of needs to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I basically want to turn everything on its head and
Speaker 1: every way possible. For now, she's doing that by putting
Speaker 1: the things that fascinate her in comic form and putting
Speaker 1: it in front of young, curious people who probably also
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to go to school. People that you know
Speaker 1: may grow up and be like, I want to be
Speaker 1: a microbiologists and study microbes and squirrels, or because I
Speaker 1: saw it in a comic, because I saw it in
Speaker 1: a comic, like and there was a real person that
Speaker 1: did that, and I didn't know that that was a
Speaker 1: thing for On the Job, I'm motus Gray. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to On the Job, brought to you by Express
Speaker 1: Employment Professionals. This season of On the Job is produced
Speaker 1: by Audiation. The episodes were written and produced by me
Speaker 1: Otis Gray. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. The show
Speaker 1: was mixed by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at The
Speaker 1: Loft in Bronxville, New York. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Speaker 1: Find us on I Heart Radio and Apple podcast If
Speaker 1: you liked what you heard, please consider rating and reviewing
Speaker 1: the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next time. For more inspiring story about discovering
Speaker 1: your life's work, Audiation