Question: Did you have any other job before you became a scientist?

Fern Johnson answered on 12 Jun 2019:

I had a couple: right after university I worked in the administration center for a charity that helps care for people who are dying, so they can stay at home. I phoned up nurses and gave them all the details of the patients they were visiting, and also called families to let them know when the nurses were coming to give them a break. Parts of it were quite difficult as the patients were very ill. But it made me want to work as a scientist to help treat or cure people who are ill.

I also worked in IT for two different consultancies. In those jobs I did work in behalf of other companies, helping them manage all their customer information well. This job was interesting but not very rewarding, because it was effectively helping the companies market to their customers better and make more money. It was useful experiences though, particularly learning how to interact with massive databases – there are a lot of these in genetics, because there are so many different genes and different mutations.