How She Went from Nursing to Network Marketing (And WHY!)

Think you can’t have a career in STEM and raise a family? Dawnika Blatter, PhD, research geologist, worked hard (and feels blessed) to have both the family and the career she always wanted...but it wasn't easy.

ABOUT DAWNIKA BLATTER, PHD RESEARCH GEOLOGIST AND FTIR LAB MANAGER

A couple of years into her post-doctorate degree, Dawnika Blatter had to tell her advisor that she was seven months pregnant with her first child. He responded, "You're not going to take any time off are you?"
With no other way to continue her career and simultaneously start a family, Dawnika buckled in and began the juggling act known as being a working mom.
Now, a couple of decades later with several academic achievements and publications to her credit, Dawnika is a highly-respected research geologist, lab manager, and professor. She is also a mother of four who looks back fondly on the terrain she traveled to have both a family and a career.
THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIA FOR WOMEN
As Dawnika points out in this interview, careers in academia can be challenging for women, but not because they can't handle STEM subjects or the rigor of the industry. Careers in academia are difficult for women because the time at which a woman will be most marketable in her field is also the time she will need to have children, if she wants them. That collision between career desires and family goals often causes one to slide beneath the other--in geology terms, I think that's called subduction.
But Dawnika's advice is simple. "Do both," she says.
In this interview, Dawnika shares some of the ways in which she made it work including getting help from extended family, overloading herself with kid activities on the days she could be available, and asking for a few concessions where needed. She also credits her husband with fully sharing parenting responsibilities and valuing her career as much as his own.

CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE

In talking to Dawnika, it's obvious she loves her job. Yes, she gets to travel to Mexico, Hawaii, Iceland, and other desirable places. And yes, she gets to ride in helicopters, stand atop great waterfalls, and work alongside remarkable minds. But it's evident she loves what she does because she fought for it.
She could have quit when her high school science classes were challenging. She could have quit when she had that first baby. She could have quit--and been one of many women on the leaky STEM pipeline--when she had more babies and had to out earn the cost of childcare in the challenging California economy. She could have quit many times, but she didn't want to.
Now she's encouraging her own children to similarly choose passion over profit when they make career decisions.Her advice is to find "something that you're really interested in and passionate about and just be the best at that thing that you can be. Then the career steps....will fall into place." I totally agree.

What You'll Learn in this Episode

• How Dawnika completed her PhD while having children
• How she had to put her husband's career ahead of her own at times
• When to put your career on a back bur

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