Creating community through grant support

As a senior program manager at the Brain Canada Foundation, Fiona Sanderson gets to fuel cutting-edge research through her grant-making while connecting researchers with one another and the public.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Transmitter: What do you do at the Brain Canada Foundation?

Fiona Sanderson: I’m on the Programs team. We’re responsible for developing funding opportunities, launching competitions, organizing the peer-review process, granting out awards and then keeping in touch with researchers for the life cycle of their awards. Everyone on my team has an academic background, which is really important for building relationships with researchers and understanding their needs. 

A big part of my portfolio is early-career researchers—principal investigators (PIs) in the first few years of having their own labs. That’s a very trying time for researchers, so part of my job is to walk them through our granting process and help them understand what it means to apply for, hold and report progress on a grant. 

TT: That sounds like a lot of communication!

FS: Yes, I spend a lot of time communicating with researchers about opportunities—funding opportunities, for sure, but also opportunities to speak at events we host that bring researchers together or connect them with the public—and answering researchers’ questions about their grants. I also spend time finding reviewers who have the necessary expertise and time to give a fair and thorough review. If someone pours their time, energy and effort into writing a grant, it’s our responsibility to make sure the review process gives them the best chance at funding.

TT: What do you love about your job?

FS: I love that I get to help build a community of researchers. I love being accessible to them. Like, if you have questions, come ask. You don’t have to be all formal about it. Come chat with me! I also love that I get to try new ways of building community and raising awareness around brain research. This past winter, I hosted a podcast called “Bold Minds: Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research.” It was an interview series with early-career researchers that we funded, and the idea was to bring what they do to the public in an accessible way. It was so fun and combined the things I like most—talking about science with researchers and the public.

TT: Why is it important for the public to hear about the work Brain Canada supports?

FS: I think that now more than ever people want to understand what happens in research. Science skeptics, proponents—everyone forms this big, diverse public. Connecting the research community with the public is really important.

TT: How did you get into grant administration?

FS: I was doing brain tumor research at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, and I loved it. I loved science, and I loved asking and answering questions, but I didn’t see myself staying at the bench. I probably knew by the second year of my Ph.D. that I wasn’t going to stay in research, so I started going to networking sessions and just chatting with people who were doing other things. Right when I finished my Ph.D., my Ph.D. supervisor invited me to apply for a position at SickKids to manage large collaborative grants. These were huge, multimillion-dollar grants for teams, and they needed someone to make sure we worked cohesively as a team to achieve our goals. I managed a few of those grants at SickKids, and I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t the one doing the research, but I was helping make it happen. 

Not long after that, I was approached to consider an opportunity at Brain Canada Foundation. After talking to them and learning more about the role, it felt like a great fit—kind of the mirror image of what I was doing at SickKids: Instead of administering grants from a recipient perspective, I was doing it from the funder perspective. 

TT: You said you started exploring alternative careers in graduate school. Did you do any work to build skills or experience for jobs outside the lab?

FS: Credit to SickKids and the University of Toronto—they offered a lot of professional-development opportunities. I thought it would be helpful to know more about business and economics, so I did this course called a “mini MBA” that was a couple hours a week for about 10 weeks—you could easily do it on the side of your Ph.D. I learned at a high level about macroeconomics, how commercial entities work, how to do a SWOT analysis (identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), and things like that. It was a nice introduction to this whole other world. There were lots of networking sessions with professionals from different industries, such as pharma. It was a great opportunity to talk to people and to get an idea of what was out there.

TT: What skills from your Ph.D. have carried over to your current role?

FS: The biggest one is critical thought. My Ph.D. supervisor always encouraged us to question the dogma. Just because something is published doesn’t mean that it’s true, he would say. This kind of thinking is obviously useful in science, but I also find it useful in what I do now. Every time we do a funding competition, for example, there are certain processes you just carry forward. But we should always ask, “Why was this done in the first place? Who benefits from this? Is there a better way?” 

The other skill is writing, which is funny. When I was a grad student, I hated writing. It was such a chore. And when I was hired to manage grants, my then-boss said, “I knew you’d be good at this because you’re such a good writer.” I was like, “What?” Now in my job, I do a lot of writing and enjoy it because I feel good at it. 

TT: What advice do you have for researchers who are curious about jobs outside the lab?

FS: I have two pieces of advice: Never burn a bridge—you never know when a connection can help you; and always have your eyes and ears open for opportunities. I think many of us are big planners—we say things like, “That’s the job I want,” or “I can’t take this job because I won’t want it forever.” And I think that’s a mistake. I think that we should be open to taking opportunities and seeing where they go. My kids are 5 and 7, and people ask them, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I think the whole thing is predicated on a false belief that there are specific lanes, and you have to choose one. Instead, we should be asking ourselves, “What do you love to do? What are you good at? And what can you offer the world?” Maybe you do a job for a few years and then move on to something else in a different lane. That’s great! Keep asking yourself what you love and what you have to offer.