What personality trait has been instrumental to your success?
The ability to admit when I am wrong, not gloat when I am right, and muddle through when I have no idea what’s going on. That or empathy and the ability to “walk in the other person’s shoes.”
 
What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not working? 
To quote my favorite Chinese Fortune Cookie, “You find beauty in ordinary things.”  
 
What are you planning to do once you retire?
Technically I am retired, although I still do some projects involving international development. As a retiree I am a volunteer wildland firefighter, EMT and Public Information Officer (PIO) for my local fire department, and a PIO for the Western Washington Incident Management Team (a wildland type 3 IMT). Since COVID, I also have been brought on as Economic Recovery Group Supervisior for the Jefferson County, WA COVID-19 IMT, as EMTs over 60 are no longer allowed to work shifts on the ambulance. Nonetheless I still find time to garden, walk with my dog, and hike in the mountains and along the beach.
 
If you had the chance to go into space, would you? Why or why not? 
Definitely. Years ago, when I was a registered federal lobbyist and point person on the budget for the science community, I was in the room when Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lawton Chiles decided to fund the International Space Station (ISS). The choice was between the Superconducting Supercollider, and the ISS. He asked everyone their preference. I did my best Spock imitation and said, “Boldly go where no man has gone before. Live long and prosper.” Nowadays, I would say boldly go where other women have gone before, but I’d go. It would be a great adventure and, having spent time with several people who have been in space, it should be both beautiful and spiritually humbling and moving.
 
What’s something you’re proud of?
Being a footnote in history. I used to tell my children to be a chapter, you may have to be nasty at times, but to be a footnote you can just be nice and do good. I knew I had made it when my daughter was writing a paper on the concerns of Native Americans in Coastal Massachusetts during high school. A Pennacook man she interviewed as part of her research said the most significant legislative change in his lifetime was the Native American Graves Protection and Reparations Act. She had not heard of it and researched it. She came to me and said she found a picture of the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of the Smithsonian, and me, on a panel discussing the bill. She asked, “What gives?” I told her I helped draft it on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology and was one of the lead lobbyists for it. I knew then I had made it as a footnote as my child had independently found me.
 
If you could choose a superpower, what would it be?
The ability to smile at people and have them become kind, considerate, and compassionate for the rest of their lives. Covid-19’s anti-maskers and political ideologues have taught us this is too often lacking.
 
What do you love about being on AUTM’s committees?
The ability to share with others the experience of doing interesting things, giving back to the profession, and the ability to make a difference for those who come after us.
 
What’s the best deal you’ve helped facilitate in tech transfer and what made it sing? 
I had just been hired to run the University of Rhode Island (URI) TTO after all the staff quit – a story for another time. It was the first hour of my first day. I got a call from a high-profile consumer brand company that they wanted to license a technology. Fortunately, URI had hired a retiree, John Topping, for a few days to show me the records and the computer system. I asked John how to find the disclosure and relevant information. Turns out there was no record (remember that long story about why no one was there?). I looked it up on the USPTO website, and URI was the assignee, with only about five years left on the patent. The safe assumption, therefore, was that they probably had discovered they were infringing and covering their posterior. I quickly looked at the company’s website but could not figure out which product(s) incorporated URI IP. The inventor was long gone with no forwarding address and we could not find him online. With no idea what was going on, and no easy way to find out, we faced a potentially long negotiation with a potential licensee as we uncovered what the patent was “actually” worth. (I use quotes because we all know you never really know what a patent is worth until the deal is done.) Then I had this odd-ball thought: What if I just tripled the cost of my contract and associated overhead? No administrator I knew would be mad if you more than covered your costs in the first hour on the job.  So that was my ask, and the company said yes. I thought, “whoops, we underbid it,” but as it took less than half an hour, not a bad ROI on my time. The prior university expenses were irrelevant as they were not known and besides were a sunk cost from over 15 years ago. And yes, the VP for Research was happy.
 
What is your tech transfer philosophy? 
Tech transfer should further the mission of the institution. At a university, the mission is to educate students, develop and disseminate knowledge, and make the world a better place. The first part of that sentence directs our attention toward building enduring relationships through which ideas, technology and people can flow to the outside world and in which cooperative R&D and student internships and hires flourish. The second part directs our attention toward prioritizing technology that addresses the big problems of our times – from climate change to health to hunger to environmental health to access to education and life-long learning and so forth. The kind of things that show up on UN lists of great challenges. It helps to break even doing that. Even better is generating more revenue than the office costs.
 
*New Product Development Professional