Elisa’s 40 Under 40
40 under 40 is a list by the Fortune magazine on the most influential young leaders of the year in the tech industry. Their list doesn’t expand to scientists or anyone working outside of tech and has been often criticized as being subjective about power and influence. Today, exactly 40 days before my 40th birthday, I reflect on my life as a female scientist, a woman, and a human. I ponder about what may lie ahead of me. These are my very personal musings on my life’s professional and personal achievements, where to next and what I would have loved to tell my 20 years-old self. Although, I’ve had the honour of crossing paths with many incredible people, I only mention a few selected individuals who have had the greatest impact on where my journey has taken me. I am eternally grateful!
The rebellious teenager
Leading up to my 20ies, I seemed like someone who probably could have been described as a rebel. This was probably my response to being a stranger in my own ‘new’ country as my family had moved from Bulgaria to (Western) Germany when I was 8. Day in, day out I was faking being a German, so I don’t get bullied at school and eventually, I perfected my ‘germanisms’ including my accent-free German language. And I did look like a rebel too - long hair, black clothes, leather and of course, my beautiful 125ccm Yamaha TDR motorbike that I got when I was 16. During most of my teenage years, I listened to Heavy Metal, went to Metal live gigs, played role and live-action role plays, while pursuing the dream of becoming an astronaut. The love for reaching for the stars must have come from the time when I got notified that I was the best pupil of my school and hence eligible to participate at the Deutsche Schueller Akademie. I took part in an one-week long retreat for bright students - doing a workshop on the ‘Anatomy of the Universe’. And to be honest, at that stage of my life, I really felt, I’d rather be in a profession that gets me as far away as possible from masses of people. At some stage, I even met the German Physicist and Astronaut, Ulf Merbold and managed to ask him what I could do to become an Astronaut. He said: “Go study Science! Study the most difficult scientific subject that you can find!” So, I did.
My 20ies and the search for a purpose in life
I enrolled in Biophysics with 10 other crazy humans and moved from Frankfurt to Berlin in 2002 - home of the Humboldt University and probably the best city in Germany with its arts, theatres, music, underground scene and diversity of people from all countries and cultures. Berlin truly is Germany’s melting pot for creativity. Biophysics, or the Physics of Dynamic Biological Systems was hard. We were expected to obtain our certificates together with the pure Physicists, the Biologists and the Informaticians but we didn’t have the time to focus entirely on any of those subjects. It was quite overkill. After obtaining the German Vordiplom (BSc), I really needed a break and obtained a grant to study abroad with the Erasmus/Socrates program for a year. I chose the Canary Islands. Here, I learned Spanish, Diving and a bit of Surfing. Perhaps not the most studious period of my life but I made some incredible friendships that lasted a lifelong and saw places that were beautiful beyond comprehension like the Anaga Mountains in Tenerife. Eventually, I finished my Diplom (MSc) in Biophysics in 2008 specialising in Membrane Biophysics. In fact, my thesis discovered some quite important information about the Influenza virus fusion which would inform what part of the cellular membrane we should be targeting with antiviral drugs.
That same year, I interviewed at the European Space Agency, however, wasn’t successful. After 15 years of hard work on the pursuit of becoming an Astronaut and witnessing this dream burst into pieces threw me straight into an existential crisis and the search for my life’s purpose. The continuing search led me to the Hydra Field Station on Elba in Italy where I initially participated in a diving training for university students on the ‘Methods of Underwater Research’. There it was! A new dream and vocation were born! I didn’t become an Astronaut but I was on the best way of becoming an Aquanaut! I’ve spent the next several months training at Hydra in preparation for an European Scientific Diver training. I had secured a slot in the 5-weeks professional training at the Alfred-Wegener Institute on Helgoland. Helgoland is a cold and stormy place in the North Sea - it’s the best place to get challenged by the elements! And that got me thinking that I’d really like to study the Ocean with a focus on field work.
Shortly after finishing the professional diver training, I started the study of Marine Microbiology at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen in 2008. Bremen is undeniably the Mecca of Marine Science in Germany with its Max Planck, Leibniz, Alfred-Wegener Institute and Bremen Uni. This second MSc opened my eyes for international collaboration and how it is to work and learn at a very well-funded research institute. I finished my degree specialising in Marine Biogeochemistry and specifically studying bacteria in shallow-water hydrothermal vents which were totally adapted to their low-PhD environment. Max Planck also provided the connection to a bright marine scientist, now Dr Duygu Sevilgen, who took me as a Diver and Research Assistant, first to Helgoland and then to the Arctic, to study the impacts of climate change on microphytobenthos (little algae that live at the marine sediment surface) by using the fanciest ever underwater microsensors. I remember being surrounded by beautiful sunlight at 2am at night and pondering what the heck should I be doing with my life, so that I can live a life with a purpose. The best part of my deployment in Ny Alesund, Svaldbard was meeting incredible people from all over the world doing fascinating stuff. I met folks from several research organisations, National Geographics and Greenpeace. After the Arctic field work, I went from the snow into the tropics. I travelled for one month through Malaysia and encountered the sheer beauty of coral reefs. Little did I know that coral reefs would captivate me for the next several years to come! In 2010, I started a PhD in Coral Reef Ecology at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology but was permanently deployed in Santa Marta, Colombia to study the coral reef ecosystem of Tayrona National Park in the Colombian Caribbean. I know, I would have never succeeded if it wasn’t for the help and mentorship of my Colombian supervisor, Dr Valeria Pizarro, who is still an integral part of my life.
My mid-30ies and finding ground under my feet as an academic
After 2 years, 9 months and 7 scientific publications, I could finally call myself Dr Bayraktarov – a Doctor of coral reefs. In 2013, I followed my love who had moved from Colombia to Australia to start his PhD. For me, a new chapter was about to begin – the hunt for highly attractive and competitive postdoctoral jobs in coral reef ecology. It didn’t make it any easier that I was an outsider, and no one had heard my name before. And then I was also trying to find employment at some of Australia’s most prestigious universities for ecology in Brisbane.
In 2014, I was successful finding a job as a Research Assistant at the Global Change Institute, which back then was a new institute to create change based at the University of Queensland. This is when my collaboration (later mentorship and then friendship) with the wonderful Dr Megan Saunders began. Megan introduced me to the study of seagrass and put me on a project to start developing a database integrating information from published papers, reports and webpages on the cost and feasibility of marine coastal restoration. I will never forget the trust Megan put in me when she asked me to step up and lead this paper while she was in maternity with her first child. Over the course of 1.5 years, I had become an expert in Marine Coastal Restoration. And I really wished, I would have pursued this direction of research. But instead, I decided to write a crazy grant application for an Endeavour Fellowship that would allow me to study the multi-factor effects of climate change and eutrophication on the interaction between corals and algae on Heron Island in the Southernmost part of the Great Barrier Reef. The grant was successful and sent me for four months to Heron Island where I worked 10-hrs days with no weekends on an experiment that received little attention or interest from my supervisors and probably led to breaking my relationship and deteriorating my mental health. The work, despite of producing some surprising results around the winners and losers of the climate change and eutrophication game, never got published. It reminds me of my time on ‘Prison Paradise’ (aka Heron Island).
Photos: Top - Arctic Explorer and Scientific Diver in Ny Alesund, Svalbard (2010). Bottom left - Experiments on Heron Island (2015). Bottom right - Nutrient analysis of seawater samples in Santa Marta, Colombia (2012).
2016 came with another, this time a scientific identity crisis. I participated at the largest coral reef conference in the World which was organised in Hawaii. Thousands of coral reef researchers who could afford the high registration fees and travel had gathered and all they were saying was that we need many more grants to do much more research to better understand coral reefs. I couldn’t believe it. It was a mass coral bleaching year for the Great Barrier Reef and all that these folks wanted was more experiments! Not many were talking about that there’s enough data and that we need to do something (e.g., climate action, active adaptive management, nature-based solutions, restoration…) now before it’s too late for our World’s corals. I think, this must have been one of these light bulb moments where I turned my back on field work and experiments and decided to dedicate the next coming years of my career to Conservation Data Science.
In 2016, I would have probably left Australia for good if it wasn’t for one of the greatest mentors in my life, Prof Hugh Possingham. Hugh convinced me to stay and take on a job, initially as a Research Assistant and then as a PostDoc developing Australia’s and the Worlds-first Threatened Species Index. I remember that there was quite a bit of a pushback, especially from the Federal Government that funded the project. There seemed to be this mantra that there’s not enough standardised data from repeated monitoring on threatened species out there. And in way, that was true. This data was sitting on people’s computers and within reports. So my job required me to talk to over 300 data custodians about datasets on 254 bird, mammal, and plant species from over 20,000 locations across Australia, and from more than 400,000 surveys carried out over 50 years. And I had to convince them to share their gold with a common good project looking into how our threatened species are going. This required extroversion. It required confidence to engage with stakeholders. I had none of these qualities and was haunted by an everlasting imposter syndrome. And then, presented with the option of either to resign or grow, I chose to do the most terrifying thing that could have come to my mind. I decided to learn how to perform in front of an audience by making up a scene on the go inspired by whatever the audience throws at me. It’s called Improvised Theatre. I started my improvised theatre training initially with a Brisbane Group called Impro Mafia in 2016 and later with Cam Percy and her Impro Club.
Impro teaches you to:
- Embrace failure – it’s not that bad
- Believe in yourself and trust that you have everything you need to wing every and any situation
- Accept ‘gifts’ by adopting a “Yes-and” mentality
- How people react to your body language
- Trust your people – they will catch you if you fall
- To become an attentive listener
- To play, be silly and laugh
It was 2 years of incredibly hard work, and I had the opportunity to work closely with environmental non-governmental organisations, state/territories governments, natural resource management bodies, species recovery teams and many brilliant scientists. In 2018, we released the first iteration of the TSX – a Threatened Species Index for Australia’s birds. Mammals followed in 2019 and Plants in 2020 - the latter spearheaded by the wonderful Dr Micha Jackson. Probably the most rewarding moments of my academic career were when I heard that the Federal Government of Australia had adopted the TSX as their very official reporting tool on threatened species status. And then, about one year later, continuation funding for the project, now under a new management through the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and TERN appeared.
Photo credit: Jaana Dielenberg
From left to right: Elisa Bayraktarov, Glenn Ehmke, Hugh Possingham, Darren Grover, Sally Box, Brendan Wintle, Ayesha Tulloch, James O’Connor
In May 2020, I left academia for good. After creating my reputation through the TSX, one of my project partners urged me to apply for a job as a Program Manager to lead the development of the digital innovation platform called EcoCommons Australia.
Leaving academia for impact (and feeling like an imposter)
Leaving academia is hard. Especially for those of us who haven’t known anything else in their lives. But like with everything in life, even academic skills are highly transferrable. It just takes a whole deal of courage to do the move and apply for the job. I probably wouldn’t have applied for the job as EcoCommons’ Program Manager if it wasn’t for my collaborator who encouraged me to do so. The good news is that, with the transition, there will be an increase in salary demonstrating that our academic staff, especially in their early career years, are rarely valued enough for what they bring to the table. Once I knew, I was going to change jobs, I needed to start working on getting my work-life balance in check and working through my imposter syndrome with my psychologist. It was surprising how simple the solutions to these problems are. To achieve work-life balance, you need to start saying “No” to requests more often (assuming you have a supportive work environment and are not working two jobs at once because of staff resignations). And the imposter syndrome can only be cured by collecting evidence on your achievements. So why not starting a ‘Book of Winning’ with snippets on everything great that you’ve achieved throughout your career or writing a blog like this. Now, two years into my management job, I feel that an academic can create a much bigger impact if they come down from their ivory tower of academia and started working on things that are badly needed. This would lead to real impact for the animals and places we love. In my case, EcoCommons is meant to become the platform of choice for ecological and environmental problem solving and empowering researchers and practitioners with data, scientific workflows, and infrastructure to protect and restore the planet. I feel, a job like that would allow me to have much more impact than if I would have chosen to write scientific papers that probably not many read. Sometimes we are lucky with the papers we write, and they are being picked up by e.g., a billionaire who’s exploring the best and most cost-efficient ways of restoring coral reefs. This happened to me once when I received an email from MARS Inc CEO, Frank Mars who had been running a 10+ years coral reef restoration program in Indonesia – which is where they extract fish for petfood and cocoa for chocolates. But of course, the farmers growing cocoa want to eat fish, so it makes sense to restore coral reefs as they would bring back the fish. Yes, I acknowledge that it’s scary to transition. But if you’re an Early Career Researcher, take a moment to really think about whether the work you’re doing will have any real impact on the ground. Is it going to make this world a better place? How? Think whether you feel that you are being valued enough at your job in academia. Only if there’s no demand for PhD or PostDoc jobs will the universities raise the payment. These jobs are hard. Perhaps this is happening already but if that’s the case, it’s happening really slowly.
The last decade of service to humans, animals and ecosystems
Looking at my life’s and work’s achievements, it probably comes down to the following things that I’ve contributed to creating change – many of those without pay and in my own time:
- I have changed the world’s largest coral reef conference to improve their processes for more equity, inclusion and diversity and to offer free online participation for delegates from low, lower-middle, and upper-middle income economy countries by writing a public letter and announcing that I’d step down as symposium chair if the conference in 2022 doesn’t change their practices (see next blog in June)
- I helped at least one friend to become a permanent resident to Australia
- Working as a Conservation Scientist at the University of Queensland and Griffith University over the last 8 years, I have contributed to protecting and managing the Australian environment by carrying out research and pulling data together to identify how people can improve the restoration of marine coastal ecosystems, how likely those projects are to succeed and how expensive they are and also on the motivations that drive people to restore coral reefs, seagrass, mangroves, saltmarsh and oyster reefs. My research brought together the first ever cost & feasibility database for marine coastal restoration in 2015 which was used to inform the Australian Reef Trust’s Offsets calculator and was updated in 2020 in my own personal time and under no payment.
- I gave Australia a Threatened Species Index (TSX) which is the world’s first biodiversity indicator that tracks changes in Australian threatened species populations and tells us how our threatened birds, mammals and plants are going. Those trends were highlighted in the recent Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act Review carried out by Graeme Samuel, which featured my submission as an independent researcher and on behalf of the TSX team to identify gaps in data, monitoring and management as well as a lack of standardised reporting on species population trends in Australia. The TSX since its first launch in 2018 by the former Australian Threatened Species Commissioner, Sally Box, has been adopted as an official statistic by the Australian’s government’s Corporate Reporting and was also used as a performance criterion by a number of states (example from the Audit of the Victorian Government). Beyond mobilising huge amounts of data, this tool has produced a platform for a national ‘conversation’ about threatened and Near Threatened species, and thereby has increased community awareness and appreciation of our threatened biodiversity to create a mandate for investment in its protection.
- I am leading a team at the Griffith University which builds a digital innovation platform that will hopefully become the platform of choice for ecological and environmental modelling and is being built to empower researchers and policy decision-makers to spend less time on searching and wrangling of data as well as on configuring models and invest more time into solving environmental problems through world-leading modelling tools and access to highly curated datasets. This EcoCommons Australia will be released to the world on Nov 29th, 2022.
- In my free time, I contribute to citizen science where I monitor local coral reefs and write reports for our local and state government or lend a hand to the Woodfordian TreeHuggers in maintaining the conservation area of Woodford.
What comes next?
While there’s no doubt that there will always be professional aspirations, over the last few years I’ve realised that my personal goals have come rather short. I don’t have a house, a husband or children and I realised that a big focus on work will always impact your personal life. Personal goals should be as important as professional ones. My big personal thing that I will be focusing on over the upcoming months or years is to become a TEDx or TED speaker. This is a dream I’ve had for a while. I came really close to it when I pitched a potential TEDx talk at the TEDxSydney Ideas Search Event in late April 2022. TEDxBrisbane is next! I can’t wait!
Recommendations for my 20-years old self on how to navigate life
If you gave me a time machine and confirm that I won’t cease to exist if I went back in time to seek out my 20-years old self, I’d love to tell her a few things about life:
Dear Elisa,
- Life isn’t linear. Often things happen and you may not be able to see the bigger picture just yet - and that’s fine! Perspective and understanding how things, humans, and happenings interweave with each other comes with age and experience.
- If you want to create change that matters, you have to overcome being an introvert and be more daring. You may fail and you probably will but that’s ok: you learn, you pick up yourself and you try again!
- If you don’t ask, the answer is always gonna be “No”. Be bold and ask.
- Scientific publications are great but they don’t create much real impact on the ground, unless they are picked up by a billionaire like Frank Mars
- Professional goals need to be pursued in parallel with your personal goals (creative arts, starting a family, study) - it would be too late for you to pursue personal goals after you’ve finished all of your professional bucket list - there’s probably never gonna be the right moment.
- You can always do more than you think you can - but only if you set clear goals early on and do every day a little bit. If you lack motivation, go watch this TEDx video by Mel Robbins.
- Time is the ultimate unit of measurement in life - think wisely how you spend every sec, min, hr of your life. Life is so much more worth living if you can fill it with joy, play, silliness, daring greatly, failing, and not taking yourself too seriously. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Be bold, be vocal, step up for your thoughts and what you believe in to be fair.
- Laugh a lot, challenge the status quo, speak up when you need to, consume life’s experiences with a big spoon and for fuck’s sake, get yourself a psychologist! I dearly recommend Marta Browne. Everybody deserves to have one! If you get one, they will help you to navigate through all this jungle of confusion and stir through all those people who demand to have a piece of your valuable life time. Every minute of your life is precious - hold it dearly to your heart! Use it to act on impulses to seed the seeds for your dreams. Your time is valuable. You are valuable. Always. Don’t waste it or give it away with no prospect of return in form of experience, reputation, joy, growth, or sheer enjoyment!
Now, go out there and do what you do best: Channel the Avenging Fury that you are and her naked rage and go change the World!
Photo: Avenging Furies at the Don Giovanni Opera in Brisbane 2018 starring Dr Elisa Bayraktarov and 80 other fabulous women from all ages, body shapes, cultural backgrounds and skin colour. They stand strong and powerful in their own skin confronting Don Giovanni (Duncan Rock) and ripping his guts out. Photo artist: Stephanie Do Rozario. Opera Director: Lindy Hume - making a big outrageous splash for the #metoo movement.