Danniele interviews Janet Fraser, PhD, BC Green Party MLA candidate. Janet lets us into her world of serving as a Trustee with the Vancouver School Board, studying chemistry and working as a project leader and manager of clinical trials; and juggling career and family. Janet dispenses advice to young STEM professionals and students, and gives us a rare glimpse into STEM in Vancouver schools.

Guest: Janet Fraser, PhD (@janetrfraser)

Janet Fraser, PhD, was born in the UK and earned Chemistry B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Bristol. Since then she has been an academic researcher, a drug development project manager, an at home parent, a non-profit administrator, and a politician.

At UBC Janet synthesized bowl and sphere-shaped compounds and in industry started as a bench chemist, working on new steroid-based asthma drugs and multi-drug resistant peptide antibiotics.  She was a co-inventor of the antibiotic selected for US pre-approval clinical trials and became the overall project manager with specific responsibility for manufacture and regulatory affairs, working with contractors in the US, Belgium and Switzerland, and the FDA.   

Janet spent time as an at home parent with her three children before taking Langara College’s Project Management Certificate and working for WWEST.

In 2014 Janet entered politics and was elected as a Green trustee on the Vancouver School Board. The board was dismissed in 2016, and in 2017 Janet was the Green MLA candidate in Vancouver-Langara and more than doubled the Green vote.

For a full transcription of this episode, click here.

Links:

• BC Green Party
• Field Hockey at the University of Bristol
  
• Indigenous Writes by Chelsea Vowel
• Janet's bio at the BC Green Party
  
• Julie Payette
• Kate Atkinson (author)
• Vancouver School Board budget vote

Hosted by: Danniele Livengood (@livengood)
Theme Music: “Positive and Fun” by Scott Holmes
Produced by: Vanessa Reich-Shackelford