Meet Dr. Beth Cameron.

She’s been a molecular biologist, a science policy advisor, a national security leader, and one of the people inside the White House thinking about the next pandemic long before the rest of us knew it was coming.

Beth has spent her career building what she describes as the smoke alarms of global health: the teams, systems, relationships, funding, and plans that need to exist before an outbreak becomes a crisis.

Her path started in a cancer research lab, but Beth realized that science could have an entirely different kind of impact when it reached the rooms where decisions were being made. That realization eventually took her from Senator Ted Kennedy’s office to the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House, and into the response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic and the work of preparing for COVID-19.

This is a conversation about what it takes to act before the emergency, why prevention is so difficult to fund when success looks like nothing is happening, and what COVID taught us about the systems we still need to build.

And for the women wondering whether there’s a place for them somewhere between science, policy, national security, or global health, Beth’s message is simple: you can do it.

What Beth wants you to know:

“You can do it. You absolutely can do it… You will find people who will help you. And there’s a place for you here.”

Rapid fire:

• Most underrated preparedness tool: Personal protective equipment (PPE)
  
  
• Outbreaks happening right now she wishes more people were watching: New World Screwworm and H5N1
  
  
• One thing she wishes everyone understood about prevention: It always pays off.

Going beyond the episode:

• Beth on LinkedIn
• Brown University Pandemic Center
• Global Health Security Agenda
• American Democracy and Health Security Initiative

For all resources and links mentioned in this episode, read the full guide here: https://www.alphapodcast.studio/beth-cameron.

With gratitude to the organizations whose archival materials and recordings helped bring alpha to life:

• New Mexico PBS, Critical Mass: Women in Science (audio)
• NASA Image & Video Library
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Meet Dr. Paule Valery Joseph.

She grew up watching her mother be the community nurse. Now, at the NIH, her work helped reveal that losing your sense of smell was one of the clearest signs of COVID.

But the nose can tell us much more than whether something smells good or bad. Certain diseases have odors. Changes in smell can offer clues about our brain health and aging. And sometimes, our senses are catching things that medicine is walking right past.

This is a conversation about paying attention: to our bodies, to opportunities, and to the reasons we choose the work we do.

Paule shares why she roots her life in her “why,” how pride in who you are can open doors rather than close them, and why we shouldn’t reject ourselves from opportunities before anyone else has the chance to say yes. If you don’t apply, you’ve already given yourself a no.

And she asks us to reconsider something most of us rarely think about: our senses.

They are how we experience the world and connect us to the people we love. They can be early signals when something in our bodies changes. And when we intentionally notice and protect them, they can change the way we move through our entire lives.

Because sometimes the small things we overlook are telling us the most.

What Paule wants you to know:

“You matter. Your questions matter. Your curiosity matters. Never stop being curious. Never stop asking questions. When a door closes, a window opens. Look for that window.”

Rapid fire:

• What is a smell that takes you back to your childhood in Venezuela? Rain hitting hot pavement.
  
  
• Taste or smell: If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would it be? Taste.
  
  
• Is there a word that you can use for what it feels like to lose your sense of smell? Disconnected.

Going beyond the episode:

• Paule on LinkedIn
• Paule at the NIH
• Dementia Australia Research Foundation: Olfactory-based Cognitive Training (OCT) for older people at risk of dementia

For all resources and links mentioned in this episode, read the full guide here: https://www.alphapodcast.studio/paule-joseph

With gratitude to the organizations whose archival materials and recordings helped bring alpha to life:

• New Mexico PBS, Critical Mass: Women in Science (audio)
• NASA Image & Video Library
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Meet Dr. Shohini Ghose.

She explores the quantum world already running your life, and recovers the women physics wrote out of its own story. Everyone agrees quantum will shape the century. Her question is who gets to shape it.

This is a conversation about two kinds of invisibility: the invisible rules of the quantum world and the invisible woman who helped reveal them.

Dr. Shohini Ghose shares what it was like to be one of the only women in the room, from feeling isolated and questioning her abilities to realizing that the problem wasn't women who needed fixing. Mentorship and another summer camp for girls can only go so far if the classrooms, hiring practices, resources, and recognition around them remain unequal.

Shohini also takes us inside the strange and wonderful world of quantum physics, where reality isn't always what it appears to be. She shares when equations first became wonder for her and why understanding the history of physics means understanding not just what we know, but how we came to know it.

Shohini reminds us that science needs everybody, and we need to fix the system, not the women. Women are not waiting to be invited into science; they’ve been there all along.

What Shohini wants you to know:

“ There's this huge lineage of women, and there will be in the future, too. I hope future generations will know about all the amazing women who are contributing today, and they will become the voices in the heads of these future scientists who will help drive them to do bigger and better things.”

Rapid fire:

• A science fiction story everyone should read or watch: The Lilith’s Brood Trilogy by Octavia E. Butler
  
  
• A woman physicist or astronomer’s name who should be on every classroom wall: Every woman mentioned in Her Space, Her Time.
  
  
• One word for the quantum world right now: Possibility.

Going beyond the episode:

• Shohini on LinkedIn
• Check out Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe

For all resources and links mentioned in this episode, read the full guide here: https://www.alphapodcast.studio/shohini-ghose

With gratitude to the organizations whose archival materials and recordings helped bring alpha to life:

• New Mexico PBS, Critical Mass: Women in Science (audio)
• NASA Image & Video Library
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting