Sanna Sokolow

Sanna Sokolow
Sanna Sokolow

Veterinarian, disease ecologist, mother, scientist  - these are all words that describe Sanna Sokolow, DVM, Ph.D.  Currently leading Stanford's Program for Disease Ecology, Health, and the Environment, an innovative program she co-founded, Sanna has found an ideal professional niche where her personal and professional interests are well aligned.  After finishing veterinary school and a Ph.D. program in Disease Ecology, Dr. Sokolow worked on postdoctoral research on Schistosomiasis in Senegal.   Working at the frontier of One Health and Planetary Health, she now applies the lessons she learned about using a solution-based science approach to many other disease systems. With a self-described career path as a “bowl of spaghetti,’ now when she looks back, it feels like a totally obvious path.  Sanna’s advice for veterinary students reconsidering their career choices and wondering how to balance work life and family life was heartfelt, authentic, and wise. 

Veterinary School & Year Graduated:  University of California, Davis, 2003

Additional Degrees: Ph.D., Disease Ecology, University of California, Davis, 2008 

 

  • Tell me about your most challenging and rewarding veterinary jobs or work experiences.
  • After veterinary school, I worked in clinical practice for a while. When I think back on those times, they were both challenging and extremely rewarding, for the same reasons. The work you're doing is life or death, for the animals and their families. It's very challenging and rewarding to be holding that decision-making power and responsibility. With that being said, I’ve never been happier than in my current position at Stanford.
  • What did you love about the position or experience?
  • My life experience and my interests are really perfectly aligned with that of Stanford and their openness to this disease ecology program that I helped co-found. It’s been really rewarding to have co-founded something and have it embraced by a large community of brilliant researchers, scientists, and leaders. The institutional environment here is perfect for me because they have embraced an innovation-oriented space for “think outside the box” solutions that entrepreneurial science needs. I felt like I’d been pushing the boundary for so long, thinking about global issues and how they impact the health of people and animals.  It's very rewarding to have the world catch up to the research that we're doing. I feel really happy about that and at home with my institution. I also love my day-to-day job of mentoring other passionate people and using the tools that I learned in school to try to find solutions. 
  • Tell me about your journey to get to that point in your life. 
  • I walked around in a fog as an undergrad. Deciding on a career trajectory felt like closing doors more than opening doors because there were so many options. I majored in biology with minors in earth science and mathematics. I also studied abroad in Costa Rica which awakened a love for ecology. I figured if I could do the hardest path, I could do it all.  After college, I took some time off and got to be a ski bum, which was somewhat of a soul-searching experience. After my time in Costa Rica, I really wasn’t sure what to do. I considered all of the career options that would allow me to work with biodiversity. In the end, I chose veterinary medicine because it sounded like the most challenging option. I applied to vet school with the idea of going into wildlife and ecology research. But by my second year of vet school, I wasn't sure if just a DVM was right for me so I applied for a Ph.D. and started research between my third and fourth year of vet school. A mentor propelled me to go for a Ph.D. in disease ecology. I ended up studying marine coral reef disease and the environmental drivers of disease outbreaks in Mexico.

    Meanwhile, I tracked towards zoo/exotics to cover a wide breadth, for better or for worse. Sometimes I feel like I missed an opportunity to learn a lot of core clinical skills. After finishing school my career journey has resembled a bowl of spaghetti more than a straight line. The big transition I made after my Ph.D. was pragmatic, but then it ended up being a blessing in some ways. I was trying to figure out how I could go on and make a career because at the time what I was studying was still pretty fringe. The clear answer at the time was to link it to humans in some way. Obviously, we look back now and say the connections are obvious but back then it was really outside the box. I decided to stay in aquatic systems and developed a fascination with Schistosoma, a parasite that has an aquatic snail intermediate host and infects humans.  By studying Schistosoma, I was able to marry human health with high-impact work that focused more on ecology and aquatic systems. We studied the changes in an ecosystem in Senegal after the building of a dam that extirpated a bunch of the aquatic food web above the dam. This change led to a decline in a particular large-bodied prawn species which in turn caused an explosion of one of their prey species, the snail intermediate hosts. We were looking at all of the cascading effects of the dam including disease prevalence in people and were trying to figure out how dams could be redesigned such that they could support agriculture while also supporting a healthy ecosystem and biodiversity.  We had to think about every single angle and go outside our comfort zone.  I have since extended this solution-based science approach to many other disease systems. I don't do 100% marine work now, though I'm dabbling back into it since I'm physically located at a marine station for Stanford University and surrounded by brilliant marine biologists.  
  • As a veterinary student, did you ever imagine yourself taking this journey and having these professional experiences?
  • Absolutely. I felt like I had to trick vet schools into letting me in because I didn't have any clinical interest. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the clinical aspect of veterinary work and sometimes I miss it. It was very stressful managing working in a clinic while finishing my Ph.D. but I could see myself returning to it once I “retire.”  I was really a miserable vet student, but I'm surprised that I was not a miserable vet. I actually enjoyed it a lot. The practice of it was much, much more fun.
  • In retrospect, what do you wish you’d known as a veterinary student or early in your career?
  • Being a veterinarian is a heck of a lot of fun once you commit all of that information to memory. It’s almost painful to memorize all of the information and organize your brain. But it's a really powerful and exciting life or death matter. You are saving lives in a blink of an eye. I also want to mention the family aspect. It seems overwhelming to think about starting a family, especially when you're so driven and you're a woman in the midst of all of this different kind of training. I would not change a thing about my life, I have two beautiful kids and I love my family. They are number one. I got pregnant with my first kid at 38.  Don't necessarily think you have to close the doors on your education to open doors for your family. You can balance family and career and you don't have to put it off completely. It's tough, but it's rewarding to have both.
  • Would you have changed anything about your time in veterinary school? 
  • My best friend had her kids when she was in graduate school, and it was tough, but it was definitely one of those times where your schedule is your own and you have the willpower to get it all done.  She also had support from other graduate students who were also starting families; there was a community and schedule flexibility.  It's a challenge, but in this day and age, I think institutions are ready to meet that challenge. I think it's possible to just keep kicking the can down the road so far that you get to the point where you kick yourself and wish you had done it sooner. 

    Another thing I did was that I gave up a lot of my hands-on time in electives to do internships at zoos and with exotics. All of my electives were related to wildlife and to the detriment of my ability to nail down things that I considered boring. But those things end up being such a crucial part of practice. If you don't get the training while in school, it's really hard to teach yourself later.
  • Would you have changed anything about your career path since graduating?
  • I wouldn't change this, but one challenge is that I'm in a soft-money position. Going into academia, you have to be extremely mobile. You have to be able to pick up your family and move wherever you get a job. I wish that that wasn't so. I wish I could be a professor at this point. But I'm not applying to jobs all over the country because I just want to be where I am. So I wouldn't change it, but it's a challenge.
  • Did you have any mentors or role models along the way that helped or inspired you? Please provide an example of how they helped you or what qualities they had that made them a good mentor? How did you find them?
  • The best mentors are people that believe in you, bring out the best in you, make you more confident, and encourage you to follow your gut instinct. I've had all kinds of good mentors fall into that category throughout my career and I wouldn't have made it without them. There were definitely times when it felt like it was impossible. You have to have thick skin to be in science. You get a lot of negative feedback and there’s a lot of rejection and you have to get through all that; I can’t stress how beneficial mentorship is for that.

    Dr. Jonna Mazet was a huge mentor in my early career. Her wildlife and epidemiology classes in veterinary school solidified my commitment to research and gaining extra skills. She was a very inspirational young woman leader in the field at a time when it was very rare to have a career just based on wildlife and disease. Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is another academic crush. She’s a Ugandan woman trained in wildlife veterinary medicine. 
  • Tell me about any pivotal moments or key turning points that shaped your career.
  • I can't really pinpoint a single moment. I think that it's a compilation of all of the different moments I've described on my path and my determination to keep going, despite all the rejection. I did study abroad my senior year of undergraduate. I recognize that that was possible because I'm in a position of privilege. The trip really opened my eyes to the wonders and diversity of the world. I think those are great programs and the more we can make them accessible, the more potential veterinary students will broaden their horizons to these newer crossover veterinary careers. Also, being a waitress was a great inspiration to go back to school. Sometimes you have to step away from something to realize how much you miss it.
  • Tell me about one or two challenges, setbacks, or obstacles that you faced along the way on your professional journey. How did you address those?
  • I'd say kids and COVID-19 are the biggest challenges right now. Anytime there's a covid scare we have to quarantine and take the kids out of school and they're jumping on me and it's tough to balance. However, my kids are my inspiration and COVID is a wake-up call to the importance of the intersecting problems of environmental change and human infectious disease, so both these challenges are also a kind of fuel to keep going. You just have to keep going, professionally and personally. That's the most important thing of all.

    It was hard to be on the fringe of available career paths for a long time. I felt like I was on the frontier pushing the needle forward in terms of recognizing this career path was a viable option. I had to get coached on how to not sound a little crazy when I went into my interviews to make sure they didn't think I was looking for a career that didn't exist. Also, this type of career trajectory is definitely not one where you shoot up linearly. You have setbacks on the way. A lot of rejection, a lot of failed grants, a lot of rejected papers, and rejected science and push back.
  • What was the most important lesson you learned as a veterinarian, and still remember today, and would want to tell vet students about?
  • When I reflect back on all of the things that I learned, it comes down to how all the pieces come together, from cells up to whole organisms up to populations. Then later in my training, I started thinking beyond populations and into ecosystems and the whole system. While that medical training seemed abstract at the time, I find that it gave me a fantastic foundation for looking at bigger issues in the world like global health challenges. It helps me speak the language with doctors and public health officials. 

    Another lesson is that if you are going down a path for which there is no straight course, I recommend setting up informational interviews and getting outside your comfort zone. Reach out to mentors or people you wouldn’t think you could talk to in a million years and have a long interview with them to understand how they did it and what to watch for. It is incredibly empowering and has been really, really important to me in all stages of my life. It's really empowering to connect with others who carved similar paths before you. You have to get outside your comfort zone and not just necessarily take the track that has been laid, you can carve a track for yourself.