Author
Erin Jerri Pangilinan
Date Published
Reading Time
12 min read
In my next issue, I promise I will talk about DeepSeek and AI Opportunity and all the other philosophies surrounding it (doomerism etc.). This issue will be dedicated towards women and women in tech.
For this this issue and those moving forward, format wise, I like to touch on different areas of tech, the trinity/threes of each: a little bit of
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in these three disciplines:
on these topics:
The topics of productivity, self-development, and the market, makes me think of one of my favorite quotes that Shannon Lee writes in the book Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee, about her father Bruce Lee. To me it is all about agency and action as a form of self-determination.
“We create our reality by how we choose to act and how we choose to respond to things outside ourselves from within ourselves.”
In this issue I write about:
Building upon my last Substack issue, below I share some of my favorite books about design and web3 below.
The video above (from Dr. Izadifar) shows how 3D printing is being used to help with critical foundational research in women’s health, things we need to understand in order to advance the field of fertility research.
Outside of a really great Dr. Amy B. Killen on women’s sexual health, on “Achieving Sexponential,” (something of which I knew virtually nothing about), I also really liked this presentation on “Advancing Women’s Reproductive Health with Human Organ Chips” by Boston Children’s Hospital, Dr. Zohreh Izadifar (see on LinkedIn). The above video from Dr. Izadifar shows how 3D printing is being used to help with critical foundational research in women’s health, things we need to understand in order to advance the field of fertility research. Dr. Izadifar talked about how their work seeks to simulate “human tissues in the lab to replace mouse models.” Little did I know that female mice lack menstruation cycles, making this more difficult for women’s health research. The video above shows the chip which is “their device made of plastic, inside of that there are 3 microchannels, middle channel, separated by membrane, you can see different types of cells (ex. lung cells), on either side of channel, you see vacuums, stretching membrane, to simulate movements of intestine, move flow and air in different channels. With these factors you can study complex conditions like infection (ex. like a lung) and you can see the blood cells and study how the cells are responding. This simulation was done in these chips. So you can see the healthy lung chip, an introduction of bacteria in the channel and how our body would theoretically respond. You can view how the blood cells would pass through, when you stain the white blood cells (green is the bacteria). The idea is to engineer 3D cellular structure and tissue-to-tissue interfaces, where you can recreate mechanical cues (dynamic flow, cyclic breathing) and mimic human tissue in a way we haven’t before. This technology started in 2006, and has evolved much over time.” She continued how critical this type of technology can be used to model other serious female reproductive conditions.
“We can use organ chips for female reproductive health, here we can leverage organ-on-chip technology for modeling female reproductive conditions such as Bacterial Vaginosis (BV), which a happens in female reproductive track, which has a high prevalence which causes pre-term birth, abortion, high risk of acquiring HIV, and STDs, pelvic inflammatory disease, and a high failure rate, and is not treatable, and is expensive to treat.”
I signed up for the Fertility Pregnancy Institute with Dr. Cleopatra, the first African American tenured professor at USC, tried some of her supplements, her MOOC is also amazingly jam-packed with more information to regulate my nervous system, understand my own psychology, biology, and overall health—not only what to do about my fertility. This was a really empowering thing - one of the best investments I have ever made.
I also signed up for AthenaDAO’s Fertility MOOC which also was rich with information that laid out a lot (like Dr. Cleopatra’s content), but in slide format, and they had a huge emphasis on cutting-edge technology improving fertility outcomes and advancing the whole field wof omen’s health, an area that is massively overlooked and possesses a huge opportunity. My favorite lecture was the one about utilizing AI (computer vision algorithms) to enhance egg retrieval and improve fertility outcomes (more on this on my previous Substack can be found here).
Below I list a link of resources I compiled over the last year that have helped me as I did my fertility consultation’s with Spring Fertility in Silicon Valley last year.
Because I get so many frequent requests to mentor and guide women and femmes, who are students, transitioning non-traditional professionals in tech, Stanford and UC Berkeley alumni, and a lot of other college students, and early stage founders, I am often oversubscribed to the point where I have had to turn down all requests unless someone is interning or working for me on a project to develop their skills, or offering a really promising startup in exchange for sweat equity until I have more of a capacity to write a check (I’m often juggling multiple projects so it has been tough). So below, I provide my resource guide primarily focused on software engineers and some advice that can help all junior women out when considering how to level up.
I created this Women in Tech Resource Guide, which I originally gifted to the Women in Tech community at Taro (YC S22), a software engineering professionals group focused on career growth. Check it out here so at least you can learn and join other industry networks, support groups by category and role.
Additionally, I originally wrote a post in 2021 about women in tech (now defunct), so I’ll briefly summarize it here. For some people, they say “Make. Show. Learn.” “Dream, Create, Explore” and “Play. Create. Connect.” and most memorably for me recently Apple’s latest motto for Apple Vision for is “See. Feel. Do.” which emphasizes the senses. For me, it’s 3 things “Learn. Build. Network.” This helps encourage women in tech to get their foot in the door.
For all the women non-software engineers/data scientists/technical folks/scientists - the same principles apply, and I would also recommend the same advice as above along with these 3 other actions that might help you advance your career:
1. Negotiate (for more money/title/role/resources etc.).
2. Self-Advocate (and find your sponsors and mentors).
3. Self-Promote (Build Your Brand - and independent of a company you work for).
As promised there are a couple my recommended reads before diving into the DeepSeek details.
Me with Kevin Owocki (founder of GitCoin and author of How to DAO) at the book launch at Edge and Node SF in the Presidio.
Web3 Books - Some of which I’m still finishing
March 🍀
April
Happy Lunar New Year! AI for Fertility - AthenaDAO (Web3 Fertility MOOC) I Women in AI I The New Club I The DeepSeek vs OpenAI vs Everyone Else Debate
