Positivity Pause - #WinningWednesday - UNWIND!

🌞 It’s #WinningWednesday, and it's time for your #PositivityPause! 🌞

TAKE a moment to inhale for a count of 3, hold for a count of 3, exhale for a count of 3🧘🏽‍♀🧘🏼‍♂🧘🏾

😷As I entered the exam room to see a patient today and neither of us was wearing a mask and we saw each other’s face in person for the first time, I couldn’t help but reflect on the brilliant African American mind that helped to make this possible. 

🤎🧬Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, Key Developer Behind the Moderna Covid Vaccine, American viral immunologist. 🔬🧫

🎇Let’s celebrate Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett and her Positive legacy🪷

✅ Corbett was born in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina on January 26, 1986, and grew up in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

✅She received a B.S. in Biological Sciences and Sociology, in 2008 from the University of Maryland–Baltimore County and obtained her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology in 2014 at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There she studied human antibody responses to dengue virus in Sri Lankan children.

✅ She is an Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute since June 2021.

✅ Corbett’s research has been honored with Kaiser Permanente’s African Americans in Health Care Award (2021), the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s The Golden Goose Award (2020), the Foundation for National Institutes of Health’s Salzman Memorial Award in Virology (2020), the American Society for Microbiology’s Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research Award (2020), and many more.

✅Corbett is an active member of the NIH Fellows Committee and avid advocator of STEM education and vaccine awareness in the community.

✅She worked under immense scrutiny and pressure as a black woman scientist instrumental in Covid vaccine development yet exuded positivity
 
- “I want to be a leader that exudes grace because there is so much pressure in science….”

- “I’ve done everything I can do, and now I need to delegate. Another important lesson I learned is that you really have to trust your instincts.”

 -“If you can unwind and be true to who you are, it helps to reckon with things.” Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett

⏸Take a Positivity Pause to be filled with pride and admiration and to just follow Dr. Corbett’s advice and “UNWIND” for a few moments 🤎🧘🏾