Pursuing Ambitious Projects in Biosecurity
An interview with Sofya Lebedeva
Sofya Lebedeva is currently pursuing a PhD in Clinical Medicine at Oxford University, co-founded the Alliance for Reducing Microbial Resistance (ARMoR) and runs the Oxford Biosecurity Group which aims to create work experience opportunities for early career individuals in biosecurity.
I sat down with her to chat about her career path. We discussed:
Her path to her current career
Developing resilience through skill-building and self-care
Her thoughts on PhDs and entrepreneurship
The value of time
Katie: How would you describe your journey to your current career?
Sofya: When I started my undergraduate degree, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to create things that were useful for the world, but I had no idea how to use my degree for that, because the obvious options were to become a doctor or a professor, or to get a job in the pharmaceutical industry.
So I had to figure out what I wanted and then get comfortable with taking a path that was less ‘traditional’. It was confusing, and I couldn’t be sure that I was making the ‘right’ choice — I just had to guess and get comfortable with it!
I came to learn that:
If you take enough risks, you realise that no one really knows what they’re doing
My own internal calibration of how often I expected to fail was off — I’ve actually ‘failed’ way less than I thought I would
Katie: What do you think helped you to choose a less conventional path?
Sofya: It’s important to acknowledge that I have a lot of privilege. I haven’t had the same financial pressures as others might have - I did work during my undergraduate studies so that I could be self-sufficient, but I could have chosen not to - and I actually graduated debt-free, which enabled me to do the optimal thing for my career without having to worry about money. I know this isn’t the case for many people.
I’m also very intentional about how I spend my time, and I reflect on that much more than the average person. I do monthly, quarterly and annual reflections using a combination of a bullet journal and Notion templates.
Finally, I have less regard for existing social norms — I’m comfortable pursuing whatever I want and I don’t mind the thought that people might find it weird. I was lucky enough to already have quite a lot of confidence growing up, but it’s also something I’ve trained, like working out at the gym. You start with the small things and then move to the bigger things. For example, even just sending quite a bold email to someone, and seeing that it didn’t upset anyone, gave me license to keep on going.
Katie: Can you tell us more about what your reflections look like?
I read about bullet journaling here (free on Amazon Prime). I’d recommend it to other people; there are initial set-up costs for the first month because you need to choose which templates to use, but once you’ve found what works for you, it’s easy.
For example, for my monthly reflection in my bullet journal, I track:
The 4 main habits I’m working on
My top 5 goals for the month
Key dates in my schedule
What’s given me energy and what’s taken it away.
I can then make changes each month to lean more in the direction of things that give me energy.
For my annual goals, I use Notion; I now have an easy template that I can just copy and paste every year. I then use Instagram as a kind of accountability diary where I post reflections and share about my exercise goals. Sometimes I share polls to have people guess on whether I’m going to achieve my workout goal or not — it’s motivating to prove them right or wrong!
Katie: How ambitious are you with regards to your career? What are your long-term career aspirations?
Sofya: Very ambitious! I’ve set myself an ‘insane’ vision to fundamentally change the way we approach medicine in the world, to reimagine how we approach medicine and health. So my mission right now is to aggressively absorb information and up-skill.
The projects I’m working on are all supporting this; the PhD is the most rapid place of learning that I've ever been in, because I’m trying to learn about three different areas of viral bacterial and cell culture work. Usually you focus on one domain: my project has three. Meanwhile, ARMoR is helping me learn about policy and how government systems work, and the Oxford Security Group is enabling me to learn how to project-manage and scale an organisation.
Katie: Let’s talk about entrepreneurship. A lot of people don’t even consider it as an option for them. What gave you the conviction to start the projects you’re working on now?
Sofya: I think my family history has a lot to do with it. I'm Russian; my parents lived through the Soviet Union and my dad is a businessman himself. When he started his business in the 1990s, due to the regime change the first 20 years of his career had become relatively useless, so he had to start from scratch and iterate quickly. Through this, he learned various lessons about entrepreneurship which he’s then passed on to me.
I’ve learned a lot from both my parents and from exposure to several languages as I was growing up. Because I've lived in multiple countries, I’ve come to realize that people everywhere get brought up with a particular worldview, and a lot of our assumptions about the world are more fake than you might think. Each country I have lived in has had its own set of assumptions, and when you experience these different cultures and systems, you see that the norms in a particular context are much easier to break out of than people within the context might think.
Katie: What would be your advice to people who want to gain more confidence to work on ambitious, entrepreneurial projects?
Sofya: Get comfortable with change. Go live somewhere else for six months. Or start small — even if it’s just by trying out a new restaurant and building from there. It’s a bit like learning a new skill in the gym: you break it down into the smallest piece and master that before pushing yourself further.
Katie: It sounds like this is partly about building resilience, which is key for people who want to work on ambitious projects. Is there anything else that you've done to increase your resilience?
Sofya: I don’t think this is particularly controversial, but I always tell people that you need to fix yourself before you try to help other people. You can’t be working at 100% if you aren’t taking care of yourself. So if your sleep is rubbish or your nutrition is awful, you really need to sort that out.
I try to practice what I preach and take my self care very seriously. I get my grocery shopping delivered and meal prep every week, I exercise regularly, I meditate, and I have a cleaner who helps keep my spaces tidy.
There are knock-on effects to looking after yourself. Check out Dan Go’s newsletter for a few months; he’s a fitness coach for entrepreneurs who has a ton of stories about how once these entrepreneurs fix their sleep and get fit, their business performance massively improves.
Katie: Another skillset that seems important is ‘super communicator’ skills; in particular, skills like negotiation, conflict resolution, persuasion, etc. Have you done any deliberate work in this area?
Sofya: Communication is definitely a weak point of mine and I'm actively working on it at the moment. This is where my reflection work comes in useful; I worked with a coach and we identified a few ways in which I could reflect weekly on the conversations I have (i.e. which conversations were good, which weren’t so good, and what made them so?)
I’ve also tried to learn more about the topic in general by reading a bunch. The classic ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie was also really useful.
Katie: Another great book is ‘Never Split the Difference’ by Chris Voss.
Sofya: Nice, I’ll add that to my list. It would be really cool to have a checklist for people to assess their communication skills, because there are so many components to being a great communicator. I honestly think that learning how to coordinate with people is one of the most important skills that I’m learning in my life right now and a key thing that I’m getting out of my PhD.
Katie: Talking about PhDs, what are your thoughts on whether people should pursue them or not?
Sofya: It’s highly context-dependent, but in general I think pursuing a PhD is probably a bad idea for about 70-80% of people. A lot of people end up doing a PhD because they don’t know what else to do, and end up kicking the can down the road for five years. I think it’s working for me because I’m killing a few birds with one stone: I’m gaining credentials but also up-skilling and exploring entrepreneurship at the same time.
Katie: Any final thoughts about mistakes you see people making or advice you’d want to share?
Sofya: One thing I notice is that people don't value themselves and aren’t clear on how much their time is worth. For example, they might be reluctant to spend money on a cleaner, even if that will save them 2-3 hours of their time each week and will also improve their mental health. To me, if you do the math, it’s worth it. Ditto for investing in as high quality food as possible and buying things like shoes that are going to be comfortable, even if they are more expensive. We should be much more resistant to being frugal in some instances so that we can find the right balance of quality versus price.
Similarly, we should grok the concept that our time is our most valuable asset. I think it was Sahil Bloom who talked about the concept of time billionaires — if you’re in your 20s, you have more than a billion seconds in your life, and people who are later in life are very poor relative to you because they may have more money but they have less time. So we should be mindful to spend those seconds wisely!
Thanks to Sofya for taking the time to share her thoughts with me. If you liked this post and would like to read more, please drop me a comment and let me know who you’d like me to interview next!