How do early career scientists become successful scientist-advocates? This presentation will share anecdotes and results from a non-random social media survey of early-career scientist-advocates. The goal is to identify elements of successful career strategies that help strengthen the role of science in policy by empowering scientist-advocates. The presentation will focus on: how scientist-advocates can keep up with and contribute to current science, how they can maintain their scientific credibility and expand their skillset, how they can develop skills or relationships to effectively communicate science to policymakers, and how to overcome barriers to a successful scientist-advocate career.
Results/Conclusions
Scientist-advocates are essential intermediaries between scientists and policy-makers, but they need support from their host organizations to be effective. In their early careers, many benefit from collaborations with former and current colleagues, but some find it difficult to keep pace with the breadth of their responsibilities and the changes in their fields. Scientists can help by recognizing the importance of scientist-advocates as educated specialists who can communicate and amplify the importance of their work for policymaking and behavioral change. Policymakers should recognize the value of scientist-advocates as representatives environmental concerns that affect their constituents, and scientist-advocates can increase their value by successfully linking their expertise to timely policy issues. To maintain their credibility, scientist advocates need to develop a strategy for choosing what parts of emerging science to keep up with, maintain their knowledge of key fields, communicate the certainties and uncertainties clearly to policymakers, and drive the field in policy-relevant directions with their publications. Universities can help scientist-advocates launch their careers by offering specialized professional development, particularly in communications, during their training. Finally, scientist-advocates may be able to strengthen their profile as a group by developing personal networks, contributing to policy-oriented publications, and joining or creating professional associations.
