Polly (Dora Jar)

In my room at the Kimpton Marlowe on the Charles River in Cambridge, MA just steps away from the future offices of Prime Medicine, my new employer. When I start tomorrow as Prime’s head of quality, I will be responsible for compliance with regulations to ensure the safety, quality, identity, purity and potency of novel gene editing technologies developed in the last year by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. It’s a long way from Coon Valley to Cambridge.

In the past two months, as I’ve interviewed with Prime and another gene editing company, negotiated offers from both, and stepped down from my current role, I’ve been gratified and humbled to hear the appreciation for the work I do. I’ve always walked a fine line between confidence and self-doubt, inviting self-sabotage to prove I wasn’t up to the task. Luckily, I’ve had people I could share with, Andi and the kids especially, and somehow it’s come to this, my next and hopefully last career adventure.