As a child in the United States, Susan enjoyed mathematics and chemistry at school. Her mother was a Registered Nurse, and for a long time, Susan assumed that nursing was the only path open to her in medicine, simply because she was a girl. It wasn’t until college that she realised every option in medicine was actually open to her too.
Susan went on to study Molecular Biology, then medical school, followed by years of additional training to become a dermatologist - a doctor who specialises in skin. In total, this training took twelve and a half years! During this time, she also started a family, raising four boys while working full time. At the age of thirty, she opened her own medical practice in Arizona, specialising in dermatology, and she has been practising there for nearly four decades.
“The only way to find out what you’re good at - and what you love - is to try things, including subjects in STEM.”
Susan trained in the 1970s and 80s, a time when it was common for people to openly say that women didn’t belong in science and medicine. She remembers being told things like “why should we accept you when there are men who are qualified?” At the time, women often had to be twice as qualified as men just to be considered equally. Susan found strength and support from the brilliant women around her at college, who were all navigating the same challenging environment together.
Despite - or perhaps because of - these challenges, Susan became a pioneer in her field, travelling the world to train other doctors on new technologies for skin care, often as one of very few women in the room. She has also used her medical knowledge to support research into Type 1 Diabetes.