Today we’d like to introduce you to Carla D’Avanzo.
Carla, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I came to Boston in 2011 as a PhD visiting student from Naples, Italy. It was supposed to be only for a 6-month period but 7 years later I’m still here and I hold a green card. The lab that hosted me is at MGH, department of Neurology, with a research focus on Alzheimer’s disease.
I loved and enjoyed so much that first 6 months in Boston, my first experience far from Naples, that when my supervisor asked me to stay as a Postdoc I accepted. I started my Postdoc in 2012, got promoted to Instructor in 2017 and left the lab last November.
During those years I’ve published scientific papers on prestigious peer reviewed journals, attended and presented at international conferences and been involved with the MGH Postdocs community. I was Chair of the MGH Postdocs association (MGPA) for two years. I organized social events for Postdocs and networking events with industry people, panel discussion events focused on postdocs career development outside academia.
I love connecting people and that was a good way to use my networking and leadership skills for professional reasons. Thanks to my networking skills I have been able to create a big network of friends as well. During the first months in Boston, few friends and I created a Facebook group to organize volleyball games, it was called “Volleyball et al.” (given the science background of all the members) but then the group started serving as platform for organizing any kind of fun events and to share info and advices for people just moved to Boston.
7 years later that group is still on and it is called “Enjoying Boston”. I’m the manager and it has about 1500 members, a very international crowd. Many people get to know me through that group and even before they move here. I’m happy I can be of help for people that like me moved here without knowing anything about Boston.
I’m always up to date with what’s going on in the city as regarding art, science, and food scenes, I like organizing periodically getting together and pub crawls to explore new places and meet new people. My friends gave me the nickname of “Queen of Boston” since it seems I always know everyone, and everything is going on.
I also had the opportunity to travel a lot around USA in those years. It has been great to be able to take a long weekend off and fly to the main US cities or Caribbean islands. I love so much this city and the life experience I’ve been having that I got tattooed a Boston skyline on me three years ago. Sometimes I feel like a Boston advocate, defending it against the ones don’t like it.
Going back to my job, starting from November I’ve been Program Manager in Strategic Alliances at MGH Research institute. I help bridging pharma companies with academia, it is definitely a job that suits me better. I’m still deep in science but not only in neuroscience anymore. Alzheimer’s research stays my first passion and I try to get involved as much as I can, for example I was in the organizing committee for a panel discussion few months ago and I volunteer at awareness events.
Few more things about me: I’m a member of ICA and you will always find me at their first Friday events. I love social media and I have been doing internship in social media marketing, I started being into running and workout in general, so I signed up for a bunch of sports events this summer.
Has it been a smooth road?
The first years were not smooth. The adjustment to the new culture and the new language was not easy. I found people thinking and behaving in a different way from what I was used to, making it harder to create real connections and friendships. I think I made it work by being open minded, understanding the differences and trying to compromise.
Today I can say I have good friends here and that in general I met awesome and diverse people along the road from which I learned a lot. Unfortunately, people come and go continuously in Boston, making it very hard to settle.
The night life is pretty different from the Italian style, everything shuts down so early and there are restrictions for drinking alcohol outdoor. It leaves always a feeling of frustration since I got to experience a more free night life scene in my country of origin.
The tough winter in Boston is challenging, especially considering I’ve never seen snow in the city I come from. I thought to run away many times during the crazy cold and snowy winters but then summer comes, Boston blooms and it makes me forget that the winter ever happened.
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