Dr. Tammy Dickinson, Principal Assistant Director for Environment and Energy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, takes a break to look out over Yosemite National Park. | Photo courtesy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Dr. Tammy Dickinson is the Principal Assistant Director for Environment and Energy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She oversees OSTP’s work to address climate change, promote sustainable development and foster new and cleaner sources of energy. A few weeks ago she sat down with Energy.gov to answer some questions about science, mentorship and women in STEM.
1. HOW DID YOU GET INTERESTED IN SCIENCE?
According to my parents, as soon as I could walk and talk they knew I was going to be a scientist, engineer or something of that nature because I asked lots of questions. I was always inquisitive. I collected everything under the sun when I was a youngster: rocks, bugs, you name it, I had a collection.
2. DID YOU HAVE A MENTOR OR A FAVORITE TEACHER GROWING UP?
From a science perspective, yes, my 5th and 6th grade science teacher took a lot of interest in me. I remember my parents told me — after the fact of course — that she called them a few months before Christmas, and wanted to make sure that my parents were actually going to get me an aquarium for Christmas because I was driving her nuts about the fact that I wanted an aquarium. And she wanted to make sure that my parents had gotten it, and they said, “Yes, we’ve had it for months. It’s up in the attic.”
I also had a father who said, “You can do anything you want to do. You’re going to go to college.” There was never any suggestion that because I was a girl, I had limitations. I tore cars apart with him — in grad school I could do my own brake jobs. So he was a good mentor for a little girl growing up in a small Midwestern town who was trying to do stuff outside of the normal Midwestern box.
3. DID ANYONE TRY TO DETER YOU FROM YOUR DREAM OF BECOMING A SCIENTIST?
When I was in kindergarten or first grade, I was sitting on the teacher’s lap at lunch. And she already knew that I wanted to be a scientist. And she said, “Girls aren’t scientists. You should be a teacher like your big sister.” And I said, “No, I want to be a scientist.”
4. WHAT IS ONE OF THE PROJECTS YOU’VE WORKED ON THAT MAKES YOU THE PROUDEST?
I think the example I’d use is from when I worked at the National Academies. In coal country on the east coast they had had a dam failure. And they had this coal slurry — basically water or fluid that is saturated in coal, ash and all sorts of other stuff — in a holding pond and it broke loose and flowed through the local drainages and cause all sorts of issues. So Congress asked the National Academies to pull together a committee and prepare a report on the impacts of the coal slurry and how we can avoid them in the future.
It was very well-funded, but it had to be done in six months. So I pulled together this monster group of people, and we were flying all over the country to places where most people never visit—in real backcountry coal areas.
And when we got it done, it had a major impact. The Office of Service Mining and others made changes in how they were doing business. It was fun, it was something new, but it also had an impact on how we deal with a very problematic waste material.
5. SO NOW YOU’RE AT THE WHITE HOUSE, IS IT A LOT DIFFERENT FROM OTHER PLACES YOU’VE WORKED?
In several ways. First, I have to be familiar with a much broader range of topics. When I was getting my PhD, and in most of the other places I worked before coming to OSTP, I dove deep on a few topics in geology and planetary science. Now, I have to be prepared to help John Holdren, the director of OSTP, advise the President on everything from pollinators to electric vehicles to natural disasters. Second, it is a lot faster paced. We often have just a day or two to write up a memo that would take weeks at a lot of other offices. And finally, because of the impact that our office has, if you make an error it’s a lot more visible. So we have to be very precise in our work—there’s a lot of making sure that you double and triple check what you’re doing.
6. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY THE MOST REWARDING PART OF THE JOB IS?
Other than working with great people? I’ve got a great staff of 25 or 26 that are just absolutely fantastic. I think probably the most rewarding part of the job is being at the table when policies or other decisions are made that affect people’s lives and will be able to have a positive impact on people not only across the country, but around the world as well.
7. CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
One thing that OSTP is able to do is bring science topics that are less recognized to light. For example, last year, we worked on space weather, which are these large solar storms that can impact everything from your GPS to smartphones to ATM machines, as well as the power grid. We’ve had a lot of activities in the Federal government going on in space weather, but they weren’t well coordinated, so we brought all the agencies together numerous times and wrote a national strategy and action plan. So we really shined a light on space weather, which is an important topic that doesn’t get a lot of publicity.
8. SO YOU HAVE AN ASTEROID NAMED AFTER YOU, HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?
That’s a great thing to put on your resume because that’s the thing everyone will remember! There’s a naming methodology for asteroids where you can propose names. Many years ago I was put up for my work both as a planetary scientist and geologist—my degrees are actually in geology and planetary science, which is why I was at two NASA centers before coming to OSTP. I did NASA research on planetary science, and then I managed the program and then I went over to the National Academies and did some policy work. So that was something the community did for me to acknowledge my research and my policy management.
The asteroid is a dark object with an elliptical orbit, I’m still waiting for my picture of it!
9. AT THE ENERGY DEPARTMENT WE’RE MAKING IT PART OF OUR MISSION TO ENCOURAGE GIRLS TO PURSUE STEM. WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE TO THESE YOUNG WOMEN?
My main piece of advice would be to experiment: try it. Try a bunch of stuff. You’ll find that one thing you’re really passionate about. Don’t think that the first thing you try you’re going to have to do forever.
As you can see from my resume, I’ve been all over and some of those were really risky jumps. Some of those all my friends and colleagues said, “you’re a fool.” And I thought, “no, I think this makes sense.” So I did it and they turned out to be great. I mean, make sure you’ve got some sort of safety net, but take the risks. Don’t be afraid to go against conventional wisdom when your gut is telling you that’s what you should do.
And, for me as a scientist, one of the things that I learned later in life, was the importance of soft skills. As a chemist you quickly learn all the hard stuff, but nowhere along the line do people start talking to you about how to give talks or how to get along with people or how to convince your colleagues to go in the direction you want when you don’t have authority over them. Every time I have an intern, I say to them, make sure you’re building your soft skills. At some point in your career, they will get to be as important as your hard, technical, science skills are.
10. DO YOU REMEMBER A TIME BEING THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM? WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?
Many, I am old enough that there were many of those. Particularly early in my career. I was the only woman in my undergraduate geology group. I was one of two in my graduate class.
One thing that comes to mind was shortly after I joined the staff at NASA headquarters. I was a year and a half or two years out of my PhD, and I went into a room that was supposed to be a meeting of a certain committee: there were 20-30 people in the room sitting around a typical table. And the chair of the committee, who was a man, this very senior leader in the community came up to me and said, “So I’m assuming that you’re here to get us coffee and take the minutes.”
And I put out my hand and said, “I’m Dr. Dickinson,” and you could just see the horror in his face. And I said, “but I’d be happy to reach back into the staff and see if I can get somebody to bring some coffee in and take some notes.”
He didn’t make that mistake again.
