Connie Steele I Future of Work Expert

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Ep. 90 - A Career Mashup Driven by a Promise, Compassion and Connection- with Catharine Bowman

Strategic Momentum

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Ep. 90 - Catharine Bowman of Alberta Lymphedema Association Strategic Momentum Podcast

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We all have goals that we want to achieve in work and in life but oftentimes we aren’t sure where to start. There is a need, not only to bring our whole selves to work, but also to deliver meaningful impact, yet the task at hand can feel insurmountable.

Catharine Bowman knows this all too well. She’s an accomplished medical researcher, board member, medical student, speaker and change agent. And she’s only in her early twenties. At 8 years old, she made a promise to her mother that she would develop one of the first pharmacological treatments for lymphedema, an incurable and painful disease that is often a result of cancer treatments. That journey to find a solution began by connecting the dots around the trends, challenges and opportunities to create the necessary traction.

Compassion is what started her journey and it was a source of stability through her own constantly changing environment. She’s another inspiring career mashup story who’s  featured in my new book Building the Business of You.

In this latest episode Catharine shares:

  • How she learned to spot the trends that set her down the career path to becoming the world’s youngest Lymphedema researcher 

  • The approach and mindset to tackling a seemingly insurmountable task into smaller components and from all angles while testing and learning 

  • Her career mashup that has enabled her to align to her broader goals 

Spotting the Trends to Find a Potential Treatment

Catharine’s mission driven career mashup is based on compassion, connection and bringing the human element back to bench science. 

When her mother developed a lifelong incurable disease called lymphedema as a result of her cancer surgery, and witnessed the unfortunate physical, psychological and social difficulties that came along with it. There weren’t any treatments available and support communities for those suffering from the disease were non-existent. 

So spotting the opportunities to make a difference was something that Catharine was squarely focused on. Her journey to find the treatment that she works on today began with a lot of reading about the disease with her mom who happened to have a medical background. Through this extensive research, she developed an understanding of lymphedema as well as the lymphatic system. As a result, this desire to acquire broad and deep knowledge helped her identify a solution from an unlikely source: a gardening magazine. 

I was kind of looking through how I would test compounds and I had read in a gardening magazine,, about a particular, particular flower called the lupin flower. It had very strong anti-inflammatory properties and, you know, with childlike innocence and very much good light in my mind, I thought ‘Well, my mom's inflamed. Why don't we just put these compounds on her and see what happens?’ 

And that a-ha moment was the start of her actively pursuing her career path at 13. 

That chance alignment as Catharine called it, coupled with her growth mindset, enabled her to define a specific path towards finding a treatment. And she never let those standards of age or conformity box her in in her pursuits. 

Starting Small, Continually Testing and Learning to Create Connections, Opportunities and Forward Momentum

Catharine’s pursuit of a potential solution didn’t happen overnight and she’s still learning and growing. But by continuously collecting and researching relevant information, she’s now able to build connections that might not have been initially evident. 

Yet that’s where the white space opportunities lie. And as Catharine tells us, she didn't know how they would all connect but she was determined to see where those threads of information would tie together. 

It’s that shift in thinking and doing from being singular to multidimensional, stepwise to end-to end that can open up a world of options that might not of otherwise existed.  That’s what has helped Catharine achieve that seemingly insurmountable promise she set out to fulfill. 

It also involved breaking this challenging problem down into smaller parts, analyzing the problem from multiple angles, and trying things to see what worked and what didn’t. Most importantly, being okay with failure and realizing the good from it was crucial. 

Operating in Parallel to Fulfill Her Goals and be Her Whole Self

Parallel pathing was also something that Catharine did at an early age. She developed  a way to pursue both her educational and scientific career while in high school and even found that they aligned and melded together. 

It’s something that she continues to do today as she not only is a researcher, she is also a medical student, board member, and speaker in addition to the many other roles and areas she’s involved in. Her career mashup has enabled her to align her broader goals of supporting patients on not just the medical front, but also the psychological, social and emotional side as well. 

Catharine did this because she never believed she had to narrowly focus on one path or another. Just as her goal was to treat the whole person which inevitably required her to doing things differently, she intuitively knew she had to explore a range of professional areas so she could be her whole self. 

Today she continues to pursue multiple careers paths that help her reach her higher order mission and goals. And in the end, her measure of success hasn’t been defined by very specific and concrete metrics. Rather success has been a feeling. That feeling is love. 

Career Advice

  • Get comfortable, being uncomfortable and recognize that the pathway to change isn't always smooth. These road bumps and blocks along the way are for the most part surmountable. 

  • If you’re not sure of how to keep yourself grounded amidst all the change, reflect back on the following: What is your intention? What is your motivation? What are the core values that underlie your pursuits? These help you find solace in the moments that lead us into the unknown.

  • Trust in what you believe in and things will very much align. 

  • Lead in love in the name of what you stand for.

  • Have courage to enter in a conversation with differences of opinion because when you leave that conversation with many more commonalities than that one difference that might've brought you together. 

  • Don’t let unnecessary boxes limit you. Be an advocate for the change you want to make.

  • Break things down and analyze it from multiple angles when something seems like a major problem to solve. Realize that you can test the idea and learn from it. 

  • Have the courage to learn from your mistakes and if it’s not working then it’s okay to pivot and reanalyze to determine where to go next. 

  • Realize our journeys don't happen overnight. They come together to create that mosaic. 

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