Video transcript · 4 min · 515 words

Kellie Pierson, NIOSH research psychologist, on her career path: transcript

Kellie Pierson, a research psychologist at NIOSH, describes how she began at the institute as a teenage office clerk and later studied at night while working full time and raising a child. She talks about fieldwork with workers and about her family and motorcycle hobby.

Key points

She joined NIOSH right out of high school as an office automation clerk and later wanted more than filing and photocopying.
She worked full time, attended school at night and was a single mother, sometimes getting up at 2 or 3 a.m. to analyze data.
Her supervisor encouraged her to keep going and offered to adjust her schedule or workload.
In the field she expected focus groups and cognitive interviews but came to feel sympathy for workers, some of whom simply asked for mops.
Providing mops could reduce injuries from scrubbing floors on hands and knees.
Outside work she enjoys time with her daughter's sports activities, vacations at the beach and riding a motorcycle.

Chapters

0:00Starting at NIOSH as an office clerk
0:57Balancing work, night school and single motherhood
1:59Fieldwork lessons and the request for mops
3:21Motorcycle riding and free time

Full transcript

0:00I started with NIOSH as a teenager right out of high school and came in working as an office automation clerk and spent several years doing that, kind of getting the feel for what occupational safety and health really was and decided that at that point I was just not satisfied anymore with kind of, you know, the filing and the photocopying.

0:57Not only was I working full-time, going to school at night, but I was also a single mother. I remember setting the alarm clock for 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning so that I could get here, get the data analyzed before my shift started here at work, then work my shift here, and then go right to school at night. Even with all that support, sometimes though, coming in here to work after staying up until midnight or one o'clock in the morning to get a paper done or working on the thesis, sometimes I still would question and be like, you know, I just can't do this anymore. And it was actually my supervisor at the time that seemed like he played more of a father role in a good way. And he would always encourage, you know, just keep with it. You know, if we need to, you know, alter your schedule here a little bit or lessen the workload here a little bit, this is the what we need you to do. Going into the actual field, I really didn't know what

1:59to expect. I kind of thought it would be your everyday just, you know, listen to some focus groups, do some cognitive interviewing. However, you really start to connect with these individuals and really start to feel kind of sympathy for them in that, you know, when we're asking questions, for example, what would you like to see out of our research? You know, what would help you with the work you're doing help prevent injuries and illness and some of them were just simply saying we would like to have mops and so then you really get a good understanding of what these individuals are working with or what they're not working with so it's little things like being able to say provide these individuals with mops and we're going to alleviate some of the some of the injuries and illnesses that they often occur from being on their hands and knees and scrubbing the floor versus being able to stand up and use a mop I love spending time with my family, going on vacations, spending time at the beach. I love being a part of my daughter's extracurricular activities. She runs track, cross-country, plays soccer and basketball. I like to spend as much time as I can with her, knowing that I don't have very much more time.

3:21I got my motorcycle license and I enjoy riding when there's free time available. I have a 2007 1200 Sportster. I hope to actually move up to a little bigger bike in the next couple years because the bigger the bike the more comfortable. People.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Science Speaks - Talking to Women in Science (Kellie, Psychologist).webm by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2013-11-04), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.