Women leaders at Clarivate like Ann Graul play a key role in accelerating innovation in the quest for answers to COVID-19 issues. Watch their story.
The global COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 turned the world as we knew it upside down, bringing unimagined challenges and exacerbating existing struggles. It impacted how people work and the progress and speed of broader problem-solving.
However, a consequence of the pandemic is an acceleration of change in the nature of work, the workforce and the workplace, all of which will shift radically in the next few years according to the World Economic Forum. As hybrid office/home work emerges as a common set-up, businesses are reinventing themselves with their colleagues front of mind. In a future of work that is increasingly worker-centric, the human experience will take center stage.
In the early months of the pandemic last year, we offered digital access to Clarivate scientific COVID-19 resources and shared information and our knowledge through free access to Web of Science™ and BioWorld™ coronavirus articles. This enabled people to make use of valuable and trusted data wherever they are and whenever they need it.
We created the Clarivate COVID-19 Dashboard with data updated weekly through 2020 to offer accurate, actionable information and insights that help reduce the time from new ideas to life-changing inventions.
Women at Clarivate taking the lead
At Clarivate, we value every voice. More than half of the colleagues in our science organization are women – their achievements are invaluable to our contributions to innovation and customer success.
This year, women at Clarivate have taken a leading role in accelerating innovation to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Their actions are helping to save lives, promote patient engagement and create a more equitable STEM field post-pandemic.
We asked Ann Graul, one of our women leaders to tell us about her research, her experiences during the pandemic, advice for others interested in their field and visions for the future.
Tell us about your role and location
I am the Senior Content Editor for the Disease Briefings, in charge of most of the writing and editing of these publications. I work in the Barcelona workplace, having moved here from the U.S. more than 30 years ago. Unlike many of my colleagues, I come from a humanities/liberal arts background, which provided me with a strong foundation in researching and writing.
Tell us about your research
My main mission is to keep the Coronavirus Disease Briefing as rigorously up to date as possible, which has sometimes felt like trying to outrun an avalanche! My job entails processing incoming information from a variety of sources, as well as doing targeted searches for information in the Web of Science, PubMed and other online sources. This topic is not restricted to the scientific news pages, however: COVID-19 news is everywhere, and my antenna is always up.
Many times during this period, upon hearing about a new development on the radio or TV, I’ve dropped whatever I was doing to run to my computer and pull up the original source so that I could add the new information to the Disease Briefing immediately.
How have Clarivate data and solutions been helpful in researching and understanding COVID-19?
The Disease Briefings are a part of the Cortellis™ suite of information, and the pipeline tables are automatically updated from the drugs and biologics in the database. I work closely with my colleagues in the pipeline team to identify and verify information on new vaccines and drugs as they have progressed rapidly through the stages of development, and some have been approved for emergency use.
“The common thread and the strength of Clarivate solutions is the human ingenuity behind them – the colleagues who add value to the raw material and polish the data before releasing it to the end user.”
I also rely on BioWorld Science™ and BioWorld as news services and I use the Web of Science for some of my literature searches. I’m a huge fan of EndNote™ and the EndNote Click™ plugin.
The common thread and the strength of all the Clarivate solutions is the human ingenuity behind them – the colleagues who add value to the raw material and polish the data before releasing it to the end user.
How have the events of the past year impacted your ways of working, including the pandemic, quarantines, shifts to remote work and other macro social and economic trends?
I have worked from home 60% of the time for the past 20 years, so in theory switching to full-time remote should have been a breeze. However, between trying to keep up with the constant onslaught of COVID-19 information and being confined to my home with few other activities available, I really overdid it in the beginning and ended up seriously injuring my back. Finding the proper balance between work and non-work was a struggle in this new environment.
I’ve learned to start and end my work day at roughly the same time, not letting work spill over into all hours of the night. Activities that help me to disconnect include reading, walking and working in my garden. During lockdown, I always took a break midday to have a relaxed and healthy meal with my family.
Do you have advice for women and girls interested in entering your field?
Be open, curious and always push yourself to take on new challenges. Recognize your colleagues as allies rather than as competitors. First identify what it is that you love to do, and then figure out how to do it for a living. And once you have found a place for yourself, lend a hand to others who are just getting started on their own journey.
Do you see women’s leadership role in COVID-19 research and response as a springboard for a more equitable future and recovery post-pandemic?
I would hope that would be the case. Many more women than men around the world have been forced to leave the workplace during the pandemic, either because they were in service-related positions that disappeared, or because they shouldered more of the load of caring for children and other family members during lockdowns.
Women in science and medicine have not been spared from the inequalities prevalent throughout our societies. We still have a long way to go in that respect.
I don’t want to end on a negative note, however, so I will just name two of my personal heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who was the first world leader to gently but firmly get the pandemic in her country under control; and NIH scientist Kizzmekia Corbett, whose research was instrumental to developing the mRNA vaccines that are saving so many lives.
Commitments to innovation
The example of the role of women leaders such as Ann Graul in the development of solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic is a clear illustration of what is possible by the commitment we have made to champion community partnerships and diverse, innovative contributions to our shared future.
Watch our film to hear the inspiring stories of how women at Clarivate contributed to the global fight against COVID-19 and are paving the path for future women of science.
We believe that human ingenuity can change the world and improve our future. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Work with us. To find out more about life at Clarivate and current opportunities, visit: https://careers.clarivate.com/.
