On a cold Boston night in winter 2017, well past 7 pm, Patricie Niyitegeka (pronounced nee-ya-teyakka) was patiently teaching me the contents of every piece of a budgetary Excel spreadsheet. She went over 38 columns and 82 rows, cell by cell, what each cell meant, and how to rationalize each line item for budget justification. We probably spent more than an hour on this.
I just want to appreciate her efforts that despite her intense workload, she took the time at the end of the day to mentor a new postdoc struggling to make sense of the grants. It wasn’t a one-off thing, she continued to mentor me on budgets and management during my entire time in Boston. I am not her first mentee – see Dr.Emily Smith’s acknowledgments in her thesis. And, she does real financial capacity building in “global south”, a very important and often not talked about topic. Read more about her and her advice.
So academic folks if you have had a non-academic mentor, please find ways to appreciate them – in your thesis/ paper’s acknowledgments, in your talks, in your blogs, and more importantly, just let them know.
While you’re here, please check out her’s (and my previous mentor’s) free awesome grant writing and manuscript development guides and templates.
