If my younger self knows me now, he will find it surprising that I am a trained microbiologist. He would be shocked that a germaphobe like himself who consistently sought to wash away all bacteria and viruses from his body grew up to be someone who loves microbes, and yes, even during a viral pandemic. As someone who lives in a small coastal town in the Philippines, he would wonder how I ended up doing research work from California to Nevada to Wisconsin and then Tennessee. From this brief introspection, I started to realize I may have only gotten into research due to a series of fortunate events and things, but I’d like to change that for everyone else. Growing up in the Philippines where holding a PhD is rare, the prospect of pursuing a doctorate was neither a prevailing thought nor option for me. Instead, my early career successes and my family’s high expectations pushed me towards a career of medicine. Looking back, this path eventually changed when my family and I migrated to the United States as it opened new and exciting opportunities for me. It wasn’t an immediate transition. Indeed, I started college at a small private Catholic university in California with a goal to be a medical doctor. My path changed my junior year when I took an introductory microbiology class with Dr. Terry Byrd, a farmer turned professor from Canada. In his class, I learned that many microbes are beneficial to the health of all organisms, including humans. And they even contribute greatly to nutrient cycling in our environments. This understanding switched my perception of these tiny creatures. Instead of thinking of them as mere sources of diseases, I began to view them as important in our lives. Leaning in on this new interest, I took a research-focused course on microbial genetics, where my passion for research emerged. I still remember the sensation I felt the first time I discovered something new, as if it was only yesterday. After working on a bacterial protein for more than a year, I found out that it functioned in cell differentiation. In that moment, I felt as though a jolt of lightning rushed through me. I dashed to my professor’s office and exclaimed, we have a phenotype. I heard Dr. Rosalind Franklin’s excitement when she first visualized the structure of DNA, and felt Dr. Barbara McClintock’s heartbeat racing when she first conceptualized transposons. It was thrilling to find something no one has ever known or seen before. I saw discovery’s limitless potential, and the desire for more led me to pursue a PhD. As I sought to further my understanding of microbes during my graduate career, it was at this time that I realized there are other factors beyond passion for research that contribute to doing research. While everyone had the inherent love for discovery, I saw biases that hampered it. I saw graduate students who are women experience direct sexism from their mentors. I saw ideas of those with regional or international accents be viewed as less than instead of equal. I did not see a lot of researchers who are black, and those I did see were often tokenized as the model minority for their program. I saw disparity in resource distribution from within labs to across universities. I saw my own privileges. Instead of research success being correlated with specific events and identities that I’ve lived and seen, I hope for a better future to support the joy of scientific research in everyone. I hope for a better future where becoming a scientist is a possibility across geography and identities and not just to those who are privileged. I hope for a better future where research environments are ridden of their conscious and subconscious biases, allowing everyone’s passion for scientific discovery to persist and thrive, providing a truly collaborative environment. I am driven to build this better future and taking this on in an unlikely place, the science philanthropic community. I am a civic science fellow working at the Science Philanthropy Alliance, a nonprofit organization that supports a network of private science funders with a collective goal to advance basic science research. While the science philanthropy space is still at its early stages of its diversity, equity, and inclusion work, I am happy to share there are emerging interests. I’m excited to follow them in the journey and have the following three overarching goals. I aim to understand and provide the support they need to build and transform their programs. I aim to strengthen the relationships with communities that they traditionally do not connect. And finally, I aim to continuously advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, both from within and beyond. Doing such work can be challenging, but I take comfort knowing that this is not an individual but a group effort. For that, I have been extremely thankful for the camaraderie and support I feel with the other civic science fellows and more recently from the Frank community. It has also been helpful that others recognize that such work takes time because changing the future requires sustained and flexible effort. With our collective visions and actions, I see elevating scientific research into new heights. We’re in questions that we could not imagine answering are answered. We’re in great scientific discoveries are not rare but are the norm. And we’re in everyone truly can appreciate, experience, and enjoy the beauty of discovery. Thank you.