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Community Spotlight: Paula Littlejohn
In honour of International Women’s Day, UBC’s Equity and Inclusion Office caught up with PhD candidate Paula Littlejohn to learn more about her experience as a woman of colour in STEM and they ways in which she is championing inclusion at the university. Littlejohn is a PhD candidate in Dr. Brett Finlay’s microbiology lab at UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories, a mother of five and an active advocate for racial and gender equality initiatives both at UBC and in the STEM fields at large. She is passionate about researching the impact of early life micronutrient deficiency on the gut microbiome and has published work about the effects of COVID-19 on the Double Burden of Malnutrition. She is also works with a team of collaborators producing a Black speaker series titled “Where are the all the Black People?” which tackles the underrepresentation of Black people in both academia and STEM. Littlejohn also loves spending time with her family learning Mandarin, enjoying music and communicating health science to family and friends.