By Laurence Bradford for Forbes
Dr. Deborah Berebichez is exclusively represented by CAL Entertainment
An academic trailblazer, Dr. Debbie Berebichez made history in 2004 when she became the first Mexican-born woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford. Today she is the Chief Data Scientist at Metis, a data science bootcamp with multiple locations across the US as well as online resources. She is also the co-host of the Discovery Channel’s Outrageous Acts of Science TV show and a regular guest expert on CNN, Nova, and other shows.
All this success didn’t come easily, however. Berebichez grew up in a conservative community in Mexico City, where she says girls were discouraged from pursuing STEM careers. In our conversation below, she describes how she broke down barriers to transform herself into the woman she is today.
Laurence Bradford: What were your early years like, coming from that conservative community?
Dr. Debbie Berebichez: I was always very inquisitive and I wanted to ask questions about everything and how nature works and all that. But [my mother] came from this background where women were mostly supposed to get married and have a family and not really have a career, and she told me it would be difficult to get married if I pursued a career in math or science. My teachers were unfortunately not much better. They told me that physics was for geniuses, and…that it was not a very feminine career.
So given all this feedback, I guess I lost my self esteem in terms of math and STEM and so I looked for an alternative career and the counselors at school recommended philosophy, because they said that was a career that allowed me to ask a lot of questions without the math and the negative stereotype.
So given all this feedback, I guess I lost my self esteem in terms of math and STEM and so I looked for an alternative career and the counselors at school recommended philosophy, because they said that was a career that allowed me to ask a lot of questions without the math and the negative stereotype.
Bradford: From there, how did you find your way into physics?
Berebichez: I enrolled in philosophy in Mexico City for two years, and that’s when I realized that the more I tried to hide my hunger to learn about the universe and do physics, the more this inner voice was coming out and I just couldn’t stop my calling, calling me to do this endeavor. So I decided, behind everyone’s back, to apply to schools in the U.S. because I had learned that you could do several majors in the U.S., not just one thing. I was very fortunate to earn a merit based scholarship at Brandeis, which is a small university in Massachusetts.
That completely changed my life.
[My first semester], I had the courage to take a very basic physics course in astronomy. The teaching assistant was a student from India by the name of Rupesh. Rupesh and I became very good friends and he’s the first person who believed in me and said to me I had not only talent but perseverance, and perseverance was much more important than talent.
One day, I kind of cried to him and I said, I really want to try to do physics. I don’t want to die without trying. So he called the head of the department and he said, “I have this student who only has two more years, but she really wants to switch from philosophy to physics.” It turns out, the director said, there’s precedent for this, because Ed Witten, the famous physicist, the father of string theory, switched from history to physics.
We went to [the director’s] office and he basically handed me a book of vector calculus, complicated math. It was an alien language for me. He said if by the end of the summer, I was able to master this material, they would let me skip through the first two years of the physics major so I could complete it on time.
Bradford: You were able to learn all these advanced concepts in a single summer?
Berebichez: Rupesh devoted his summer to tutoring me and mentoring me every single day. We had to cram two years of physics into two months basically. Saturday derivatives, Sunday integrals. It was crazy. Then I managed to pass the exam at the end of it.
The reason why I love this story is because I always wanted to pay Rupesh for all his tutoring and mentoring, and he said to me that when he was growing up in India, he said there was an old man who used to climb up the mountain to his town and teach English, math and [music]. When the family wanted to pay this old man for all his teaching, the man said no, the only way you could ever pay me back is if you do this with someone else in the world. It was beautiful. And that’s sort of how Rupesh passed this torch to me to inspire and encourage other minority students who have a dream to do STEM careers, but somehow feel for whatever reason that they can’t achieve their dreams.
Bradford: And after graduating from Brandeis, you didn’t stop there.
Berebichez: I really wanted to pursue a career in physics, and I was very lucky that Steve Chu, who had just won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 (and later the Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration), invited me to work directly with his group lab. I went to Stanford in 1998 and I did six years of physics, which is normal for a Ph.D. And in 2004, I became the first Mexican woman to get a Ph.D in physics at Stanford.
Bradford: How did you find out that you were the first Mexican woman to do this?
Berebichez: We went through a whole process. [A fellow female student and I] basically confronted the administration and said that we were wondering why there was so few women that graduated from the program and so people started giving us the statistics and we became sort of known for sort of digging in and researching a little more to help women advance. We created the Association for the Advancement of Women in Physics. That’s when [one of the professors I interviewed] told me, “Looking at all these stats I realized that we’ve never had another student from Mexico. If you finish the program you’d become the first one.”
Bradford: How did you feel after that revelation?
Berebichez: It was a whole talk where I learned that with privilege comes responsibility. So the fact that I had the privilege of being there and being mentored by all these bright minds, gave me the responsibility to help others because it taught me how even at Stanford, a very progressive school, the numbers of women graduating in the program were so low compared to the male counterparts.
Bradford: So, skipping ahead to current day, describe how you’re using this physics background in your current role as a data scientist.
Berebichez: Data science is almost like doing physics all over again, but instead of solving cryptic problems that only five or six people care about, you’re actually solving [practical] problems, gaining insights for companies. Whether it’s retail, healthcare, finance. That cemented my passion for math and programming in a more practical environment. Physicists tend to train very well to solve problems and to think on your feet. To not be intimidated by the problem. So I think those qualities lend themselves really well to data science.
Bradford: What advice would you give to others who feel alone and isolated maybe in their college program or in high school, whatever, that want to pursue STEM?
Berebichez: My advice would be to not let anyone tell you or anyone stereotype, tell you that you can’t pursue your career and dream in STEM. Really just practice, practice, practice, because that’s what will eventually lead to success.