Many homes
My supervisors (2 of 3)
Posted to LinkedIn on 2026-09-22. The text below is the post as published.
CDC supervisor after supervisor believed in me. Those were the CDC homes that meant the most to me–the homes that I have sought to extend to others.
For over 25 years, CDC was a single home. Throughout those years, CDC was many homes: reproductive health, ethics and regulation, tuberculosis, data science and informatics. I moved through relationships with supervisors in which I could show up with my whole self and have that honored, even if it meant that I sometimes did unexpected things.
In no particular order: There was the supervisor who supported a statistician’s journey into research ethics. The supervisor who not only championed the regulatory processes that I had revamped, but who also showed me how to bring the contentious critic along with me. The supervisor who had my back when someone with power over me humiliated me in front of my staff. The supervisor who helped me speak truth to power by giving me the floor and (literally) applauding after I spoke. The supervisor who encouraged me to make my already-unconventional role my own. The supervisor who attended all the way through, to whom I could bring unvarnished despair and know it would be received, not managed. The supervisor who gave me the means to turn my high dudgeon into a Trojan high horse, to smuggle conviction in through Plain Language, who not only tolerated but embraced my unorthodox, progressive vision, who kept me out of dust.
These supervisors unceremoniously fostered my brand of leadership, even when it ran smack into institutional inertia. They championed me. They allowed me to grow and refused to abandon me. Their support didn’t come with a ledger, because it was about my becoming, not my success. They made respect feel like my due rather than largesse.
Still, I didn’t doubt that they had to navigate their own ways through the halls of power. They didn’t hand me power (and I wouldn’t have wanted that), but they always held the door open against the winds. Whether I walked through, and whether the other side gave me what I sought, remained mine to pursue.
I respect and admire each of them without venerating them. I have had many homes. I held the institution constant and watched the variable move, which is a statistician’s way of knowing. I have had one home.
[This is the second of a series of 3 LinkedIn posts on homes.]
Many homes
- 1 · Sledgehammer
- 2 · My supervisors (this post)
- 3 · Still inside