In Chapter 3 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "In What Ways Has Your Family Cultivated and Supported Your Passion for Science?" She notes how her grandparents were Holocaust survivors who came to Brooklyn and made education a top family priority. Stacie's parents pass on these values in their own parenting, doing what it takes to support their children's education.
Stacie Grossman Bloom is the Executive Director at the NYU Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). She earned her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University in New York City. She earned her BA in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Delaware.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: In what ways has your family cultivated and supported your passion for science?
Stacie Grossman Bloom: In my family, education was always really important. My father’s parents were holocaust survivors who lost everything and started their lives basically from the ground up. Came to America, came through Ellis Island, settled in Brooklyn. My father met my mother and they believed firmly that education was the key to success.
And, I have one brother and growing up that was the one thing that was always so important that we do really well in school and that they provide us with whatever we would need to do really well in school. And, we did. We did really well at school, they did a good job.
You know, I went to college; I was the first person in my family to go to graduate school -- that was a really big deal. And, I remember finding out that I had been accepted and calling my parents and I was very excited and I was going to Georgetown and it was so unbelievably expensive and my father said that no matter what he had to do, I was going to go and he would even take a second job. And it was like such an amazing thing. Fortunately, I ended up getting a fellowship and full ride and stipends and nobody had to get any second jobs. But, I would say that I was always really supported and given the resources that I needed to do well in school.