Standing Your Ground: Stories about sticking up for yourself

Confrontation can be scary and speaking up for yourself takes courage. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers find their confidence to fight for themselves.

Part 1: When Luis Melo doesn’t see his name on a report that he spent nine months working on, he decides to confront his boss.

Luis Melo has been providing professional Data Science consulting services in various industries since 2003. For the past 4 years Luis has been working for the Mount Sinai Hospital System in the Psychiatry Department as a Health and Safety Quality Analyst. Luis’ experience ranges from working in research for mental health care and criminal justice to Data Analytics in nutrition, sports, entertainment and fashion. Luis earned a Master’s Degree from John Jay University of Criminal Justice in Criminal Justice and a B.A in Psychology from Mount Saint Mary College. Luis is a married father of 2 with a wonderful wife and kids that have helped yo become the person yo is today. Luis was born in Dominican Republic but grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Luis enjoys calisthenics outdoor workouts and basketball as well as quality time with his family. Luis recently started yos own data science consulting and multiservice business where yo helps clients achieve their goals by applying yos skills in research, fitness, and nutrition. The focus is always on building an efficient and results-driven relationship. Luis works with yos clients to create a customized plan of action for themselves or business in order to streamline and optimize their growth.

Part 2: When another professor at a conference makes an inappropriate comment toward Sara Maloni, she decides to speak up.

Sara Maloni is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Virginia. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Warwick in 2013. Before coming to UVa, she was a Tamarkin Assistant Professor at Brown University. She works at the intersection of geometry and low-dimensional topology. More precisely, she studies deformation spaces of geometric structures on manifolds through their geometric, topological and dynamical properties. Sara is originally from Italy and lived in the UK and France, before arriving in the US. In her free time, she loves hiking, scuba diving, travelling, reading, crafting (felting, pottery, woodworking).

To listen to more stories from our UVA show check out the latest episode of HOOS in STEM.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

I've always been like a team player. It's just the way that I kind of grew up, family dynamics and also from just plain organized sports from elementary school all the way through college. So it's just always a thing that I am.

Luis Melo shares his story at Caveat in New York, NY in March 2023. Photo by Erica Price.

For example, I'm the guy that wakes up butt crack early to go to the park to get the best spot for the picnic. Or the guy that, when I worked at Staples growing up, would volunteer to switch shifts with co workers just to accommodate them and make everybody comfortable and happy. Or the guy that set up a system with the neighbors to combat that damn alternate side parking.

That's just one thing that has always carried with me and just taught me to like complete projects, be social and it was just a skill that carried me throughout.

I was undecided when I went to college. I didn't really know what I wanted to study but I was there. I would show up to class all the time. And after junior year, it was time to declare a major, so I decided psychology. This is what I want to do. This is it.

I was taking classes and learning about all the different types of psychology and all the different fields and I started to learn that I was becoming fascinated with research and the process of it: the lit review, the methodology, the developing of tools to collect data, the analyzing of data, the interpretation of the data. It just fascinated me. So I was set. I was like this is what I want to do.

And the icing of the cake was going to the Eastern Psychology Association to present my senior thesis. So I was set. I was like this is what I want to do. This is it.

So I graduated college and, like most college grads, you don't know what kind of job you're going to get. You just got to get a job. So I started finding myself in a lot of direct care work. I was working as a case manager for a home based crisis intervention program or as a teacher's assistant in the therapeutic community in a foster care residential program.

Those were the kind of jobs that I was getting and I started to notice that if I want to do this research, I need some more school. So I went back to grad school. I armed myself with the importance of statistical significance and learned about T squares. I was just ready to go out there and do more research.

So I found a job in the city agency where that was one of the main things that they did, research. For the first year, I was just there learning and trying to learn about different standards and different ways to provide oversight. Because the agency that I worked at provided oversight for different types of mental health programs, behavioral health, addictions, housing programs, prison re entry programs. So those were the types of things that I was evaluating and reviewing.

Right around this time was around the time that Mayor Bloomberg, then Mayor Bloomberg came out with the food standards, New York City food standards. I don't know if you heard about the New York City food standards, but if you ever go to McDonald's and you see the number of calories next to the menu, that's one of the reasons why. If you see a Big Mac and you see 563 next to it, that's how many calories are in it.

When it came to city agencies that were receiving money from the city to provide services, they had an extra 100 to 120 set of standards that they had to follow. For example, if a program purchased food, there was a set of standards for that. If a program served food, there was a set of standards for that. If they purchased a can of tuna, the can of tuna had to be less than 290 milligrams of sodium. Or if they purchased cereal, it has to be less than six grams of sugar.

So the options for the participants, it wasn't the most healthy. They all complained about it. But the main point of the food standards was to provide food that had less added sugar and lower sodium in order to reduce incidences of obesity and high blood pressure amongst other health disorders that could happen because of bad diet.

One day, I'm sitting in a staff meeting and our assistant program director who looked like Woody Allen and wore an extra baggy suit, like the suit was extra big on him, he gets up there and says, “We've been commissioned by the mayor's office. We have to come up with a report to measure the impact of the food standards and how the city agencies are complying with it.”

I looked around the room and I was part of a multidisciplinary team that consisted of MDs, consisted of PhDs, consisted of MBAs, consisted of social workers, nurse practitioners. It was about 23 different people, different practices, disciplines in the room. I looked to the left where the MDs are and I see one. She's doodling flowers. The other is playing sudoku.

I look to my right. I look at the PhDs. They're looking at each other like making the face like, “Don't volunteer. Don't. Don't. Don't do it.”

I look to the end of the table. I see the social workers. They're not even paying attention. They were somewhere else.

So I kind of slowly start to raise my hand and I see this is my chance. Like I got some stuff I could do here.

So I said, “I'll do it. I'll do it.”

So Dr. T says, “Great. Stop by my office and we can discuss the particulars, but I think you're gonna need a colleague to help you out.”

I said, “Okay.”

I looked around the room. I already knew nobody was really interested so I was in for one.

The next day, I was able to convince Dr. N who sat two doors down from me to help me out. I was able to convince her by saying that I will do her housing apartment inspection visits all the way out in Brooklyn, the last stop on the A train. So that was going to be a long trip, but I was able to convince her. I said I was going to do 15 of them.

So we go to Dr. T's office and we sit there and he's like, “This is a list of 622 programs that we have to review and evaluate. What do you think we should do?”

And in my brain, I'm already going, “Oh, you know, we got surveys, we got online surveys. We can do this. We can do that.” I'm thinking SPSS. I'm thinking about coding. It's just going through my brain, everything that we think we should do.

I start to kind of rattle off a plan of what we should do and he's like, “That sounds great. Here you go. We'll talk soon.”

So I was like, “All right. We're outta here.”

At first, I would meet with Dr. T, we would meet with Dr. T like every three months. Every time we would meet, we would rattle off how many programs we chopped off the list. “Oh, we're down to 498 now.”

Three months later, “Oh, it's about 320.”

Three months later, “Oh, we're down to about 47.”

At this time, he's already getting a little anxious, I guess. He's like, “We need to meet more often. I need more updates.” And he's constantly asking daily updates of 46, 45, 43, 30.

At one point, he says to us, “Well, we have a deadline of July 1st for this project. So why don't you put something on my desk by June 23rd.”

I was like, “Great.”

I'm writing up my summary. I'm punching in numbers, one, coding zero, zero. I'm going crazy just on the computer. Is there a one? Getting this done.

So we write up my summary. We get our findings. We get it in to him. Type up the report: By Dr. T, by Dr. N and by Lois Melo. Hand it in to him. Great.

A few days go by, I'm feeling great. I'm like, “We just finished this awesome food standards project. This is gonna be great.”

I think it was a Tuesday afternoon, I ran into an old colleague who used to sit in our office, actually. He now moved on to the mayor's office. He knew that we were working on some food standards but he was always a jokester. He told me, “Hey, we got the report on the food that you guys sent over. It was awesome, but I didn't see your name on it.”

So I'm thinking, “This guy's messing with me. He's always messing around.”

I'm like, “Get the ‘F’ out of here. You messing around? Don't mess around.”

He's like, “No, seriously. I didn't see your name on it.”

I thought he was joking so I just kind of walked off and just went to my desk. I thought he was playing.

But there's something in my brain that said, “You know, check that out for yourself.”

So I went in to my computer, checked my emails and I didn't see anything that said I was included in a message to the mayor's office. So I was like, “Hmm, maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe I wasn't included on that.”

So I built up the courage and I went to Dr. T's office and I said, “Hey, I heard that the mayor's office got the report. Do you mind sending it to me?”

He said, “Sure. No problem.”

He sent it over to me. I rushed over to my desk, opened it up and, sure, the guy was right. My name wasn't on it.

I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I was like, “What just happened? Like we just spent the last nine months working on this and why isn't my name on it? Why isn’t Dr. N’s name on it? Does she know? Let me go tell her.”

So I go over to her office. She's in there jamming to Mary J. And I tell her. I'm like, “Hey, I don't know if you saw this but our names are not on this.”

She looked at it and she wasn't as upset as I was. She wasn't shocked. What she told me was, “Eh, it's not a big deal. You gotta pick your battles in this place and I don't think that that's a battle I wanna have right now.”

I looked at her and I said, “Are you serious? You're gonna let them play us like that? Like our names are not on this. Like we did this work. We did it. He didn't do it. We did the work. He just had minor feedback for it.”

But she was like, “Uh, it's okay. You know, there'll be other opportunities for you to get your name on a report to the mayor's office so just live with it.”

Now, I was like, “All right.”

I kind of was a little dejected and frustrated and walked back to my desk. I was like, “This can't be right. This can't be right.” I'm looking left, I'm looking right, I'm looking up, I'm looking down, I'm just kind of doubting the work that I just did. Like what would happen? Like what's going on?

But something inside of me told me, “No, this is not right. You have to do something about it.” And right at the moment I got up and I marched down to Dr. T's office.

Have you ever been in a city building, in one of those old city buildings? They're old. They got the bricks, tall doors. I'm marching through them like it didn't even phase me. I'm like the sixth floor, it didn't even phase me. I'm walking through and smelling the dust, nothing.

I get to his door and I start to bang on it. Bam, bam, bam, bam. He wasn't there. Bang on that again. Bam, bam, bam, bam. He wasn't there.

He shared the office with the director of the program and she heard me, so she came out of her office, like what's this loud noise. She's like, “Luis, is everything all right?”

And I'm like, “Yeah. Kinda.”

But she noticed that something was not right with me because she knew me. She saw my face and she thought I was a little upset.

She's like, “What's going on? Are you sure everything's all right?”

And I'm like, “Yeah.” I had the report in my hand, I'm like, “Yeah, we worked on this report and it went to the mayor's office and my name's not on it.”

And she goes to me, “Really? Let me take a look at that. I saw this report. It was a really good job.” And she's like, “Yeah, you're right. Your name is not on it. This is not right.”

And then right when she said that, Dr. T just happened to pop up. He just walked right through the door.

We both looked at the same time and she said, “Hey, Dr. T, come over. We have something to discuss with you because Luis is over here. He has some questions about this report.”

So he comes down, sits down and he's like, “What's going on?”

I say to him, I'm like, “Yeah, I got the report that you sent over to me earlier and I noticed that my name wasn't on it and I just wanted to know why.”

And he said, “Oh, you know, your name is going to go on it. It's supposed to be on it. I'm just doing some edits going back and forth with the mayor's office, some things I gotta tidy up. But, you know, it's supposed to be there.”

I thought to myself, “Yeah, right. You didn't mean that.”

I looked at the director and she said, “Just let's make sure everybody gets the credit they deserve for this project.” She kind of defused the situation. I walked out and went back to my office. She went back to her office. Dr. T went back to his office.

A few days went by and I kind of stopped thinking about it. I was like I'm getting played. This is messed up. But I came to my desk and I opened up my email. And I don't know about your job but my job sends like a broadcast, email broadcast about everything happening in the agency. Sometimes you just ignore those emails. You don't even read them. You're just like, whatever.

But that day, the email came up. And what did I see? It said, the first thing that popped up it said, “New York City Food Standards for Meals and Snacks Served.” And right under it, “Luis Melo, Dr. T, Dr. N”.

I was like, “What? Mom, I made it.” I was pumped.

I was pumped, but then I had a moment to kind of reflect. My takeaway from it was that there's going to be moments of doubt but your skills and your ability put into action is going to outweigh the doubt. So don't be afraid to stand up for yourself and the work that you do.

Thank you.

Part 2

It's 2014 and I'm in Israel for one of my first international conferences. I was invited to speak about an article I finished a few months earlier about certain dynamical properties of moduli spaces of geometric structures.

I didn't know many participants at the time but I was very excited to be there. The conference center was right on the beach. We were talking about math all day long and the atmosphere was just very informal. Everybody was wearing t shirts and shorts.

My talk was on the second day in the morning. I was nervous but I tried to concentrate on my math and it was great to see encouraging faces in the audience, like my postdoc advisor Jeff.

I think the talk went very well. People asked a lot of questions. They seemed to really like the result. I still remember a joke I added at the last minute that made people laugh a lot.

Sara Maloni shares her story at University of Virginia in April 2023. Photo by Dan Addison.

After the talk and the really nice discussion over lunch, I decided to go for a walk with a few of my colleagues. That's typical in math conferences.

I'm waiting for my friends and I see a professor from Marseille, Martin, who I didn't know very well at the time but whose work I knew about approaching me with a smile and he said, “I really enjoyed your talk.” I was happy to hear so I thanked him.

He then continued, “I especially liked the picture in your talk.”

At that point I was a bit confused, because I only drew the Farey graph, which is a graph which encodes a simple closed curve on certain surfaces I was discussing, but it's very common in our field.

So I asked, “Which picture? I think I only drew the Farey graph, which I'm sure you know about.”

And he answered, “I meant the picture on your body.”

I froze. I have a small butterfly tattooed on my back and I knew he was referring to that. In that moment, time slowed down. A lot of thoughts came to my mind and I realized it must have happened when I was writing on the blackboard with my back to the audience. I always try to reach the top so that I don't have to erase too many times, given my height, and my shirt must have moved up.

I felt really uncomfortable so I excused myself then left. I was definitely not in a mood for a walk anymore so I went back to my room.

I remember hearing him say, “It's just a joke,” but I was already away.

Back in my room, I started replaying the talk in my head many times. I was wondering how many times that must have happened and what are the people that I care about, the experts in my field thinking about it now.

I was also not sure what Martin wanted to achieve with his comment. That really built on fear I had.

So I was wondering am I overreacting? Am I being oversensitive? Comments like that didn't use to bother me at all in other contexts but there it did, because I felt he was not seeing me as a mathematician. He was just seeing me as a woman, as a body on stage. And that built on fears I had about my career and myself. Am I good enough to be a mathematician or am I just here to fill a quota?

In the afternoon, there were other talks. I was there physically but my mind was elsewhere. Definitely, the events that happened didn't put me in a great mood. I was feeling out of place, embarrassed, and that is not typical of my personality.

We went for dinner and we were sitting at the table with a few colleagues and my postdoc advisor Jeff and people were laughing, bringing back the joke that I had before. I tried to laugh along. I think it was clear my laugh wasn't very genuine.

After dinner, Jeff asked me if everything was okay. He always did that, making sure that I was okay. I think I answered, “Yes. Sorry, I'm just a bit distracted.” But I noticed that he was not buying my fake answer.

And so I told him what happened and why I felt so silly, because I felt I could have prevented it if I just thought about, if I just had dressed differently.

He told me that it was not my fault. That I should not blame myself. And he said that in such a kind but firm way that I felt I could believe him. That really made me feel better.

The next day, he also told me that he learned Martin, it wasn't the first time Martin had felt other women in the field, the feeling uncomfortable. He asked me if he could share what had happened with the conference organizer to see what they could do about it.

I felt ashamed but I agreed. And after that, I focused on the good aspects of the conference: the new result, the networking, and little by little the good feeling I had about the conference came back, thanks to Jeff and to the other wonderful people there.

Later, I learned that, actually, the conference organizer told Martin that what he did was unacceptable. That he should apologize to me, which he did via email half-heartedly, and that he was not going to be welcome at any other conference in the future.

I felt that this was crucial for me to see. I really felt that my community showed me that they had my back. They wanted me there. And this made a shift in my mind. I stopped blaming myself. For that to happen, it was crucial that on that day Jeff saw me. He took the time to see what was going through and he was not afraid to get involved.

Fast forwarding today, I mostly feel safe and comfortable in my community. But, unfortunately, events like this continue to happen. What changed is maybe my attitude.

Just to give an example, I was at a meeting and one of my colleagues was presenting some decision from her committee. After her presentation, the floor was open to discussion and one professor started explaining why he disagreed on everything she just mentioned, even though he already explained to each committee member this point before. He repeated his point three times and his tone became increasingly aggressive. This was making my colleague more and more uncomfortable.

I was a more junior member of the group at the time so I was waiting for someone else to just step in. But when I was seeing nothing was happening, I politely said to the professor that we all heard his disagreement and asked if he could leave a space for someone else to share their thoughts.

I think this kind of shocked him, but the chair of the meeting at the time sided with my suggestion and we moved on with the meeting.

And this is just a very small example but it's easier to just say that thanks to the support I received myself in Israel, I'm not the same person I was in 2014. If I see something that is not okay, I say something. That is uncomfortable very often, but I think it's really essential for everyone to witness and for us as a community to keep moving forward.

Thank you.