A career shift can allow scientists to explore their passion.Credit: Getty
Nick Sherwin starts most days walking across his six-hectare farm with his two golden retrievers, Daphne and Phoebe, surveying the sheep that graze the land between autumn and early spring. From time to time, it pulls the besieged out of the cracks in its walls. “They’re very good at sticking their heads into things,” he laughs.
Sherwin, a hepatologist, left his full-time academic career at the University of Southampton, UK, in 2019, when he and his wife Lisa bought a 16th-century longhouse in the Otter Valley in Devon, 150 kilometers west of his former workplace. They now grow apples and onions, brew their own beer, and harvest honey from the “fierce British black bee” (Apis mellifera mellifera), and revitalize their lawns with yellow rattle plants (Little unicorn) which drain nutrients from the grass and allow rare wildflowers to flourish. Chiron also has a chicken named Rowena, who “loves human company and follows me around all day.”
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In between brewing beer and building a farmhouse clay pizza oven, Sherwin continues to work as an alcohol policy advisor to the UK Department of Health, and as a visiting professor at both King’s College London and the University of Plymouth in the UK, where he studies the relationship between cheap alcohol and the continuing increase in deaths from liver disease.
“We don’t regret the move at all,” says Sherwin. On the contrary, he says, “It’s very nice” as he no longer spends his days staring at a screen. In addition to his visits as a professor, he uses his passion for science to grow, sift and sell custom-made yellow seeds for others to buy and use to revitalize their green spaces.
Sherwin is just one of many scientists who have left academia to reinvent themselves. Some choose “science-adjacent” roles, while others embark on a completely different career path, often applying many of the skills they have acquired as working scientists. Many feel freed from the pressures of the “publish or perish” culture in academia, and say they feel freed from the tedium of giving the same lectures year after year.
People start their own businesses or non-profit organizations; Traveling to undertake independent research or conservation work; And mentoring others in their fields, hoping to have a greater impact on the world that way. Although taking the step and leaving academia can be daunting, many say they feel fulfilled and have continued to learn as they pursue their passion in the wider world.
Nick Sherwin now starts his mornings walking among the sheep on his farm in Devon, UK. Credit: Nick Sherwin
Transforming knowledge into action
Not everyone leaves science on their own. Immunologist Luz Cumba Garcia was a Sustainability Advisor at the US State Department, where he was supporting global health efforts to combat HIV and AIDS through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). PEPFAR, which Compa-Garcia describes as “the most successful global health diplomacy program in the world,” once supported 55 countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Its role in PEPFAR was to help low- and middle-income countries develop sustainable health policies and strengthen health systems, thereby reducing dependence on the United States. Prior to that, she led work on global health cooperation between the United States and Mexico, including coordination on transboundary health threats, such as highly pathogenic avian influenza.
But in January 2025, after Donald Trump was re-elected as President of the United States in 2024, Cumba Garcia was placed on leave from the State Department. “It was a very tough and painful process,” she says, preceded by emails asking her and her colleagues to justify their experience and achievements, “to prove that we were worthy.” It was permanently abandoned in April 2025.
But she didn’t let the setback slow her down. “I enjoy providing workshops and training to scientists on how to communicate with policymakers, and vice versa,” she says. “This was something I had always done as a side hustle, so I said ‘How about doing this full time?’”
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She turned her passion into a business, founding her sole proprietorship, SciPolicy Global Strategies, in July 2025. Her consulting work includes advising clients in the private sector and non-profit organizations on topics such as global health, biomedical research, and the ethical use of artificial intelligence in scientific research. She also lectures in English and Spanish on how science can inform policy making, and leads interactive workshops and training on social media management and personal branding for scientists.
Compa Garcia points out that it’s not going well. “Some days are better than others,” she admits. “A good, productive day is one filled with networking and meetings or landing new consulting contracts or speaking engagements, which is work I really enjoy,” she says. “A bad day is when things take longer to materialize, such as delays in contracts or challenges in finding the right opportunities.”
“At the same time, I believe this is the time to reinvent yourself, not under ideal circumstances due to lack of funding. But it is also the time to be bold, brave, and embrace your passion.”
Passion led Erika Jefferson to found Black Women in Science and Engineering (BWISE) when she was laid off in 2015 from her job as director of supply chain optimization at Praxair, an industrial gas company, after oil prices fell. BWISE provides career development and mentoring support to underrepresented women in middle management and senior leadership roles, as well as early-career scientists who have degrees in science, mathematics, or engineering. A chemical engineer by training, Jefferson spent much of her career working for oil companies, including Chevron and Amoco.
“I already had ideas about BWISE, so it was really good to walk away and really think ‘what could this be?’” she says, recalling her moment of inspiration. “I went to a conference in 2015, and I was sitting in a row of other black women. Everyone was engineers. I started asking them: “How do you like your job?” Answers ranged from “I hate my job” to “I hate my job more” to “I hate my job more than anyone else here.”
Luz Cumba Garcia giving a lecture at a conference in Guatemala.Credit: Luz M. Compa Garcia
The women talked about spending long hours dealing with breakdowns in chemical plants, but they also talked about widespread racism, “with some sexism,” Jefferson says. “I thought, maybe we should get together and share ideas.” She began organizing networking events and coffee socials in her hometown of Houston, Texas. “But I soon realized that some people were really struggling and needed more than just a pat on the back. They needed training, advice and guidance.”
“Initially, I created something that didn’t exist for Black women,” says Jefferson, who is president of BWISE.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, BWISE expanded to include multiple chapters in a number of U.S. cities. It now has members all over the world. “We’ve held job fairs, we’ve done information sessions, we’ve held networking events, we’ve had lunches, dinners, breakfasts – you name it, we’ve done it all over the country,” she says. “So many people have met each other and connected through BWISE.”
When scientists are laid off from their jobs, “you want to focus on something meaningful in the next phase of your life,” Jefferson advises. “I always ask people to describe me in one word, and they always say ‘connector.’ I love connecting people, and what I’m most proud of is that the work I started to help women has now also helped the next generation of scientists.”
Her love for her career motivated Claudia Santos to continue her fieldwork even when funding was not available. In 2023, after completing her doctorate at the University of Lisbon on the impact of climate change on human migration in Guinea-Bissau, she applied for a three-year contract with the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. After waiting for a response for a year, her application was rejected. The foundation merged with another to create the Research and Innovation Agency (AI²) on January 1.
Self-funded science
Motivated by networks and solidarity, or by a spiritual connection to their homes, Santos decided to pursue her self-funded research in Guinea-Bissau on how people survive in their communities in the face of climate change. “I wanted to keep publishing and writing, because I really struggled to separate myself from Guinea Bissau,” she says. While doing fieldwork with these communities, she made friends and learned “very important community values, feeling cared for when you have very little; that ultimately puts everything in your life into perspective.”
In 2025, Santos co-founded Upstand, a social enterprise dedicated to disaster risk reduction, with climate change specialist Andrea Souza. The two met through the University of Lisbon’s doctoral program in climate change and sustainable development policy. Santos explains that Upstand “is a social impact agency specializing in participatory research, facilitation and community-led design” that supports inclusive initiatives “in the areas of climate change adaptation, human mobility, ocean biodiversity, and disaster risk.”
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