 Well, I decided to use the same play from my playbook that I've used before and have the external awardee who was receiving this year's NHGRI Special Recognition Award also be the keynote feature for today's great ceremony. And for this, I'm delighted to honor Mona Miller, the CEO of the American Society of Human Genetics. Now by way of background, most NIH institutes interact with multiple professional societies and patient advocacy groups. The nature of those relationships can be, shall we say, mixed at times, in some cases being quite positive, while in other cases being associated with some challenging interactions. But not being associated with a specific disease area means that NHGRI really is not aligned with any advocacy groups that are unique to a particular disease area. And rather, we have excellent relationships with several professional societies, specifically those associated with human geneticists, medical geneticists, and genetic counselors. Now the most significant of these relationships is with the American Society of Human Genetics, or ASHG. Simply stated, many of the staff of NHGRI are members of ASHG, and over the years many NHGRI leaders have served on ASHG's board and or major NHG leadership positions. But most importantly, ASHG and its staff have become great colleagues and friends to the institute, particularly in recent years. This has included not only very positive interactions around areas of mutual interest, but also major collaborations and close coordination on a number of areas. Now a major reason for this recent positive growth in our relationship with ASHG relates to its CEO, Mona Miller. On taking the reins of ASHG six years ago, Mona has been nothing short of spectacular at leading the society and developing even stronger bridges in an area of collaboration with the institute. From day one in her role as ASHG's CEO, I and multiple others at NHGRI develop strong mutual admiration for Mona and her efforts to advance ASHG's mission for its members and more broadly for the fields of genetics and genomics. This included a number of programmatic priority areas of major importance. It also included each organization helping the other in developing the latest versions of our respective strategic visions. And most importantly, we greatly expanded our joint fellowship program, extending it beyond the existing fellowships in policy and education to include a third in communications and a fourth for post baccalaureate trainees. Another the new suite of four joint ASHG and NHGRI fellowship programs is in its inaugural year and will now include 10 fellows per year instead of the previous two. I cannot tell you how excited I and others at NHGRI are with respect to this new joint ASHG and NHGRI fellowship program. But Mona's contributions go well beyond our relationship between the two organizations to include a major set of advances that the society has achieved under her stewardship. This includes making the society a more professionally organized entity, increasing ASHG's focus and programmatic efforts related to enhancing diversity, navigating the society in its major annual meeting during the difficult times associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and having the society confront its history with eugenics. And all of this was led by someone who was not formally trained in genetics, but who as you will learn has great instincts and judgment, as well as a style that is amazingly effective. Now, my giving Mona Miller this year's NHGRI special recognition award actually has a bittersweet aspect to it. Mona and I had a Zoom meeting a couple of months ago during which I planned to tell her about this award and invite her to today's great ceremony. But before I could give her this good news, she informed me that she had decided to step down as CEO of ASHG. But let me emphasize, and I really do, that my decision to give this award came many weeks before I had any idea that she was leaving ASHG. This honor has nothing to do with her departure. And in fact, I thought that this award would mark something like the halfway or half time of Mona's tenure as ASHG CEO. But in another twist of irony, that wasn't the case. It really is sort of a bittersweet that today is actually her last day at ASHG. And here she is spending the afternoon on her last day with us at our great ceremony. So I would like to ask Mona Miller to please join me up higher on stage so that we can use a fireside chat format to have the greater NHGRI family learn more about this wonderful friend and colleague of the Institute. So please join me in a round of applause for this year's NHGRI special recognition awardee, Mona Miller. Here, sit here. All right, so thanks for coming. Thanks for everything you've done. And I hope you're still my friend at the end of this. No, you will be. I didn't know if I should bring a heat shield for the fireside chat. Yeah, well, somebody told me they were going to try to have you look at last year's fireside chat with Larry Tabeck. And I'm glad that didn't work out because that was a bit more of a roast. But so I want to sort of march through some just general areas so that people, the whole bowl here, so people can get to know you and take a little tour through your head. So let's just start with your life journey. So I know you grew up in Northern California. You decided to go to college at Tulane in New Orleans. And then you decided to get a master's degree in public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Did you have any interest in science along that way? Not at the time. My early interests, I think I've always considered myself an advocate. It was really trying to find something that I felt like I could really get as excited and passionate about as a career path. And I found my way to science in an unusual kind of way. My early advocacy was really in women's health. My early years at the National Planned Parenthood Organization during the 90s, where I really learned the core elements of advocacy. But I became a science advocate really thanks to Senator Barbara Mikulski for whom I worked in the late 90s and who was a great, great champion of this institution. And so many other institutions in Maryland, she really saw science not just as not only as a means to a health end or a science or a space end or any number of the other science programs that are led out of Maryland. But I think as a scientific quest, I think she saw it as something larger for humanity's sake. And so I came as a health advocate and I left as really a lifelong science advocate. And it's been such a pleasure to get to know different elements of the scientific agenda for the U.S. and to do it most recently for human genomics. So was that your first, was that your first job with the Senator? No. My very first job was, I dabbled in journalism. Coming down to the pastors, you first. No. So I went to Tulane, moved to New York. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. I started at Planned Parenthood there and did some work there, moved to D.C. Very involved in policy and advocacy in Washington for a few years. And that's when I went back to grad school. And then coming out of graduate school. I went to Senator Mikulski's office. Did you start off as a communications director? Yes. You work your way up. Yes. Communications director. That's a big job for a high profile senator. I had gotten to know Maryland politics a little bit through some campaign work earlier in my tenure or my career. And so it was a really natural and exciting role to take. And have you been in the D.C. area ever since? Yes. Except for the quick trip to Boston for grad school. I've been in D.C. ever since. Ever since. So you made a point, you've pointed out your family. So you want to introduce the family members who are here with you and then tell us about your family and how that got woven into the different stages of your career. Well, my husband, Brian Romer, and my daughter, Willa Romer, are here. My son, Lucas Romer, is not here. He's a junior at University of Vermont studying environmental studies and what's his latest major? History. And so they are really the best part of my life. And I got to know Brian. I met him in policy school. He too has a real commitment to making the world a better place. He does that as an attorney, believe it. He really does. And so it's been wonderful to be able to live in the city in such a diverse and welcoming town and to have them grow up, my two kids grow up in this D.C. area. And your daughter is going to go to college next year. So you're going to be somewhere. I know we're going to be empty nesters. We'll figure out what's next. Don't be an ASH. You're really going to be unleashed. Mona unleashed. I think that's the teacher. Sounds like a really good idea. That would be great. Yeah. There you go. So, okay. And when did you start, when did you start your family relative to your different jobs? Boy, Lucas in 2003. So I was fairly, still with the son. No, I had left and was, I did a little consulting to stay at home with my son for the first year and then headed to the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is actually where I got that first exposure to genomics and genetics. There was a fantastic program that the Pew Charitable Trusts had led for many years with Kathy Hudson as director, thinking about the intersection of science and society with an orientation, an explicit orientation from the Pew Charitable Trusts perspective of how to positively integrate discovery into public life and to serve humanity, especially focused on some of the topics that have complicated social and ethical questions. And so there was a portfolio of programs, genetics and public policy center, the nanotechnology project, and then there had been a long time food and agricultural biotechnology portfolio, all of them trying to bring diverse stakeholders and perspectives to a table to say, what are the challenges of this particular emerging technology? How do we work together to minimize harm, but really maximize benefit with so a very forward leaning appreciation for science, acknowledging the challenges, but not letting those challenges thwart the, you know, the full potential. Something happened in transitional because then you decided to go to a scientific professional society. So first is I guess the senior director of communications and public affairs, the Society for Neuroscience, and later you became the deputy executive director for program and finance. Did they, did they recruit you? Did you say, hey, I want to get more deeply into a scientific society? What made that transition happen? Well, I, it was actually Marty Seguessi, my old CEO, executive director will tell you, it was a total cold call email. Me to him or him to you? Me to him. And I had been doing this work at Pew and the opportunity to bring communications and public affairs together into a single department was really exciting. And of course, neuroscience is, is second only to human genomics in terms of its excitement and potential. Just in second. Yeah. Just in second. It's really a sub-section, sub-function of genomics, really, I mean, that's a really sorry, their meetings, 25,000 of them are meeting downtown. I should be careful about my words. It's a much bigger society, right? It is a larger society, but I was, and I was really excited. I don't know if folks know a lot of places in Washington. The communications department is over there. The government relations department is over there. And, you know, never the two shall speak. Or if they do, it's, it's really sort of brokered. And it was really exciting to have SFN, which I have a special love for neuroscience and neurogenetics that they brought these together, recognizing that it's really all on one continuum of being able to communicate to the public about the promise and potential of a particular research area. But that actually relates to one of the big initiatives you did there, because when you were there, you really were focused on increasing public awareness of neuroscience. Now you decided that was a priority and that you thought it was important to try to tackle the challenges of communicating complex concepts to the general public. Was that just saying that was incubating in you for a long time and neuroscience was your area? Well, it's fascinating. It is. You know, just as human genetics is fascinating and there's a program there called the Brain Awareness Campaign. It's sort of like the DNA day concept for genetics and genomics. And maybe it gets a little meta. But Brain Awareness is such an important phenomenon, an important concept for so much application to human benefit. I mean, actually Nora Volkow, I will always remember, she was in the Washington Post being quoted saying, my brain wants chocolate, not I want chocolate. My brain wants chocolate. And we always say our DNA wants chocolate. Yeah, well, there you. Is it fully expressed or only turns on the person. And so I really found that to be sort of a just a beautiful construct of this incredible organ that drives us, wakes us up, puts us to sleep, compels us to eat chocolate, helps us love our friends and family and has evolved over millennia to protect us and to serve us and to help us evolve as a species. So and that gets a little a little big picture, but it was really, for me, that click of why science is both a beautiful thing for application, but also, you know, just in its own right, a beautiful pursuit. It was while you're at the Society for Neuroscience that you first encountered this Sarah Bates person, right? Yes. I was just going to say that all became possible because Ms. Sarah Bates appeared, her resume first appeared and then, blessedly, she appeared full time to join us on the communications team at SFN. And she was a huge architect in actually creating what is one manifestation of SFN's public communication, which is something called brainfacts.org. As SFN had always had something that we then subsequently referred to as brainfacts.book and it needed to enter the 21st century desperately. And you were her supervisor? She was on my team. Was she a pain to deal with? She did. When we first met, she said, we need to redo the website. And I said, yes, I know, it's going to take about 18 months, we're going to do this. And she was like, 18 months. I can't wait that long. And so she immediately jumped to really transforming our own communications operation. Did she used to leave her iPhone in strange places like on the podium? What? I was wondering what that was. Yeah, you left it on the podium. So, okay. How big is the staff of the Neuroscience Society? As I was heading out about 110. So now we're going to talk about this transition. You go from there of a staff 110, you decide to get recruited because I know there was an active recruitment when they brought you to ASHG. How big is the staff of ASHG when you arrived? 19. Okay, so it's a different kind of an organization. So you obviously applied and you were interested, but was that an easy recruitment? Did they have you right away or did you have to think about it? Because that's a pretty big change. It was. I think many of you have found circuitous career paths or maybe you knew immediately what you wanted to be when you were 16 or 17. But the communications and public affairs work is what I have been doing. But I had a really wonderful and supportive mentor and occasional boss who would occasionally throw me in the deep end and say, you can do this. And so I had the opportunity in a subsequent seven years or so to really grow my operational and organizational leadership capacity beyond communications and public affairs. So association, scientific societies are fully fledged nonprofit organizations really of any size. And so in addition to the communications and public affairs work, I had the opportunity to learn about journals and meeting planning and budgets and staffing and HR. And you just really discover some people are just love communications and public affairs, but I loved putting it all together. There's a science that was all siloed. Each of those things was done by a different and now because it's smaller, you had to be involved with everything. Yes. And I had grown in my role at SFN to be a deputy executive director where I had learned a lot of that capacity development because you can have the best intentions and mission. But if you can't operationalize it, if you can't make it happen through all of these different channels, then the full potential is unfulfilled. And so I had had that opportunity and my executive director there was always very supportive of people being ready to take the next step. And when I saw the ASHG position, it really seemed like it really had everything I hoped a CEO role would have, the exciting science and a wonderful staff team. My predecessor had really fostered a culture that was fantastic to build on. And yet I really saw also that there was a lot of good work to do. So it was very exciting. And I was thrilled. And one of the first things that happened was I got an email from Eric, welcoming me after I received the position. And we made a plan to meet at some point soon. We did. The rest is history. So when I reached out to some of the presidents that you've worked with, many of people commented how you truly transformed ASHG as an organization, making it more professional and more robust in many dimensions. One quote, one of the comments from a former president was ASHG was largely a scientist led organization up until Mona's tenure. She was the first organizational professional to run it and it has made a world of difference. So first of all, when you arrived, did you realize that this doesn't, what was your initial feeling? Did you say like, all right, this is not a professional organization? Or did you just say, all right, I know what I'm going to bring to this, but you weren't concerned about it? I just, what was that first feel in the first couple of months? Well it was wonderful. So the staff was open and responsive. It did have a very genetics, specific emphasis and staff expertise and focus. I brought, I think, what's a complimentary nonprofit management and association leadership kind of experience. And so the first couple of months were sort of getting to know one another and learning to speak one another's language. One of my former colleagues who's since retired said, we're all learning to speak Mona, but it's taking a little bit of time because you have all of these words that we don't use. And that's okay. And so it was starting that process of holding on to all the expertise that genetics and genomics experience brought, but also starting to introduce these other organizational components. And I think one of the things that I have brought that is new is one of the great things about scientific societies is we have amazing volunteers, some of many of whom I see in the room, who bring that genetics and genomics expertise. And so if you can, you can get the best of both worlds. You can get association and nonprofit leadership expertise and annual meeting expertise and policy and legislative expertise. And then we have this wonderful richness of volunteers who bring the genetics and genomics expertise. And so we started to really draw more on the needs and perspectives of the field rather than presuming or nobody presumed, but rather than trying to architect that ourselves. And I do think having a non-geneticist is a little bit of an honest broker because I don't have a particular research area that I think is more important. And so you could bring this collective group of experts from so many different facets of genetics and genomics and say, okay, how are we going to reach consensus and move a subject component forward? What I noticed is that there was no moment of time when you feel like you were making radical changes. As my observation as a society member, as somebody interacts, it was like slow changes over time. Then all of a sudden a year ago, I go, wow, it feels different in two years. Wow, it's very different. Three years. It's incredibly different. And yet it wasn't feeling like you were ripping the drywall down and you were sort of undergoing a renovation. I think it was just my observation was these slow incremental improvements that made it more professional, which is where it is now. Before we go in a little bit more of those programming, one thing I'm curious about the science, as somebody who just came into the genetics genomics realm, what's the top thing that has surprised you about our field that coming in, you had no idea you were going to either be exposed to or that we were capable of? Coming from neuroscience and all of a sudden six years later in genetics and genomics, what's the thing that has surprised you and impressed you the most? I'd say a couple of things. My experience has coincided with just the incredible expansion of computational tools and research across the board. That was starting to be the case in neuroscience, but it was just so exponentially greater in the genomics and genetic space. I think the incredible willingness to share, actually the expectation to share data and feedback is special here. This community is a particularly open one. For me, the big expansion and growth experience was I had really come from a biomedical research health application standpoint and about three or four weeks into my tenure. We had the tragedy of the Charlottesville riots. I had really just started and was still finding the coffee. Obviously, we started getting calls about the genetic and genomic underpinnings of hate. Honestly, it opened this whole other wing of the genetics and genomics import. It's been a journey for me to understand and see how early this community started to integrate questions around social, ethical, legal considerations into the research agenda. I've had to get really deep in my capacity and my understanding to facilitate this great potential in scientific promise and health promise alongside these questions that you all have grappled with for a long time and how to do that in a way that still speaks to the promise and advocates for the investment in the research agenda. That relates to what might arguably be one of the big challenges you had with moving forward on the eugenics front. Facing our history project, which ASH took on, was one of the most impactful and probably one of the most difficult niches that have been shepherded under your watch from beginning to end. Maybe you could tell the NHRI family for those who don't know what is the Facing Our History project and what are your thoughts on looking back on what it's accomplished or what you hope it's impact is going to be in the future? Sure. Well, first, I just want to say from the outset that none of this would have been possible without expert guidance and direction and leadership from Dr. Chasman Jackson, who joined us as Senior Director for Diversity Equity and Inclusion in the summer of 2020, and Neil Hanchard, who I think I see over there, who was a board member as I was coming aboard. But in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the social justice and movements and demands understandable of that summer, the board really took a hard look at itself and said it's probably overdue, but we need to acknowledge some of the roots of the society, many of which I didn't fully understand at the time, but they charged us to undertake a project. That of course, you all in the history initiatives and work that you do is much larger than we could have tackled as an organization. But the board felt very strongly that this was a significant and essential undertaking. I should add Charmaine Royall, who was also on the board and a major encourager of this work. And so we talked a lot as an organization about how to approach this. I was mindful actually, as of this is a quick aside, as of 2018 I was doing my math and I was like, oh, the 75th anniversary is right around the corner of ASHG, sorry. So there was some deep temporal relevance to it as well. And so the board really wrestled with what could ASHG do as an organization? What was our particular role? How could we talk about and document some of those early harms? And how could we talk about progress without trying to push away the difficult parts? And so the organization pulled together a group, really a wide ranging group, including some who had been longtime ASHG leaders, as well as some voices who were human geneticists but had not felt as included in the society, who had diverse perspectives on and really maybe felt unwelcome at ASHG in part because we hadn't acknowledged and talked about some of these roots. And so over the course of a year this group met periodically to provide feedback on a report and guided and Neil was the, I think we avoided chair, I think he was the facilitator. Thank you for the process, which the board then accepted the report and reflected on an issue, a very important statement, apologizing for that role, which and its early contributions and interwoven relationships with the you American eugenics society and also talked about some of the work that it would have underway in the future. And it was an important, just an essential way I think to start the 75th anniversary not with celebration but with reflection and no doubt a lot more work to do and acknowledging a lot more work to do, which also I hope started to meaningfully also interweave diversity at community inclusion as a priority for the organization as it already become more important but it added an essential component to that. And I know DEI has a huge priority for you as you walk out the door of ASHG are you pleased with the trajectory you're leaving it on? With respect to those efforts? There's so much to do that I've come to a really appreciate maybe thanks to Charles and so many others that the H in our name is such a blessing and such a challenge because diversity is in written into the genome, right? And so how we characterize our own aspects of diversity may or may not be genetically relevant actually, but but are certainly part of our identity in that interplay is has a lot of work to do and I am not it's not my area of expertise I've tried to listen as well as I could and to be a good steward. And I'm sure the next generation of ASHG leaders will work with the next generation of NHGRI leaders to to shape that for the future. One thing that I do think we've done in large part, thank you to folks like Terry and to Vance who helped us start the human genome, the human genetic scholars initiative is begin to change our community. ASHG is a little organization compared to human genetics, but we are stewards of this incredible community. Many of you may have been able to join us at the meeting in DC a few weeks ago. And we have one thing that we can do is start to change the composition, the culture, the presence of that community so that people know that their scholarship, their person, their communities are seen and heard in the field. And so I think the meetings doing that more actively the membership striving to do that the leadership is certainly more diverse. And I feel really confident the journals are doing a lot more in this space that working together that will continue. This may relate to the last question I want to ask which now having been a two very prominent well respected societies, neuroscience and ASHG, do you think the role of scientific societies are have changed and are continuing to change what their role in the scientific ecosystem is? I mean, I think it certainly has in the area of diversity, for example, but do you think in other domains as well? So we could have a whole conversation about the changing dynamics of scientific societies we face as an organization changes in the journal environment. We wondered for a little bit of annual meetings, we're going to be a thing of the past for about 15 minutes and 2020 everybody was like, let's never have another meeting again. We've always meet online. But I think we all realized that that wasn't really consistent with the H either. We need to see one another and be with one another. So scientific societies are changing. Membership trends are changing. I know many of our longer standing members would say, my PI just told me I have to join ASHG and so that's what I do because that's my community. And as human genetics has moved out beyond a core human genetics community across all of science and that creates new opportunities. So I think scientific societies are as relevant as ever. I hope you all see a sense of the value of having some organization out there in your corner and working for you and trying to move your science forward and collectively being a home. But we're all trying to respond to current times just as all organizations are. And you didn't even mention scientific publishing, which when societies have a journal, that's a whole other conversation of complexity. So you served, I mean, I want to talk a little bit about people that you've really interacted a lot with. I thought it was interesting. I was going back last night through the president's, because the partnership between the president and the CEO at ASHG is a very special one. So it's a one-year fling and it's super intense interactions. But it's really, really important and it needs to be really good collaborative interactions. So I guess Nancy Cox was the year, sort of your transitional year or the year before. Yes, she hired me. She hired you formally. And then I want to point out the interaction or the synergies between the people you've worked with in this institute. So Nancy is a former member of our Board of Scientific Counsel, a current member of our advisory council. And then you had David Nelson for a year, a good friend of the institute, done a lot for us over the years. Then you'd have served with this guy Les Beeseker as the president. There was that guy. And then the next year was Tony Winsch-Aboros and Tony came to the institute as a tenure track investigator in 1993 or so. Roommate with Les, right? You guys had an office together. So Tony grew up here and got tenured here and then got recruited elsewhere. So it was a bit close ties. And then the next president was Gal Jarvik, a current member of our advisory council. Then there was this guy Charles Rotimi, who you worked with for a year, who you worked very closely with. And then most recently was Brendan Lee, who was formerly the chair of our Board of Scientific Counselors and another good friend of the institute. And then next year, well, you won't be here anymore, but it'll be Bruce Gelb. And you worked with him on the on-deck fatter kind of thing as the incoming president and Bruce a good friend, another good friend of the institute. So out of that list, and don't have to show any biases. Who was your favorite? I mean, two of them are in the audience. It was really Brendan. I thought it was Brendan. And were there any clunkers? Were there any of those that you said, oh, God, not Les Besiker again, nothing like that? No. No. You really, these are terrific folks. So I think you're going to say every one of them was a joy with maybe one exception. So I always, I always have to thank the nominating committee for its wisdom and in putting forward, you know, outstanding leaders from very different fields. You know, this is such a diverse group that they work hard to make sure that over time, the leadership represents different facets of the field and different areas of expertise. And from my neuroscience days, you know, you have to have high brain plasticity to have a new president every year, got to be ready to adapt, but also to learn. And so each one of those presidents gave me a completely new facet of the field that I hope I held on to, you know, successively year over year, to just become a little bit more experienced and able to represent the array of genomics knowledge less is real discussions with me about genetic exceptionalism and in all of its facets and complications of, you know, what does it mean for everything from health tests and data access to concepts around the social constructs and belief structures that really aren't accurate as just one example. And of course, Charles has been such an advocate for global dialogue and the common ancestry and evolution that we share. And what I notice is that even for me, and especially now with the new fellowship program or even structurally putting some things in place, where when that new president arrives, they're obviously going to work very closely with your successor, but I regard them as a partner for me because there's a number of things we interact with, I interact with the board, but now through the fellowship program, we'll have some joint responsibilities. And I look forward to that as well, I mean, because there's always this consistent legacy of great presidents. And they work really well together too. We work hard to create sort of a presidential suite. And usually they have quite different backgrounds and but they're working together for the organization's benefit. So I'm going to ask like one more question. So if people have questions for Mona, if you can start just sort of going up to the microphone, that will give you your opportunity in about a minute. If there's anybody online that has questions, Susan's going to tell me that. So I was also thinking about in addition to Lesson Charles, people that you've and you've mentioned a bunch of others. I mean, you really know a lot of people at this institute because of other people have served on your board. Chris Gunter is a board member right now. I think Elaine Ostrander was recently a board member. I don't know if it was before your time. I think it was before my time. What about was Bill Gaul on when you were on or was that before your time? Neil was on but Neil was on at the time. Obviously, you interact a lot with me and Vence and Ellen Rolfes, Christina, Keppitzie, Sarah. We already mentioned Francis, you interact with Terry, you interact with. So there's probably others that I can't think of around the board I may have missed, but there's a lot of people that you've utilized. So here's my question before we go to audience questions is that which of all those NSHRI people that you've met you've interacted with, if you could have a one-on-one dinner with, that would not conclude me. Who would you want to have dinner with out of those? And then importantly, who would you not want to have a dinner with? Okay, you're not going to answer that one. All right, so, what was that? I'm an excellent cook. Oh, Christina's advocating she cooks well. I can cook a little, so we could have that. So if people would queue up, if anybody have questions for a moment, we're going to go about another five minutes. And are there anybody online? I know and I'm getting the watch signed, which means you don't want anybody else asking questions. Now, we're going to have, I thought that was somebody going for a question. No? Any, I think Terry's going to ask one. We'll take one or two questions and then move on. So hey, Mona, it's great to see you. So I'm a little curious about the relationship between the society and the journal. So how do you keep those, I mean, they have to be integrated and yet separate and unbiased, etc. So can you talk about that a bit? Sure. So yes, editorial independence is a foundation of our relationship with the journals. They are owned by the society, but they are granted as a founding precept of having editorial independence. And so the society identifies the editor-in-chief. We went through a search process in particular while I was here to identify Mike Bombshad for the Human Genetics and Genomics Advances launch. And that has those, so that is a relationship. So you are identifying, soliciting nominations for the editor-in-chief and selecting the editor, but then really granting independence in terms of the content. We have good relations via a staff position of are there opportunities for, for instance, the history future initiative was published in the journal. In many ways, the journal is the scientific record of this field or one of them, one of the prominent ones. And so creating opportunities of would this be of interest? And we have used the journals with the editor's agreement for publishing ASHG perspectives and other ASHG content. But the independence is significant. And we take great care not to be aware of necessarily anything in the pipeline unless it's helpful for us to be able to promote or share, but no editorial input. We're going to take two more questions, one from Sarah and then one from online. So Sarah, oh, maybe three, we're going to like Christina. All right, we'll sneak Christina. That's good because she's going to tell us what she's going to cook for dinner. Go ahead. Boy, that's going to be hard to talk. So yes, thank you, Mona. So my question is, could you speak to what you see as the role of genesis and genomicists in the next few years in an advocacy sort of role, especially in the current climate with misinformation? Sure. Well, it's a great question and advocacy combines communication and presentation of amazing information that's merging from the field, as well as those social harms that the society and the larger community is dedicated to thwarting. I won't profess here to have the answer for the larger anti-science misinformation efforts that are really calculated, large-scale, and big challenges for society. Lowercase S, not capital S society. But obviously, we all play a role in it. And so the society itself is committed to speaking out when genetics is misused for harms. And that's really just one voice, an important voice, but one voice. And what I do hope we can do, and I know the society is committed to moving forward, is helping to train and empower individual scientists to speak up either collectively in pursuit of a shared concern or individually. I mean, it's a great thing that there are 8,000 ASHG members who have particular interests, expertise, passions that you all want to give voice to. And so how can we help you do that better? And at least as a small contribution, we have launched the, we're soon to be recruiting for our third class of ACGT, Advocacy Certificates for Genetics Trainees, which is a year-long program for about a dozen early-stage researchers, giving them the tools and the experience to advocate. And what does that look like? We do it in the context of the NIH budget, because that is a major policy priority for ASHG to support you all, encourage funding. So they learn how to write up beds, short policy papers, how to go to the Hill, elevator speeches, and how to speak out in their local districts or make, go to your local office, your state office or congressional office to make your views known. And so that's really the superpower of a society, which is to be able to empower each of you to be passionate about the things you're passionate about while we can really advocate for the field broadly. It is a similar question to Sarah. So on the climate of misinformation, and Sarah's, the OC presentation yesterday, they stated that as NIH under HHS, we aren't allowed to respond to direct scientific attacks and misinformation, that's the, am I correct? That's the agency line. So what, knowing that, how does your society help combat misinformation? What is the best, what have you seen as the best technique, I guess, in general? So a broader question. Yeah. Well, first of all, we rely a lot on the nonpartisan research and analysis and public communication that our friends can promote, the NIH resources that are out there that are talking about the advances and the progress and the factual information about science. I will say we are one small actor in a very large society community that is working for NIH. And so we meet as a really large NIH advocacy community and work with key leaders like Research America, ad hoc group for medical research and others to unite our voices in support of the importance of science. And we do that primarily to the legislative community. The general public, the challenges of the general public from a science literacy standpoint to, and the challenges in the larger societal persuasion efforts are really kind of a worst case, are really combining to cause, I think, significant challenges that no one organization alone is going to address. And I don't wanna end it on a bummer note because it's really important that, I guess I'm gonna go back to my neuroscience, that we keep the prefrontal cortex engaged and there's a lot of pressure to be afraid and to be fearful and to not believe and to kind of pull ourselves back into that, into the reactive fear flight, fight or flight kind of mode. And so I think the information you're putting out, the information we continue to put out, the advocacy that we do is so important and it's more important than ever and it, I should say, it's super important because although there is misinformation, we tend to focus on that. The public is with biomedical research and scientists are trained to focus on the problem but way back when in 2019, we did a public opinion survey, it's just a public opinion survey, it's not a scientific research program but the public was curious about human genetics and genomics research. They were hopeful, they were excited and they still believe that this is the National Institutes of Hope and so I hope that what you'll take away is that the work you do is really important. The public is with us despite the challenges and to get up every day to keep doing the research that you're doing because I know that that's what motivates you and that's what's gonna create long-term change. So misinformation is an issue but let's also focus on the very strong support that the public continues to have and patients continue to have for the research that you're doing. Well, Mona, what I wanna end with is saying that, like I said in my remarks earlier, I thought this would be like half time for your run as CEO so I'm still sad, I feel like this could be half time in our conversation. I could go on another hour talking to you and I'm sure lots of other questions we're leaving behind including some on Zoom, our time just doesn't allow us to do it but I'm delighted you came here today. I'm delighted I got a chance to honor you. I'm delighted that my NHRI family has gotten to know you a little bit more and have come to adore you the way the people from NHRI that have interacted with you so much over the last six years already feel the way. I'm glad you brought part of your family to share with us today. Hopefully they had enjoyed hearing this and don't feel like it was too mean to her at all but also can sort of see the genuine friendship and collaboration that exists between us. We're gonna miss you but on the other hand, I am exceedingly confident that ASHE will continue to be in good hands because of the standard that you have set. I know the search committee is sitting there working saying we gotta get someone at least as good as Mona. It's a high bar, I think they'll do it and but you've put them on a trajectory that I think is incredibly valuable and we have all benefited from that and will continue to benefit for years to come. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Could I? Go ahead. I just want to offer that this partnership is not a given in any, as you said, many societies have solid and important relationships with their Institute of Center and I just want to thank you for the openness and receptivity and encouragement that you've given for your leadership to be involved with the society because this really has to be a two-way street. And you can see today the impact that you have on building a strong staff team and none of what we talked about today would have been possible without the now 33 staff at Rockville who have made this possible and grown this operation right alongside me. So it would not be a full meeting if I didn't thank them just as you've recognized and thanked your team here. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay, cut that. Thank you.