My biggest privilege as scientist is to be able to impart knowledge to others and pay it forward in numerous ways. The biggest surprise of my career as a researcher was that I ever became a scientist at all. I did not grow up thinking of such a career. Research did not and still does not exist where I grew up: words like researcher and scientist were unheard of during my childhood. I studied chemistry because I was deeply inspired by my sixth-form (high-school equivalent) chemistry teacher in the UK, who went above and beyond to inspire and motivate me. In fact, I was a student who was rather behind her peers, having just arrived to the UK an...