If you ask Colleen Wallace where her inspiration and motivation comes from, she’ll give you three answers: “The outdoors, science, and learning.”
As a Senior Scientist with Electra in Boulder, Colorado, Colleen says she gets to pursue all three of these passions while helping to solve one of humanity’s biggest challenges – climate change – at the same time.
“For a young scientist, finding a balance between professional development and personally fulfilling work can be tough,” she says. “Some jobs will give you lots of independence, but the impact is small to non-existent. At other places, you could be working on a technology with a huge impact, but there’s very little autonomy. Your individual contributions can feel small to non-existent.”
“Electra is different. Here, we try to offer the best of both worlds – independence and impact,” she says.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Physics from James Madison University, Colleen decided she didn’t want to stay in academia, or take an entry level position in corporate America. Instead, she wanted to explore the idea of being a science teacher.
From JMU in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Colleen moved cross-country to Southern California to become an instructor with Guided Discoveries, which runs STEM-based outdoor education camps in the San Jacinto mountains just west of Palm Springs.
“It was meant to be a short stint, to find out if I really wanted to be a science teacher,” Colleen says. “It was so much fun I ended up staying for two years.”
Eventually, however, Colleen decided that she wanted to work more directly on “climate and the impact of human activity on the environment.”
She wanted to work in fundamental scientific research, looking for the kinds of breakthroughs that can make a big difference in a hurry. That sense of urgency steered her away from graduate studies and towards the world of cleantech startups.
“Work just happens slower in academia,” Colleen says. “There’s lots of red tape.”
In 2018, Colleen was recruited by a grid-scale battery startup near Boulder, Colorado. She later moved to another early-stage firm working on hydrogen electrolyzers, before joining Electra in late 2020.
Across the different firms, Colleen worked with the same core group of scientists and engineers, led by Sandeep Nijhawan and Quoc Pham – the co-founders of Electra. And as a member of this team, her career as a research scientist has flourished.
“You get so much more autonomy when you are part of the Electra team,” she says. “You just pick up so many more practical skills. I am getting way more experience than I’d be getting out of a graduate program.”
As a senior scientist at Electra, Colleen also gets to flex her teaching muscles, helping newer team members design and run experiments, interpret the data, analyze the results, and communicate the findings.
“You are working with people who are so smart,” Colleen says. “They push you to be a more well-rounded scientist. If you want to work a bit harder on something that could have a big impact, this may be the place for you.”
Not surprisingly, when Colleen is away from the lab, you can find her doing something outdoors: Hiking, rock climbing, walking her dog or even gardening. However, in an effort to become less of a Colorado stereotype, Colleen also enjoys some indoor activities like reading, baking and fixing up her house.