Shili Lin, Ohio State University, is the chair of the CIMEP working group (the mentoring and engagement program run by IMS and the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute, CANSSI). She reports:

The inaugural joint IMS–CANSSI mentoring and networking event took place on Monday, August 5, at JSM 2024 in Portland, Oregon. This was a direct result of both IMS and CANSSI (the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute) being highly committed to serving the community and nurturing statisticians to be successful in their careers, and of the dedicated effort by members of the CANSSI–IMS Mentoring and Engagement Program (CIMEP) working group.

The session was organized into two halves. The first half was a moderated panel discussion, in which seven panelists with excellent credentials at multiple career stages from academia, industry, and beyond provided their perspectives on questions such as:

• “How did you decide what setting (academia, industry, beyond) you wanted to work in?”

• “How have your responsibilities and the way you spend your time changed throughout your career?”

• “When new opportunities present themselves, how do you decide what to say yes to?”

• “How do you find work/life balance?”

• “What skill sets are important to possess in order to navigate promotion and being successful in one’s career more generally?”

After the panel discussion, the participants were split into small groups for more in-depth and targeted discussion, with each group led by a panelist. All participants participated in the lively conversations happening across the room, asking questions and providing their own perspectives.

Overall, from anecdotal information gained through chatting with some participants and panelists after the event, it is felt that by pooling resources and combining efforts, IMS and CANSSI are making a greater impact in the respective societies and the wider statistical community.

The Panelists: John Eltinge (Census Bureau), Ilya Hekimi (Statistics Canada), Saman Muthukumarana (University of Manitoba), Bouchra Nasri (Université de Montréal), Layla Parast (UT Austin), Jose Pinheiro (Johnson & Johnson), and Bin Yu (UC Berkeley).

The CIMEP group members: Andrea Benedetti (McGill University), Jessica Gronsbell (University of Toronto), Shili Lin (Ohio State University), Nicole Pashley (Rutgers University), and Ali Shojaie (University of Washington).

The CIMEP group is continuing to work on planning future offerings of member engagement events. Stay tuned!

Participants in the session asked questions of the panelists