Les Myatt
Les Myatt, PhD, FRCOG
SRI President, 2009-2010
I succeeded Felice Petraglia as President following the first and highly successful international SGI meeting in Glasgow in 2009. Any celebratory feelings from that meeting were tempered by an investment loss of $317,000 from the 2008 economic downturn, an operational loss of $213,000 in the previous year coupled with declining support from Pharma due to altered regulatory requirements. While the investment portfolio recovered sharply in late 2009 we had to institute strict budgetary controls over the society’s expenses removing any support for SGI members who spoke at the annual meeting and setting limits for travel and per diem for outside speakers. Unfortunate casualties of this cost containment were withdrawal of the SGI support for the RSDP program and limiting support for the JGSI Editorial office. We also severed our relationship with FASEB feeling we were not getting value for money paid by the membership, reinforced by a totally lack luster presentation to us by the FASEB leadership. John Tyson replaced John Grossman as Executive Vice President of Development. As membership of the CAB had fallen from 22 to 5 members John began the task of trying to increase membership again by attracting biotechnology companies.
My priorities for the SGI were emphasizing development of new investigators, interaction with sister societies and continued international activities. We created a new investigator advisory group led by Nastaran Foyouzi to get their input into the program, and helped them organize a symposium on Global Maternal Health and its Ethical Considerations. This group became the new investigator committee that is so active today. For the 2010 meeting we established educational activities for the new investigators, instructional “hardware” and “software” tool box sessions, meet the expert lunches, emerging technology sessions and a bonding activity, the KUBB tournament. Kubb is a Swedish lawn game played with wooden batons which prompted Ava Tayman to ensure every participant signed a release form indemnifying SGI against any injury caused! Thomas Jansson did a superb job organizing the program the theme of which was “Epigenetic Regulation”. For the first time we had every poster and oral presentation by a new investigator judged by senior SGI members with prizes of $200 for best poster and orals presented at the President’s Pizza Bash. We ensured that every session had a young investigator and a female member as co-moderator. Also for the first time we had the SGI Distinguished Scientist, Gautam Chaudhuri and the President’s Achievement Awardee, Marilyn Cipolla speak at the meeting, and brought Marilyn’s mother up on stage to share the excitement with her! The award of the Naftolin Award for Mentorship to Louis Peeters recognized the continued and ongoing support of SGI by our Dutch colleagues who had brought a large number of trainees to our meetings over the years. My theme for the President’s address was “It’s not your father’s SGI”, highlighting our changing landscape and our response to it. I also showed my tan lines, something not displayed by a SGI president since Ann Reynolds. Sadly no one has exposed their tan lines since!
As part of strategic discussions we explored the idea of partnering with sister societies in the reproductive sciences such as the pediatric societies had done. To embark on that venture we organized joint symposia with both SSR and ASRM at the 2010 meeting and those societies hosted reciprocal symposia at their annual meetings.
Activities for extending the international outreach of SGI included the 3rd International SGI Summit in Sendai Japan, voting to hold the next international meeting in Florence 2014 and garnering support from the Pampers brand of Procter and Gamble to sponsor a visit by four SGI members to visit seven academic institutions in China to “spread the word” and potentially identify Chinese scholars who might come to work in SGI member’s labs back in the US with support by P&G. Alas, although the highly successful visit went ahead, shifting priorities at P&G prevented the idea going further.
I had instituted a thorough review of society activities establishing 11 strategic groups to report on various aspects of SGI activity. One of these led by Kelle Moley floated the idea of a name change to reflect the society’s role in representing the entirety of Women’s Health, something that came to fruition 4 years later when Kelle was President. The Council meetings were not uneventful, with discussions surrounding the future management of the society and whether to establish a CEO type position, a matter not settled until 5 years later when EDI were appointed to manage SRI. There was also vigorous discussion regarding the application by the newly formed Women in Reproductive Sciences (WIRS) group for a voting position on Council. While WIRS itself did not have longevity, we have since ensured equal participation and representation by women on Council and in all aspects of society activity.