Dr. Janina M. Jeff, who loved science growing up in New Orleans and studied genetics at Spelman College and Vanderbilt University, is dedicated to bridging that field and a Black American community that historically has viewed it with suspicion.
Jeff, who in 2012 was the first AfricanAmerican to graduate from Vanderbilt with a Ph.D. in human genetics, was one of three women of color chosen from 18,000 entrants last summer in the inaugural Spotify Sound Up Bootcamp competition for podcast proposals.
Since then, she has used her $10,000 prize to create a pilot episode and begin production of her podcast In Those Genes. The host is working with a small team on a 12-installment first season titled “46 Chromosomes and a Mule.”
The podcast uses genetics to uncover and explore the lost identities of African-descended Americans through the lens of Black culture. Despite the recent rise in popularity of ancestry-themed television programs and home-test kits, human geneticists traditionally have not studied Black Americans, and those who have tend to use approaches informed by their own White perspective, Jeff has observed.
In a nationwide push to get more women, Black and Hispanic students to study and pursue careers in STEM fields, where they are chronically underrepresented, some thought leaders and researchers are trying to understand what factors influence children – who tend to be naturally curious – to veer away from STEM fields later in their education among underrepresented groups.
That didn’t happen to Jeff, whose path to a career as a geneticist and her current passion was influenced and cultivated by an Afrocentric family that valued education, community uplift and their ethnic heritage. She fondly remembers her grandfather, Morris F.X. Jeff Jr., a civil rights leader, panAfricanist and psychologist with a Ph.D. in social work who held leadership roles in Black-uplift organizations such as the Urban League, 100 Black Men and the National Association of Black Social Workers.
Jeff realized early that not only did she like science and math, she was good at them. They complemented her natural curiosity and creativity, and winning a number of competitions in local and state science fairs fueled her interest.
