If you're going to try to get your work out there, whether it's to a policy audience or a journalist audience, you need to have different kinds of skills. You need to be able to write in different ways. You need to be able to look at something from somebody else's point of view and understand what's going to get that person’s attention. I think the mistake that too many researchers make, especially when they're starting out, is they think that everyone is as excited in this tiny little thing that they've studied as they are. And everyone's not. I mean, in the world of research, we all specialize on very, very narrowly focused topics, and so you need to think, "Well, what about my work is going to be interesting to the average person?"

I often tell my students, "Write this up as if you were explaining it to your grandmother, and then you will see whether it's going to be interesting to the average person or not." But it does require being able to write well, and to me, that is one of the most important parts of training that we don't pay enough attention to. The best people, if you read the work of the stars in our field, I think one thing that they all share in common is that they're terrific writers. And, your ideas are only as good as people can understand them to be. And if you can't express yourself well, you are not going to have an impact no matter how good your work is.