Difficult Choices Posted on October 19, 2007 Ruth M. O'Hara (bio) talks about personal circumstances that influenced her career trajectory.

The next critical juncture occurred between ’93 and ’95 and this was really three tiered. The first was I separated. So, I had a family event, which changed my circumstances. I went to being a single mom with a lot of additional responsibilities – my son lived with me. And so, I had to sort of step back and think, how is going to affect career? That was compounded by the fact that my sister and my family – immediate family – were all in the area, actually moved - lock stock and barrel to Northern California. So I find myself at an early career stage, just being put on faculty track with really having a significant personal event that I knew going to slow the trajectory. And then one was institutional. UCLA is a wonderful place but this was in the early ‘90s and at that point, within our department there, psychologists were still – I think – perhaps seen in a less interdisciplinary way than is definitely the case now. Genetics really hadn’t taken on in the same way as a prediction for cognitive decline.

So, there were also institutional factors. I wasn’t feeling that I could see myself being able to do exactly the kind of research. So, I had to sit back and think and then I made my second biggest career choice and decision ever, which was to go to Stanford. In part that was driven by family reasons, providing my son with an infrastructure of his grandparents and his cousins and providing myself with family support, just in terms of social life and other aspects that are very important to us from Ireland. And additionally, I needed a research environment that I felt was a better match for my actual career plans, which was particularly at that point, to look at some of the genetic risk factors and moderators of cognitive impairment and risk for dementia.

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