By Jerry Heindel
Traditionally, an elder is a person who has accumulated wisdom and knowledge throughout his or her lifetime. An elder is also someone who may be transitioning away from the demands and deadlines of others to focus on what they want to do or express their wisdom and experience without constraints. Since the EDC field is now about 40 years old, many scientists working in the field are now elders. The elders in the EDC field is made up of scientists who have spent their careers somewhere in the collective space of the revelation, understanding and communication of endocrine disruption and on developing solutions in scientific, technical, commercial, educational, regulatory, and political arenas. It is an amazing thing as one becomes an elder to know that your life’s professional work has been associated with aspects of the greatest challenges associated with commercial chemicals that humanity has ever had to face.
For the most part EDC elders are not really considering retirement in the usual sense: why stop doing what you love when you know it is so important to life on earth? Some of us are considering changing our focus or further expanding it from teaching and research to a more “unstructured” lifestyle, where the most potent component of our efforts will be to help lead our civilization away from the perils of endocrine disrupting chemicals.
If you are an elder working on EDCs or in a related field, HEEDS has an idea for you. We offer you the opportunity to join our senior leadership team, that will meet regularly to strategize on how humanity can cope with the challenges of endocrine disruptors and how we elders can contribute to this effectively as we transition. We call this new team the HEEDS Elders Working Group.
The goals of this new HEEDS group are to:
- Share experiences of transitioning from full time researcher/academic teacher to elders
- Explore options for the next leadership phase of our lives
- Help ensure that group’s unmatched collective EDC knowledge is shared effectively with society
- Help stimulate communication, coordination and collaboration across the EDC and allied fields to improve the impacts of research and advocacy that promotes essential and measurable changes in the chemical enterprise that eliminate EDCs and become sustainable
- Help to mentor the next generation of EDC researchers, entrepreneurs and advocates.
If you consider yourself an elder in the EDC field, come join us. Send an email to jerryheindel@gmail.com. We will be holding regular Zoom meetings to develop plans and actions the group can take to continue to influence the world in the direction of change it desperately needs.
For the current members of this working group, see this webpage.