From Lab to Leadership: ACS President-Elect Reveals the Surprising Career Skill Every Chemist Needs

The American Chemical Society’s 2026 president-elect, Christina Bodurow, has followed a career path that many aspiring chemists might not be thinking about in the laboratory. As a chemist who started her career researching organometallics to make natural products, Bodurow has spent the last 40 years in a wide variety of research and development (R&D) roles, including drug development, R&D operations, and project management—all related to medicine development.

A Problem-Solver and People Person

“Project management provides a framework and a discipline as to how we approach the scientific problems we’re working on,” Bodurow says. “Chemists are kind of by nature problem-solvers, so I think that the many years of chemistry training and the chemistry discipline that you receive when you go through that is certainly probably part of it. But on the other hand, I just love organizing science.”

Project management isn’t just organizing though—it’s also a people-person job. In addition to organizing science and data, she has to coordinate the activities of everyone in the room. A specific skill that helps is executive composure, or the ability to remain calm and professional. Bodurow reveals that a key to mastering this skill is getting comfortable with conflict: when you’re organizing people, there are bound to be different opinions.

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Things and Working Together

A tangible example of project management in ACS is CAS, a division of the society that focuses on how best to provide chemical information to scientists around the world. This mission requires a lot of project management while upholding a certain trust and reliability in the information. Bodurow notes the interdisciplinary nature of these divisions and the importance of working together. “Part of my objective in my presidential term is to create more of those interactions.” She imagines five to eight divisions collaborating to unlock innovative ways to address certain global challenges, such as in medicine development, energy, and chemistry and space.

"Project management provides a framework and a discipline as to how we approach the scientific problems we’re working on."

When asked about the effectiveness of collaboration, she says, “My experience has been the bigger the better. We actually have communities of hundreds of chemists that work together across the globe, and they’re joined together in various initiatives, and they work together as a community—it’s pretty amazing, and it does work like that in chemistry.”

Striving for Better, and Growth for the Next Generation and Yourself

On what she’s looking forward to in her new job, Bodurow mentions the Catalyze Indiana initiative, which enhances chemistry in Indiana by giving students in academia the chance to work in laboratories in industry. Incorporating green chemistry into this program is another way forward and will help make the students more competitive in industry. She wants to make sure that students and future chemists are prepared for their careers and that they are not only prepared but can strive to do better.

C&EN asked Bodurow if she had any suggestions for students in figuring out if project management is something they enjoy. She suggests asking some self-reflective questions: Am I interested in doing/supporting multidisciplinary work versus solely focusing on my area of study? Do I like working with people? Do I like organizing teams to achieve a goal and working with them to achieve it? “These are all basic elements of a project manager profile, and if you can relate to them, then find a few project managers and take them to lunch or a coffee to learn more about their jobs,” she says.