Eve Slater, board of directors, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Eve Slater’s career, which includes high points in academia, industry and government, embodies the improvements that have occurred for female scientists over the past 30 years. “When you roll back the film you can see there has been progress,” says Slater.

Even so, her progress was mixed with the kinds of choices that female scientists must still make today. She chose to leave the clinical practice, research and teaching she loved in Boston — she was chief resident at Massachusetts General Hospital — because her spouse had career opportunities in New York.

Instead, she joined the drug company Merck. She began her industrial career as a basic scientist, but soon found that her ability to communicate with scientists from other specialities helped to open doors. A pivotal moment came when she made a presentation on the cholesterol drug lovastatin to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval. After this was successful, Merck gave her a position in regulatory affairs (see CV).

Slater loved her new role, describing it as a “truly creative discipline”. She enjoyed recruiting the physicians and scientists needed to answer key questions about how drugs worked in humans, and she savoured the scepticism she knew she would face at the FDA.

Her success was such that she was considered for the post of FDA commissioner a few times. But in 2001, some influential members of Congress signed a letter saying that the FDA commissioner should never have worked for industry, which prohibited her from getting the job.

Instead, she joined the US Department of Health and Human Services as health secretary Tommy Thompson's assistant. She enjoyed the public speaking and the chance to be an advocate on many issues — especially women's health — but eventually she felt the urge to return to the private sector.

So she now fills her schedule with positions that match her interests and abilities, such as serving on boards of favourite causes and, most recently, joining Vertex as a board member. She does, however, believe that she has time and energy for “one more big job”. Her creativity, adaptability and persistence are more than likely to lead her to one.