Reflecting Back
Marjorie Solomon Friedman
It is hard to believe how much time has passed and how my life has changed in ways I could have never predicted. All in all, I am pleased with the past 35 years. I married my GSB sweetheart, Mark Friedman (’84) and that was the best decision of my life. In addition to being brilliant, creative, handsome, and a wonderful dad, Mark is a person of the utmost integrity and passion for our community. We are still best friends and bring out the good in each other. We always manage to have fun. I guess my first piece of “wisdom” is: “if you can marry your best friend and keep your love alive, you are consummately fortunate.” It gives me pleasure to observe that our eldest son appears to have taken this trite advice and married Elizabeth, who ten years in remains his perfect partner. I hope that my other two sons will be as fortunate.
Six years after business school (and public finance and health care consulting), I veered from the MBA path. I returned to UC Berkeley to complete a PhD in psychology. Long story short, I became a psychologist and medical school professor at UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and the MIND Institute. During my post-doctoral fellowship at MIND, I established an empirically validated social skills program for high functioning children with autism. This program runs to this day and has served close to 750 children with autism and their families. My Stanford MBA skills were critical in my vision for the program and for planning its growth.
Over time, my research career has flourished. My Laboratory examines cognitive development in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) through the lifespan using behavioral and clinical cognitive neuroscience methods, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). I have been the Principal Investigator on two NIMH-funded R01 grants that use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The first examines intellectual and cognitive functioning in middle childhood (ages 8 to 12), and it looks like we will be granted a renewal of this application this summer. The second is a longitudinal cohort sequential study of the development of cognitive control, memory, psychopathology, adaptive functioning, and academic and life outcomes in a cohort of adolescents and young adults ages 12 to 27 using fMRI. Additionally, I am the Principal Investigator on a clinical trial examining the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication treatment in children and adolescents ages 8 to 14 years with ASD and anxiety using fMRI as a biomarker of treatment effectiveness as part of the MIND Institute NIH-funded Autism Center of Excellence (ACE). I am an author of close to 80 empirical manuscripts and a bunch of book chapters. I also currently serve as the Associate Director of the UC Davis Imaging Research Center, the Treasurer of the International Society for Autism Research, and am the incoming co-Director of our MIND Institute NIH-funded Autism Research Training Program. Again, I believe that my GSB skills give me a “leg up” in all my roles from directing a social skills program, lab, or Imaging Center, to trying to understand INSAR financials (a trip down memory lane for sure!). My second piece of wisdom is: “business skills can be very useful in unexpected contexts.”
Another clear lesson I have learned from my journey is similar to the old self-help book entitled “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Since one does not make lots of money as an academic, I would rephrase this as “if you do what you love, you have the best chance of doing it well.” The study of autism fascinates me. This has fueled my passion and propelled me to persevere in difficult funding climates, political situations, and impasses in my research.
I turned 60 this past year. Achieving this milestone coupled with quarantining with Mark and two of our adult sons during the pandemic has given me occasion to think a lot about what is important to me. It has been freeing not to have the typical drumbeat of only somewhat important nightly social engagements and travel plans, and I have enjoyed the introverted, slowed down time. It has given me the opportunity to more clearly examine what is meaningful to me in my work and social pursuits. In work, this typically comes down to thinking about challenging problems related to my research and mentoring talented students, versus scrambling to get ahead in the byzantine academic hierarchy. While I enjoy the occasional Zoom cocktail party, it has been refreshing to have more time to reach out to individual friends remotely or during social distance walks or outdoor visits. It also has been a time of forging stronger bonds with my wonderful siblings and their spouses, while getting to know my children better as adults. I am doing my best to savor these moments, as I know they will not go on forever.
In conclusion, despite the stresses and strains associated with the pandemic, I remain hopeful that recent calls for greater racial and social justice will continue to propel us forward as a nation. Given that I first learned about “the conversation” from Black friends at GSB over thirty-five years ago, it’s about time.