Likeable Badass

I know, this has taken a while. Thank you for your patience. It was something my mentor said that was both supportive but also made all the words get real sticky trying to come out of my brain: “You don’t get the opportunity to share news like this often, so make it count.”

On top of that, within the last month and while this was all unravelling, I travelled to Puerto Rico, Burbank, and Minneapolis to talk science, helped my first student get her thesis submitted (she defended today!), emceed at the Aladdin which is a huge Portland performance milestone, and entered the last class of my Masters degree. Plus all the other stuff that comes with being a scientist and mom and wife and musician and human, not necessarily in that order.

But this is the big news, finally. And this is how I celebrated in the early days after finding out. I’m hitting send before I can dither about this anymore. Enjoy.

Saturday, March 28th, 2026, 1:15 PM.
Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Outside in the labyrinth of bricked and cobbled streets, it is blindingly bright, the first purely sunny day all week. The weather has been chaotic with rainstorms pouring from above as suddenly as the angels turning a faucet on and off overhead, flooding some streets that were dry just a moment before. The narrow walks are packed with people enjoying the weather, voices raising in song, hellos, and chanting in large groups as part of the large nationwide protest of unfair governmental systems. Police blare sirens every few minutes. It is somewhere north of 80 degrees with a humidity of five billion percent, the air feeling like a Labrador Retriever cuddle pile: warm, heavy, cloyingly damp, and an underlying smell of bodies and dust and salt.

In here, it is completely the opposite. Well-lit, but not overly so. Air conditioned, a necessity and luxury at the same time in Puerto Rico. A banger playlist is going quietly in the background as the few people seated together at a long table nod to each other, laugh and sing along a little. Big crystal chandeliers are flanked by gorgeous draping flower decor, and the walls are white and lined with big glass separatory and dropping funnels. The beautiful woman in the lab coat across from me, Nicole, hands me another slip of paper, which I receive reverently with a deep inhalation. Bergamot, all lemon and herbal, greets me, and I put it next to the other slips.

Welcome to the Blanca Fragrance Factory, a sanctum of scent in the streets of Old San Juan. Here, more than 100 extracts from botanicals, woods, and oils await those looking to create a little cosmetic chemistry.

Finding about Blanca was accidental kismet. There are only 3 Blanca blenderies in the world, and 2 are in San Juan. The chances of me stumbling into this science-meets-scent place was small, and so to come across it while planning a last-minute post-conference afternoon walking tour was magic to me, which is what my perfume adventures always are.

I don’t know when it started, but finding a scent to identify with when I hit a major life change has become something of a tradition for me. I find a new perfume that represents where I am. When I smell it, it reminds me of that time, who I was, what my intentions were, and I find strength in it. In 2019, when the PDX Broadsides went on our East Coast tour, I bought Clean Beauty’s Rain from a Sephora near Times Square in New York City as a reminder of the invigorating feeling of boldly going on a tour supported by amazing fans and friends, even as wildly outside of my comfort zone that was. In 2022, at my first conference back after the birth of my son, I found a hole in the wall store that had been in business more than 30 years. People bustled in and out of this tiny place, The Perfume Shoppe, while I sat with the owner, Naz. She would talk with you for a few minutes, match you to something, and she knew exactly what you needed. She keeps all her clients in a spreadsheet so they can reorder. They do. Faithfully. Their kids and grandkids come to her to be matched. Every time I’ve worn that scent, Mancera Paris’ Midnight Gold, people pay attention. It’s a beautiful, spicy, woody scent, and it makes me feel confident and feminine. I mixed a lotion scent at Nectar Life in Vegas that smells like a fresh baked brownie with notes of vanilla that reminds me to be playful and enjoy being a little silly, and of that wonderful honeymoon/birthday celebration trip with my equally playful and wonderful husband.

So, with a big life change happening, stumbling on Blanca was magic. I’d just told Nicole a bit about my history of perfumes for life changes, and then I told her the reason why I was there: I’d just gotten my first major NIH grant and I wanted to commemorate the way it was about to change my life. 

In a time when science and anything involving women’s health is under siege, it’s nothing short of a miracle. I cannot tell you the relief and gratitude I felt when I saw the magic “Awarded” notice on my NIH Status page. I told Adam, my longtime tech, who was sitting next to me, and then I put my head on the lab bench and let out big, ugly, soul-deep sobs for five minutes. It was like a thunderstorm of stress, grief, exhaustion, gratitude, and disbelief unleashed itself from my bones and insisted that, one way or another, it was coming out. Then I got myself together, notified my mentorship team, and cried again.

The National Institutes of Health approved my K01 grant to study the long-term health of women with previous kidney issues after they give birth. This is going to help so many folks who have gotten kidney injury in combat, accidents, athletes, Veterans, and more have long, healthy lives with functioning kidneys.

5 years of funding, approved.

Grand total to me and OHSU: $804,600.

It’s the biggest thing I or my group dared to dream about for me at this stage, and it’s happened. And now that I was going to be an NIH investigator, I needed to feel like one. I needed a scent to remind me that I am intelligent, warm, kind, and an authority on this area, all at the same time. That I was prepared to lead and worthy of being followed.

In short, I needed to be a Likeable Badass.

I was introduced to the book “Likeable Badass” by Dr. Allison Fragale during my MotherMind Coaching cohort (if you’re 50%+ in research and a mom and want to join a career coaching group that will change your life, PLEASE get in touch!). Basically, she says that women are taught that, to be successful, we must chase power, but really, what we need is status. We need people to give us trust and authority, thereby earning the power through reputation and representation of our own values. The biggest point in our favor is to cultivate a reputation of being the perfect intersection of warm and authoritative. A Likeable Badass.

So, here I am, living out what it means to be honest, vulnerable, knowledgeable, invested in science and the community…I am approaching Likeable Badass-dom every day, to help lead, inspire, and discover. That’s the goal. Making science accessible for everyone and making research that changes lives. Healthy Parents, Healthy Babies, Health For Life.

And now I smell like it.

Putting a glass of champagne in my hand (because Blanca is classy as heck and we’re celebrating), Nicole asked me what sort of things I was looking for in a Likeable Badass blend. Strength, obviously, but a warm, reassuring one. A good base. Fresh, sweet, and little spicy, because what I say and do has to catch your attention. Truth can be bold. Finally, I also wanted it to smell a little like the sea, since it was in Puerto Rico that I had this adventure and got the official letter, but also because it’s a clean new step.

I blended. And sniffed. And rocked out with some fellow blending baddies, we finally hit on the right number of drops of oud, mineral salt, and pink pepper. Behold, the Likeable Badass.

Nicole got me wrapped up, we entered my online profile so I could reorder anytime, and she gave me a reassuring squeeze. “You ARE a Likeable Badass,” she said, “and I’m so glad I got to meet you.” I smiled at her, and my new friend at the bench who just blurted out that her scent was “Sessy Sugar” and was still trying to figure out if she should be embarassed or not. “You get it, Sessy Sugar. You’re a badass, too.”

May we all be the Likeable Badasses we want to see change the world.

To the next five years, bigger and better.

<3,
Dr. Jess