Loyal Employer, Loyal Employee

I worked at a pharmaceutical company in Japan before I joined my husband in the U.S., and then I was a stay-at-home mom for five years. I am so grateful to my former boss, Lida Sethi, who retired several years ago. She dared to hire me even though she was told that CAS didn't want to hire somebody who had stayed at home for so long.

I started as a Markush analyst in 1993 with a work permit that was to expire in six years. CAS started the process to get me a green card in 1996, but it wasn't early enough. After the six years were over, I didn't have a green card, and it would have been illegal to employ me. So I went back to Japan until the green card came through. I was gone for 15 months.

When I finally came back to work, I came back to the same position in the exact office. I appreciated that CAS kept my position open while I was gone. I was a little bit scared when I came back to work since it had been a while after I left the job, but with help of my manager and coworkers things came back to me quickly. While I was gone, the group I was with got a President's Award, because they worked so hard to compensate for my absence.

Later, when CAS was about to launch SciFinder, I was involved in creating a promotional video for a Japanese audience. Everything was done in English, but CAS wanted Japanese dubbed for the narration and for Mr. Massie's talk. We were at the video studio, reading Japanese text with great precision to match the picture and sound. It was a unique experience.

Shimizu received a B.S. degree in pharmacy from Chiba University, in Japan. She started with CAS in 1993 as a Markush analyst.