What is really, really troubling, if you look at the careers of women, I mean we were looking at it recently even in our institute. It takes way longer for women to achieve leadership or independence, so I think this is a situation that has to be repaired immediately. In our own institute, leadership when I first arrived was very male-oriented and that was repaired. You just hired and now we have 50% women, 50% men [in the management committee]. It has to come from both the community and leadership, and at one point we have to fix it, we have to move on. We have to actually go to the next level. We should not actually spend our time debating about it. We have to fix it. So, I think that's why it's important to actually have women in leadership positions because they can make those hard decisions quickly. It's also important to have women in leadership positions going to hear the challenges of young families and they're going to try to adapt and to protect the next generation. It's important to have also a diverse leadership, for everybody to be able to project themselves in the next step. I think all of that is extremely important.

Yasmine Belkaid is a renowned scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between microbes and the immune system. She is the President as well as the head of the Metaorganism laboratory at the Institut Pasteur.

Belkaid earned her Master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene in Algiers, and a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) from Paris-Sud University. In 1996, she earned her PhD in immunology from the Institut Pasteur, where she studied innate immune responses to leishmania infection. Belkaid then moved to the United States for a postdoctoral fellowship in intracellular parasite biology at NIAID’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases (NIH).

Belkaid has received numerous awards including the Robert Koch Prize, the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Prize, and the AAI Excellence in Mentoring Award. She also serves on the committees of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the Microbiome Technical Advisory Group at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH Anti-Racism Steering Committee, the American Society of Microbiology, and the Genentech Scientific Resource Board.