Moving Forward Together: Women’s History Month 2025 – Dr. Maria Thomson
In keeping with the theme of this year’s Women’s History Month, this series highlights the importance and impact of mentoring partnerships between department faculty and their mentees.
Maria Thomson, Ph.D. is a social and behavioral scientist with interdisciplinary training in anthropology and public and population health sciences. She is an experienced community-engaged researcher, having recently concluded a community-centered, low touch colorectal cancer screening intervention in Petersburg, as well as the Chickahominy TRUTH project, conducted alongside Dr. Katherine Y. Tossas, an effort to investigate cancer care access and water safety in Charles City County. She also serves as the co-chair for the Cancer Prevention and Control Disease Working Group in the Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Clinical Trials Office.
I have learned so much working with Dr. Thomson throughout my career. She asks great questions that help to shape and progress ideas. This skill is something that I use all the time now, and it helps have better conversations and better outcomes in our work.
-Katelyn Schifano, MS, CHES
Katelyn Schifano works with Thomson in her role at Massey. The two have worked together since 2013, continuing efforts to ensure that cancer research involves and benefits local communities. “She encourages me to make sure our work is helping progress scientific knowledge and is held to high standards,” says Schifano. “It is our responsibility in the scientific community to be sure that our work is serving those who we are engaged with.”
Outside of her research role, Schifano appreciates Thomson’s dedication to her personal development. “She is a mentor and a role model that has helped me grow in my career from a research assistant to an assistant director,” says Schifano.
One of the best pieces of advice I learned early on under mentorship with Dr. Thomson was to keep making progress and not get stuck when there is a setback. In the research world there will always be setbacks in one manner or another, but instead of freezing in the negativity there are always steps, big or small, we can take to progress our research studies, writings, and ideas.
-Jackie Knight Wilt, PhD
Schifano’s sentiments are echoed by another of Thomson’s mentees, Dr. Jackie Knight Wilt, who recently completed her Ph.D. at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She and Thomson have continued to work together after her graduation, as Knight Wilt develops her independent research. “What I love about our dynamic is that Dr. Thomson deeply knows my own strengths and capabilities as a researcher, and challenges me to push them further,” says Knight Wilt.
Thomson’s strengths lie not only in research mentorship, but in personal relationships with her mentees. Knight Wilt is grateful for Thomson’s guidance and support and she became a mother while working on her Ph.D.: “I consider myself very fortunate to have had Dr. Thomson as my mentor, advisor, and supervisor when I had my son in the spring of 2022,” she says. “Dr. Thomson created an incredibly supportive environment for me as a new mother…. The pathways [she] forges to uplift and create spaces for other women in the sciences is truly inspiring and something I strive to emulate.”
