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Many laboratory professionals discover the field through a teacher, mentor, or chance encounter. For sisters Stacey Robinson, age 57, and Alysen Robinson, age 47, laboratory medicine planted roots in their childhoods. Thanks to their parents, the sisters developed an early fascination with the human body, laboratory testing, and scientific discovery.  

Laboratory careers made visible by their parents 

Stacey and Alysen both had their eyes opened to laboratory careers through their parents’ work. 

Stacey Robinson, MS, MLS (ASCP)^CM SH^CM, SCYM^CM, an anatomic pathology laboratory manager at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, recalls visiting her mom at the military base laboratory in West Germany where Stacey also held a summer job as a teen. 

"If she wasn't ready to go to lunch yet, I would sit in the phlebotomy chair, or I'd sit next to her and she'd show me things,” Stacey says. 

Her mother taught her how to streak microbiology plates using curved metal loops that she had to sterilize between samples (today these loops are plastic and disposable). “She also taught me how to do a pregnancy test, which back then was not the nice little kit that we have now where the line shows up,” Stacey says. 

Because of this experience, she said, "Unlike a lot of people that I have talked to, I knew what medical laboratory science was."  

Stacey’s younger sister, Alysen Robinson, MS, a laboratory manager at the Johns Hopkins Center for Inherited Disease Research, knew about her mother’s laboratory job, but came to her work as a candy striper in a hospital where her father worked. 

She recalls how “absurd” it was “back then they actually let children take samples from the different floors to the lab of the hospital…I was always around that kind of stuff."  

A shared curiosity for science  

Neither sister felt pushed toward laboratory careers; they just had an early fascination with science, biology, and understanding how things work. The laboratory became a good fit when they were choosing careers. 

Stacey says that she, her sister, and mother "were always very interested in science.” She remembers in childhood that models “of the human skull and entire body” were perfectly normal in her home. She also had an inherent curiosity for how things worked. “I remember studying cells and going out and picking different stages of development of pinecones and stuff like that."  

Alysen thought at first that she might take the pre-med path because she “loved learning about how humans work” and was “drawn” to the sciences. But when she reached college, she felt she didn't have that drive necessary for pre-med, though she “still had the love of it.” She adds, “I kept going, but I realized my direction was going to be different." It was pathology that won her over. 

Different routes into the profession 

Although both sisters share a love of science and figuring out how things work, their paths into laboratory careers looked very different. Stacey entered through her own military service and clinical laboratory training, while Alysen found her place in research and genomics through time spent interning in a hospital.  

Stacey quickly realized that “medical laboratory technician was the only thing that I really wanted to do for the Army, and I had high enough test scores.” However, the Army’s first offer of a job was missile repair. When she rejected that and walked out, they caught up with her at the elevator with a second offer for medical laboratory technician. 

Immediately after her training, they shipped Stacey off to South Korea for a year. In Uijeongbu, she found herself the only laboratorian for three posts, performing all manual testing for her first year. She served for 11 years before transitioning to civilian service within the military healthcare system. 

For Alysen, having side-stepped the pre-med path, while her peers peeled off to internships in the ER, obstetrics, or other aspects of medicine, she says, “I was that weird nerd that wanted to hang out with the pathologist.” This desire grew when she realized pathology was “not just about death; it's about life and it's about biopsies and it's about cancer and just everything."  

What keeps them engaged decades later  

Both sisters value the opportunity to be constantly learning on the job and rarely feel bored.   

Alysen says of her work, “I love a good puzzle.” She also appreciates having seen vast technology changes in her 24-year career. “I couldn't get bored because every two years I was learning something different."  

One of the coolest things she’s experienced in her career is having lived to see the Human Genome Project reach completion. “Now, getting sequenced is nothing and it's so cheap and everybody's doing it and it's blowing up. Getting to see that has just been really cool."  

Stacey also loves the variety. In her 32-year career, she says boredom is impossible when “there's always something new, something different, something unexpected.” She adds, “I've worked in anatomic pathology, flow cytometry, blood bank, hematology, and chemistry. I've worked in South Korea, Germany, and Kuwait. There's just this endless variety of stuff to do. There's always more to learn. There's always different avenues to explore and you could go anywhere."  

Now, Stacey is facing retirement but she’s not in a hurry. In her work in anatomic pathology, she says, “I'm just learning new things all the time."  

A family connection that continues today 

The sisters feel lucky to have continuing support, mentorship, and a shared language for discussing science and laboratory medicine.  

Stacey credits her mother with planting the seeds of “fascination with laboratory science” that persist to this day and wonders if this penchant runs in the genes; Stacey recently learned that their paternal grandfather whom she’d never met was also a hospital laboratory worker. 

In general, Alysen says, "It's been a lot of fun getting to bounce ideas off of each other.” Since both sisters are lab managers, they have a shared understanding of things “that anybody else would not really understand,” Alysen concludes. 

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