Mandy Bell is certified as a histotechnologist (HTL) by the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) and is the laboratory manager at Flagship Biosciences. Mandy received a BS in biology from Colorado State University. She said she has always wanted to be a scientist and shared more of her story below.
Here’s more from Mandy:
“I was the kid with a million questions always asking, ‘why?’ because I wanted to know how things worked. Disease research, in particular, always seemed exciting to me and interested me from a young age.
My career in histology began at the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at Colorado State University. When my husband and I moved to Monterey, California after college, I moved into a clinical laboratory setting at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula.
It was there that my interest in IHC (immunohistochemistry) grew and I became the histotechnician in charge of optimizing and validating new IHC assays. While doing some research on the Histonet, a web group for histologists, I first learned about Flagship and became interested in what they were doing. I told myself that if we ever moved back to Colorado, I would look for an opportunity to work with Flagship, and the rest is history!
I really enjoy working with my team and all of the cross-functional teams at Flagship. I sometimes get caught up in the details of my day-to-day work and then remember how cool what we do really is.
I love knowing that we are helping patients get the treatments that they need and that we are making an impact.
My advice for aspiring scientists is to follow your passion! I have done this and feel very lucky and happy to be working in this industry and with Flagship.”