“Look for the People that Care”
Q&A with David Sellers, analytical chemist at Pfizer

David Sellers took multiple winter and summer classes at Au Sable's Michigan and Pacific Rim campuses between 2007 and 2009. He currently works as a principal scientist at Pfizer's Kalamazoo manufacturing plant. He shares how learning about the natural world lifted him out of a depression and how environmental and health issues connect.

What was your time like at Au Sable?

Each campus has its own unique environment. I loved the setting at the Pacific Rim, where you're out on the island close to the bluffs next to the ocean.

In Mancelona, you're surrounded by the forest. I remember walking barefoot on the paths between the dorms and dining hall, feeling the pine needles. It was soft, loamy ground and lovely to walk in. On both campuses, I found caring individuals dedicated to God, education, serving their students, and creation care. That spirit helped shaped in me a lifelong desire as a Christian to take care of the world around me in what little ways I can. I have my houseplants and my garden. I often go through picking up trash when we walk home from church and help take care of the church grounds.

My professors at Au Sable showed me a great template for being both a scientist and a Christian. That has made it easier to identify as both and not have a war within myself.

What are the tensions you feel in being a scientist and a Christian?

I grew up with the idea that the Bible teaches seven-day creation and science teaches evolution, that they're not the same therefore they can't mix. In grad school I remember thinking, "This is completely incompatible. You can't believe in God and science." People directly came out and said that.

Fortunately, I've been surround by good mentors. I work at Pfizer in Kalamazoo. We are one of the sites that makes Pfizer's COVID vaccines. In my department we have our own Bible study. The pressures now don't appear as big as when I was younger.

What was your journey like from undergrad to working at Pfizer?

I graduated in 2009 from Spring Arbor University. It was really difficult to find work. A friend and I decided to spend some time volunteering. We found a lab in Cambodia, an NGO mapping the geology and its impact on the groundwater and surface waters, trying make sure there's safe drinking water. There is often arsenic in the groundwater due to the Himalayan deposits there. And often the surface water has bacterial or viral contamination. Two of their main sources are not always reliable, so we were trying to figure out where are they reliable.

Then I came back and worked for a women's monastery for a while, helping them with construction. In the meantime, I went to grad school at Western Michigan University, which has a heavy emphasis on environmental and green chemistry. I received my Ph.D. and fell in love with the Southwest region of Michigan. Pfizer is a great employer. I love the mission that Pfizer has to bring medicine to patients to help make their lives better.

How did your time in Cambodia shape how you think about environmental issues?

If you have money in Cambodia, you secure yourself safe drinking water. You buy bottled water or have your own in-house purification system. If you're in poverty, you're reliant on whatever system is available to the local community, usually surface water. The impact is different based on a person's wealth.

Sometimes I feel like in the U.S. we're immune to this but [the water crisis in] Flint really drove this home. We still have inequity here. Safe drinking water is not something we should take for granted. When our systems in the U.S. do fail, it is often communities that have already been hit the hardest by inequitable practices who suffer the most. For example, in Flint, a lot of the Black community was hit hardest by the issue of the city's change to the water plant's practices. This plays out all over.

How does that insight shape your work at Pfizer?

I work for a corporation that ultimately makes its money from people that are ill and participates in practices in the pharmaceutical industry that quite frankly sometimes are very greedy. I'm always a voice of criticism willing to say that we shouldn't be profiteering more. I worked on two projects related to COVID in the past two years, one related to the vaccine and another related to PAXLOVID, a treatment after infection to help reduce the severity of the illness. You have this crazy hope that the pandemic will end, but then working on these projects you also have this desire to see your product make it out to treat people.

Pfizer has started to turn a corner at least in how they provide medicines to people. They put in a [multi]-tier pricing system on the vaccine, for example. At the same time Pfizer lobbies Congress to not have government put price caps put on medicines. It's a difficult world sometimes. But I think they're moving in the right direction.

How do you bring an environmental perspective into the healthcare industry?

I work at a manufacturing plant so we deal with really large volumes of waste. We are constantly working to improve our waste stream analysis and make sure we can put forward the most sustainable practices.

Pfizer has a commitment to net zero emissions by 2040. As a large corporation, we have a chance to change practices globally and influence others, which will hopefully lead to improvements to the environment and to improvements in people's health.

You were in a depression going into your time at Au Sable's Pacific Rim campus. In an email describing that period, you wrote, "God’s mercy was manifested to me through my two compassionate professors [Ioana Popescu and Lisanne Winslow]. I credit the required journaling sitting on top of the bluffs in the forest near the army barracks for a chunk of my healing.” How did that time contribute to your healing?

It's really hard to ignore God while sitting up there in the forest looking over Puget Sound, hearing the waves roll in. It was a summer spent studying plants and marine invertebrates. It's hard to be completely self-centered and focused on your own inner despair when you’re constantly being brought out of it to look at this amazing gooseneck barnacle or Pacific Madrone, a beautiful tree. The field courses were constantly drawing me back out of my own inner monologue to see what was around.

It was that act of looking up. Dr. Popescu's love for plants was so infectious. Even though I didn't have much room for love at the time, I couldn't help but love plants more in her presence.

Many young people today deal with eco-anxiety or forms of climate depression. What words do you have for them?

Look for the people that care. See the love and vibrancy that they have. Remember that there's hope. All of these problems are not anything that any one person can solve. We're solving them in community. That's why I love seeing the Au Sable and Pacific Rim Institute newsletters. They are doing great things because of the community that's been made.

You mentioned journaling. What other habits and spiritual practices sustain you?

Being respectful of rest. Taking time for silence. Having a consistent prayer life. I've had to be humble in learning in how little it is that I can be consistent with, but having consistency in there is really beautiful.