Riinu Pae

Meet Riinu

Riinu is a Behavioural Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, where she works to integrate behavioural science evidence and methods into public health practice. In her work, she conducts applied research projects on health protection behaviours, provides training for public health professionals, and supports knowledge mobilisation efforts to bridge the gap between research findings and public health practice. She is also the co-founder of the Behavioural Science Jobs Board, a growing community of over 800 people interested in behavioural science careers.

1. How does your work help others or contribute to the world, and what motivated you to pursue this path?

I work as a Behavioural Scientist at UK Health Security Agency, which is a government agency that protects communities from all hazards to health: everything from infectious diseases to all flavours of natural and man-made disasters.

Most of my job is driven by engaging communities in public health work that affects them, understanding why people are or aren’t following public health advice, amplifying their voices and bringing these insights to decision-makers. In practice, this means doing research, and most importantly, figuring out the “so what?” of what do these research insights mean for public health practice, and how to communicate these in an actionable and digestible way. We’re doing this all for the grand aim of contributing to improved health outcomes through public health practice that considers how people actually behave, why, and encourages them to make informed decisions about their health.

I’ve been interested in working in health as long as I can remember, but it took me a while to find the ikigai role (as an aside, I had a brief moment where I wanted to become a spy, but I would have been awful at it because I’m a terrible liar – you would not want me in your team playing the Secret Hitler boardgame!).

Following a Psychology undergraduate degree at University of Leicester, and a stint of working in health and social care, I realised that whilst working 1-to-1 with patients is hugely rewarding, my interests and skills lied in research and system-level work. A TED talk I watched incidentally added the term behavioural science to my vocabulary, and inspired me to pursue an MSc in Behaviour Change at UCL.

Going into the MSc, I was planning to work in health promotion after graduating, but life had other plans because the COVID-19 pandemic started whilst I was studying. I found myself working in infectious disease outbreak response and really enjoyed the blend of clinical and behavioural aspects and the occasionally responsive nature of the job. I also found myself being surrounded by extremely knowledgeable, supportive and just all-around brilliant people both in my team and the wider public health system, so I’ve stayed put as I really like it here.

2. Could you describe a typical day or week in your job to give us a sense of what it’s really like?

A day or even a week might be too small of a unit of analysis as it really depends on what I’m currently working on. There’s a lot of variety in my job, both in terms of topic areas and types of work. In general, I work on three types of projects – all at the same time, but the proportions depend on the month.

First, applied research, which involves everything from scoping out a project to data collection and analysis to dissemination. A lot of this is qualitative or secondary research, but there is also the occasional mixed methods project with a quantitative aspect.

Second, different forms of knowledge mobilisation such as writing briefing notes, doing presentations, giving specialist advice, and networking with public health practitioners and academics.

Whilst the team I work at is the biggest behavioural science team in the UK government, there’s only so much we can do ourselves, so the third aspect is training public health practitioners and clinicians. We teach them how to apply the basic principles of behavioural science in their day-to-day roles, as well as the appreciation that behaviour change is an art and science and specialist input will be needed for more complex problems.

And then, well, there’s admin. You can’t escape admin no matter what your role is or how senior you become.

3. What aspects of your work do you find most enjoyable and/or meaningful?

I enjoy working on long-term research projects, but it’s the responsive work that informs decision-making during incidents, and training development that gets me most energised.

Whist the impact of these things is not hugely concrete, I believe these small changes in ways of working and what assumptions practitioners make about people and behaviour scaled up to hundreds or thousands of times has a bigger impact than writing journal articles, which are read only by a handful of people who already know a decent amount about the topic. That’s not to say publishing papers isn’t important – quite the opposite because published evidence forms the building blocks of my work and part of me would die if I couldn’t do research – but the responsive work and training development is what I find most meaningful and enjoyable.

4. What skills or traits make you good at what you do and how have past experiences shaped/helped you (or not)?

The key skills and traits needed in my job are curiosity about people and why things are the way they are, the drive to make a positive change in the world, and the ability to be really pragmatic about how you go about doing these things. The pragmatism has come with experience, but the curiosity and the passion for making a difference come from within. If you’re not already naturally inquisitive and don’t want to contribute to the social good, I don’t have any advice on how to develop these, but I’m assuming these things apply to you if you’re reading this, so I might be preaching to the choir anyway.

Two other things come to mind. I’m always trying out new things – be it new frameworks or approaches, ways of working or topic areas – and try not to take it personally if these things don’t work out as expected. I also like having an ear to the ground and generally know who’s who in behavioural science. This fuels my own enthusiasm and helps to know where and who to go to for what, but more importantly, behavioural scientists are generally interesting people and a good fun, so I also just enjoy their company.

5. How does your type of work fit with the rest of your life?

Working in the Civil Service allows me to work flexibly and have a good work-life balance, so I would recommend it for people who want to have an impact-driven career yet like to have a life outside of work.

Having said that, I haven’t found the on-off switch for seeing behaviours, influences and potential solutions all around me even when I’m off duty. Similarly, the public health side of my job follows me wherever I go because I am very aware of health inequalities, social determinants of health and disease transmission. I believe this angle for seeing life is both a prerequisite for a job in this field and is further strengthened by the academic and on-the-job training, so it can also become an occupational hazard if you’re not careful. To keep a balance, I try to do things outside of work where I can switch off the analytical and socially conscious part of me, and just be present in what is without trying to change it and experience being in my body not in my head.

6. If a student or someone early in their career wants to end up working in your position or similar, what next step would most accelerate them in that path?

Getting into behavioural science can take a long time because most roles, even the entry level ones, require experience applying behavioural science principles to real-life issues.

If you don’t know how to get started, the article with Umar Taj has great ideas on getting experience in a really informal way (e.g. going to a local small business and asking what behavioural problems they’d like to solve). Also, make the most of formal opportunities like Nudgeathons, extracurricular student projects, and reach out to lecturers asking if they could use some help with a project (you only need one yes!).

If you don’t have luck with these things, borrowing advice from my football coach, move to open space to create opportunities yourself. If you spot a gap and can come up with a way to create value, just do it. Worst case scenario, you’ll get an example for a job interview on how did you handle a situation when things didn’t go to plan. Best case scenario, you’ve created something that’s useful for other people. For example, Adrian Stymne and I kept sending job adverts to our MSc WhatsApp group and realised that it would be great to connect more people with these opportunities, and that’s how the Behavioural Science Whatsapp Jobs Board came about. It has grown to 800+ members in 2 years with very little promotion and effort from us, showcasing that there was a real gap for something like this. But what I really care about is that it has connected numerous people with jobs, PhD studentships, and other people who they wouldn’t have otherwise connected with – all because we followed through with a Wednesday morning idea. Dare I say, it’s been a wild success?

Fueling your work on enthusiasm is all well and good, but we all need to eat, so at some point you also need to start earning money. Entry level ‘pure’ behavioural science roles are in short supply and it’s not all that common to land one fresh out of uni. Instead, cast your net wide and find a job where you can develop your research, science communication, community engagement, project and stakeholder management skills (or domain-specific knowledge if you’re interested in applying behavioural science in a particular field). All aspects of behavioural science might not be the main part of your role, but you’re developing your foundational skills and are likely to come across behavioural problems, so you can gain some formal experience this way. Trust me, it will all come into fruition eventually – once you get a behavioural science role, you will have developed a much better understanding of the world of work and how behavioural science can add value.

7. If there’s one piece of advice you could give to your younger self or people in their early careers today, what would it be?

I wish the 24-year-old restless Riinu had listened to more Billy Joel! As he puts in his song Vienna “Slow down you're doing fine, You can't be everything you want to be before your time”, my advice would be similar: be patient and trust that it will all come in time. I’m not saying things will land in your lap without putting in the hard graft, but as most of us have 40-50 years of work ahead of us there really is no rush to get your dream job by 25. Something that’s 60% and allows you to develop your skills is absolutely fine to start with. Let things happen organically, don’t compare your journey with the others’, and don’t let the hustle culture make you feel like you’re not enough.

Thank you so much, Riinu, for sharing your insights and advice with us today!