A day in the life of a Grants Manager at the Harvard School of Public Health

Meet Keith.

Ask Keith Pankratz about nutrition, and he can talk a good bit about trans fats, the latest on caffeine’s impact on health, even the merits of exercise. But he’ll be the first to warn you that he’s no scientist – he just helps them get the funding they need to learn such critical information.

“They write the science, we put together the budgets,” says Pankratz, one of three grants managers in the Nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), who work with researchers to apply for and track grant funding for a range of scientific inquiries.

“It’s my job to submit grant proposals to get funding. I also do the progress reports, set up and close out accounts, and submit monthly budget reports to principal investigators (researchers) so they know how much they’re spending and how much they have left.”

Since Pankratz manages the research accounts of four HSPH professors, he might work on as many as 10 grant applications in a single year, with awards that can range from $10,000 to $17 million, disbursed over several years.

“One of the professors, Dr. Walter Willett, has 30 separate grants currently,” says Pankratz.
In addition to Dr. Willett, who has made headlines for his work on trans fat and for publishing an alternative to the USDA’s food pyramid, Pankratz also provides financial accounting support to Stephanie Smith-Warner, Ph.D., who is studying links between diet and certain cancers; Frank Sacks, M.D., who studies nutrition and cardiovascular health; and Janet Rich-Edwards, D.Sc., who studies environmental hazards to reproductive health.

Though he’s the “money guy” on these studies, Pankratz inevitably learns a great deal about the science.

“There are a lot of decisions to be made,” he says. “So it helps to read the science, to get a sense of how the money is being used.”

Seeing how science is funded and how research gets done is what keeps Pankratz interested in his work. He enjoys learning about the latest health information straight from the people who have made the discoveries.

“It’s interesting to hear about the science before it becomes publicized,” says Pankratz, who earned a degree in finance from Boston University in 2000. After a year in an accounting post at Wentworth Institute of Technology, he found an accounts payable job at HSPH and soon took on grants management.

“I love academia, and I want to stay here. I just like the idea of working for a higher goal, like improving global health,” says Pankratz, who has also become very active in Harvard’s clerical workers’ union.

Looking ahead, Pankratz hopes to start taking classes toward his MBA in accounting with the goal of improving some of the processes involved in research funding.

“With accounting, you’re keeping track of how money is moving within the department. In finance, you’re keeping track of how money is moving outside the institution. With experience in both, you can keep track of the money everywhere it’s going,” he says. “I want the MBA so I can see ways to make things more efficient.”