Someone once told me, ‘If you want to become as successful as your scientific heroes, follow the paths they took.’ For me, in almost every instance, that included getting a PhD from MIT. I was exposed to cutting-edge technologies and immersed in an environment where new inventions are made every day. The work I contributed to as part of the Jaenisch lab was foundational in many respects, and paved the way for my own lab to later become the first to generate patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).