It is one of the most common and costly mistakes in STEM: taking the best scientist or engineer in the room and making them a manager without any leadership training. The result is a team that loses its top technical contributor and gains a leader who was never equipped for the role. Dr. Lori Ana Valentín, founder of Radiant Journey LLC, has made it her mission to break that cycle.
Dr. Valentín is an analytical chemist and management coach who works with scientists and engineers in management and leadership roles. She holds a doctorate in analytical chemistry from Binghamton University and received specialized leadership training from the New York State Police and the American Chemical Society. Her client roster includes professionals at NASA, Merck, and Estée Lauder, and she has delivered keynote lectures and leadership training for STEM organizations worldwide.
Her unique approach applies analytical rigor, investigative acumen, and high emotional intelligence to solve even the most complex management and organizational challenges. She assesses each individual’s core characteristics, including personality, communication style, and information processing, and prescribes management strategies tailored to the individual or the team. She calls it working with her favorite element: people.
Before launching Radiant Journey, Dr. Valentín spent years as a forensic chemist with the New York State Police, where she analyzed controlled substances in criminal cases, helped identify emerging clandestine drugs, and testified in court. She later moved into a lab management role focused on quality assurance before fully transitioning into leadership coaching. She also worked at IBM in intellectual property law during her doctoral studies and holds a black belt in martial arts.
Her coaching programs deliver organizational communication and performance development services focused on the areas where STEM institutions need it most: succession planning, conflict resolution, workforce development, and performance optimization. She fills her sessions with chemisms, analogies that connect management principles to scientific concepts, making her training resonate with audiences who think in experiments and data.
Dr. Valentín has been recognized by the American Chemical Society as an early-career chemist making an impact, featured by Women in Chemicals as their Woman of the Week, and served as the 2022 Chair of the ACS Eastern New York section. She received the section’s 2021 Outreach Volunteer of the Year Award and works as an ACS Career Consultant, helping chemists at all career stages.
