Fancy Comma, LLC Turns 5!

By Sheeva Azma

Last month, Fancy Comma turned 5 years old!

It turns out that tackling tough challenges through my novel science skillset and getting paid to do so is my dream job. So, as the years have passed, Fancy Comma remains larger than life to me.

When I started it, I had no real plans other than to turn my skills as an MIT- and Georgetown-trained scientist and freelance science writer since 2013 into something that could bring depth to science via communications, marketing, and policy…and it’s all because of the collective vision of our team to turn Fancy Comma into something both meaningful to and useful for people.

Fancy Comma’s first five years would not be possible without our team, and in particular, the hard work of Kelly Tabbutt and Kevin Ho, who joined Fancy Comma when I started it in February 2020, just three weeks before the pandemic. Even when I had no idea where we were going, Kelly and Kevin brought ideas and enthusiasm that helped make Fancy Comma the unique science comms and policy consulting company it is today.

Kelly is a professor who teaches sociology now, and back in Fancy Comma’s early days, she was a sociology PhD student at the University of Oklahoma. Here is an interdisciplinary conversation we had on our YouTube about the role of trauma in the US carceral system and society.

We’ve had a few interesting conversations about the role of sociology in science and breaking toxic science culture, and we also wrote a blog post on “Better Science through Sociology” together.

A political science major with an MBA, Kevin Ho’s depth of knowledge and experience in both government and entrepreneurship, as well as our shared love of video games and history, has been a great asset to Fancy Comma. He and I wrote an article for The Xylom about representation and inclusivity in video games as related to the diversity in the game development teams that make them. In September 2020, just a few months after I started Fancy Comma, we appeared on the podcast Dads, Beards, Nerds together talking about our shared love of retrogaming, as well as toxic gaming culture and the fine lines walked when developing video games about historical events. Kevin also authored our first blog post, called “How to Start Blogging.”

Kelly, Kevin, and I are a great team: we have even written three books together sharing what we have learned over the past few years.

In more recent years, Fancy Comma benefitted from the help of expert science communicator and marketer Aimen Arshad, who joined our staff during the pandemic to write tweets for us back when X was still called Twitter; she has also blogged for us. I’m grateful for her eternal optimism about Fancy Comma’s success, as well for her helping us out with backend blog issues during a particularly busy time.

Matthew Bow, my high school classmate, also joined Fancy Comma in 2021. As a US Army combat veteran, he brings a refreshing and novel perspective to Fancy Comma, including in the blogs he has written for us. He’s also been a source of moral support on the days that have not been so great. It turns out that fighting literal battles translates to an actual, useful skill set in entrepreneurship that includes having a positive mindset despite any setbacks. Stuff like that is important in running a small business.

These five years are just the beginning for us. We are excited to share what we have learned over the past five years working at the intersection of science communication, science marketing, science policy, and science journalism to help empower others. Check out the resources we have compiled from our five years of existing at this intersection.

We also posted about the momentous occasion of our 5 year birthday on our LinkedIn, highlighting a few of my favorite moments from the past five years:

We have written neuroscience resources for Science Friday and communicated pandemic science when the world needed it most. We have been a brave voice for science amidst those politicizing science for personal gain, while refusing to put science on a pedestal. We have spoken out against toxic science culture in favor of making science better serve the taxpayers who pay for it, since sexism and racism are a waste of tax dollars.

We have also chatted with young people at Science Museum Oklahoma about why science rules. We have blogged about why lawyers and scientists don’t see eye to eye on scientific evidence. We’ve talked about how trauma disenfranchises those in our carceral system. Early in the pandemic, we even bartered our writing services for N95s we dropped off at our local hospital.

I am also grateful to you, dear reader, for following and supporting Fancy Comma over the past five years. We would not be here without your support.

There is so much work ahead of us, and we are here for it all, cheering on our fellow people working in this space, as well as continuing to forge our own path uniting science, policy, and communications that can help improve the way we talk about and even do science. Onward!