Finding a Career Through the Microscope

Cathy Harvey's fascination with fungi led her into a successful career in the mushroom industry. -- photo by Len Vaughn-Lahman, San Jose Mercury News

Typically, a microscope unlocks worlds invisible to the naked eye. To Cathy Harvey, a 25-year veteran of the mushroom industry, a peek through a microscope lens revealed a career that has taken her from compost piles to corporate boardrooms. "My dad was a chemist for Bethlehem Steel before joining the Navy during World War II, so I had been looking through microscopes since I was four years old," she says. "Even when I was very young, I knew I wanted to be a scientist." Today, Harvey is culture operations manager for Amycel, Inc., a company based in San Juan Bautista, California, that manufactures mushroom spawn for its corporate parent, Monterey Mushrooms, and other clients worldwide.

Harvey's father left his chemistry career to run several businesses in DuBois, Pennsylvania. But he instilled a fierce interest in science and the natural world in the younger of his two daughters. Harvey credits her mother, an artist, educational assistant, and veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, with giving her a strong work ethic and the confidence to believe she could accomplish anything she put her mind to.

"Cathy was industrious and had the inquiring mind that professors are delighted to work with," recalls plant pathologist Paul Wuest. "She had an interest in art, and fungi intrigued her because she found them beautiful. She brought those artistic sensibilities with her into her career and continued to develop new skills and abilities with each job she had in the mushroom industry."

Growing up in DuBois, Harvey spent hours in the dense forests and fields surrounding the town, identifying trees, flowers, and insects. Upon graduation, she decided to attend Gettysburg College. With an eye toward entering medicine, Harvey majored in biology -- until she took a course in mycology, the study of fungi. "I looked through the microscope and saw the structures of different types of fungi, and I was hooked," she recalls. "To see that kind of diversity was fascinating."

Harvey graduated from Gettysburg in 1975 and landed a summer job working with entomologists at Penn State's Fruit Research and Extension Center in Biglerville. She applied to Penn State as a graduate student in entomology, commuting to classes at University Park and returning each day to Biglerville to work. But Harvey soon found that the mushroom research group was better suited to serve her interest in laboratory research on fungi coupled with intensive field work. A few weeks after her arrival in 1976, Wuest suggested Harvey attend Penn State's Mushroom Short Course to get an idea of the career opportunities available in the industry.

"I was the only woman there among about 350 men, but they were all intrigued by a woman asking them questions about mushroom growing," she says. "After that first day, I knew I wanted to be in the mushroom industry. They were talking about making compost and treating economically threatening diseases. It all sounded really exciting -- like microbial husbandry."

As a graduate student, Harvey researched how weed mold and pathogens affected different strains of Agaricus mushrooms. When she earned her master's degree in 1977, the mushroom industry was vibrant. She accepted a position as an assistant scientist with Castle and Cooke, a large food company owned by Dole Foods. Harvey traveled to Salem, Oregon, to start her new job at the company's research center and production farm, where she incorporated company research into existing production systems. Eight months later, at age 24, she was promoted to grower and put in charge of 25 percent of the farm's mushroom production -- about 3.2 million pounds a year. "My crops performed better or the same as my male coworkers, so that put any gender issue to rest," she says.

"I can't say it was easy," she says of her duties supervising a 40-person crew. "Once, I came around a corner and found two women fighting each other with mushroom knives over a personal dispute. They don't tell you how to handle that in graduate school." Harvey also returned to Penn State for six months during her tenure with Castle and Cooke to collaborate with Wuest and mushroom scientist Lee Schisler on The Penn State Mushroom Grower's Handbook, a publication still widely used in many countries.

In 1981, Harvey moved to Olympia, Washington, to work for Ostrom Mushroom Farms, a small, family-owned company producing fresh and canned mushrooms. Harvey supervised the firm's laboratory operations, disease control team, and quality control team. She also managed the company's spawn-making operations. By now, Harvey had established a reputation as a top employee in the close-knit community of mushroom producers across the country. In 1985, she was asked to become spawn plant manager for Mushroom King, a California entrepreneurial startup company. Unfortunately, the highly leveraged company declared bankruptcy two years after opening its doors. "I was unemployed for the first time since I was 16 years old," Harvey says. "I was worried about surviving in California without a job, but the day after the plant closed, I was in a deli having lunch, and the president of Monterey Mushrooms came in. I went up to him and said 'I'm looking for a job,' and he told me to bring my résumé by his office."

Harvey started at Monterey Mushrooms in 1987 as quality assurance manager. She transferred to Amycel about 18 months later, where she has continued to seek out challenging experiences. In recent years, she has helped design Amycel spawn manufacturing facilities in Texas and in France. "It seems like a long way back to DuBois," she says. "I always try to visualize myself as a salmon swimming upstream. I always believe the next step will lead to another. I don't know what the next step will be from here, but I know I'll keep learning new skills, whatever they may be."