Ouellette's website describes her as a "recovering English major who stumbled into science writing quite by accident as a struggling freelance writer in New York City.

[5]She also served as a Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in 2008[6] and worked in New Mexico with the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop as an instructor in 2009.

[18] Until September 2015, she wrote a blog for Scientific American titled Cocktail Party Physics,[19] where she and other female contributors chatted about the latest science news: "You just tell entertaining stories and weave the science in and it’s a way of getting people familiar and interested in what is normally kind of a scary subject for them.

[3] Accepting her Humanist of the Year award at the AHA's 2018 conference, Oullette spoke of her brother's struggle with and death from cancer, saying medical professionals should not "hide behind euphemisms and platitudes" that hinder end of life decision making, and about patients' need for frankness and honesty about their prognosis.

[23] She spoke about the suffering due to the limitations of the medical profession's current understanding of pain management and the need for research, and about her support for right-to-die legislation.