While I was still in graduate school, a fellow student called me “true believer.” I ran into her at the library, midway through a day of writing and research at the graduate carrels. She meant that I seemed like the type who was determined to make a career out of academia, no matter what. At […]
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Alison Fisher | CloudBase Services
I chose Plant Biology as a field for graduate study because I loved the class work and I envisioned a career solving environmental problems. It remains a subject that excites me and sparks my imagination. About four years ago I transitioned to technology consulting and I am now a project manager and database developer for […]
Aviad Eilam | Rosetta Stone
I’m pretty sure I never imagined I’d find myself working in marketing or social media. In fact, social media didn’t exist when I was growing up, and the closest I could get to marketing at my undergrad institution was probably a degree in business or economics. Neither of these fields appealed to me enough to […]
Barbie Decker | Team Beachbody
There’s a little wooden plaque hanging up in my home that reads: Where does your story begin? I guess the story of my second and present career as an Independent Team Beachbody Coach and business developer begins as a worn out and overweight post-graduate student. Life had just put me through the wringer. With my […]
Benjamin Levitt | Birkhäuser (Springer)
I will confess that when I switched from studying poetry to studying mathematics, I didn’t notice much of a difference. This will tell you something about my sensibilities (though I’m not sure what exactly). When I announced over dinner to friends that I was leaving my graduate program in Comparative Literature, none of them seem […]
Chris Humphrey | Triodos Bank
As a kid I loved reading anything that could help me to understand the world, past, present and future. In university I studied English Literature and critical theory and learned to see the world through the lenses of feminism, post-colonialism and socialism. Intrigued by the carnival traditions which stretched back to medieval Europe and beyond, […]
Christopher P. Thornton | National Geographic Society
“Hi. My name is Chris, and I am a workaholic.” I’ve never joined a 12-step program, but if I did, this line would be the first sentence I’d utter (unless it was an AA meeting). For me, work is its own reward – something about the Protestant Ethic or American Dream or whatever – which […]
David Craig | CannonDesign
When I was invited to share my typical week on PhDs at Work, my first reaction was that my PhD is part of a former life, not this one. But the more I reflected on what I do today and particularly on what I like most about my work, the closer the old PhD felt. […]
David Hardtke | LinkedIn
In this introductory post, I will answer Admiral James Stockdale’s famous questions: If you told me the day I started graduate school in physics at Ohio State that I would today be managing a team of computer scientists at one of the leading social media companies on the web, I would have objected on the […]
Hanna Griff-Sleven | Museum at Eldridge Street
When I was senior at Grinnell College, finishing up my degree in American Studies, a friend and I used to fantasize about moving to New York City, posting an ad in the Village Voice. It would say, “Need to get in touch with your roots? Contact Hanna and Sarah and we will research your family […]
Jessica Collier | Independent Consultant
I filed my doctoral dissertation in December of 2012 and the next day went to work as a consultant for a small software company called Delicious Monster. In theory that’s true, but in fact it wasn’t quite that simple. I’m often asked about my transition from academia to industry as though it were a finite, […]
Joseph Shahadi | The Art of Brooklyn
My fantasy of earning a PhD—a life of the mind, narrow but deep, which led to a prestigious and institutionally secure position —was a powerful one. It kept me going as, red-eyed, sporadically bearded and fortified with takeout Chinese, I banged away at my dissertation. (I should note that some of my cohort took a […]
Kevin Eckerle | Accenture
First and foremost, a big ‘THANK YOU’ you to Michelle, for building the network and offering the opportunity to blog about my work week. Through these posts, I hope to give you a sense of the challenges and opportunities of being a management consultant, as well as the commonalities that I see between consulting and […]
Kristen Gwinn-Becker | HistoryIT
I am the founder and CEO of HistoryIT, a rapidly growing software and services company that works with institutional clients in various markets to help them develop and implement strategies to create truly accessible digital archives. I sincerely believe I have the coolest life. It’s a life I never would have dreamed of in graduate […]
Maria Irchenhauser | DWPub
I manage the German operations of DWPub, an international PR and media services company based in London, UK. Services offered by DWPub include an online research platform for journalists, a journalist directory, a press release distribution service, a media database and a media newsletter. Founded in 1997 by former journalist Daryl Willcox, DWPub started out […]
Maria Lahuerta | ICAP
I consider myself lucky: I really like my job. Not sure about you, but I was never the type who knew exactly what I wanted to do in life. One day, I wanted to study architecture, another day medicine, and the next journalism. Since I wasn’t able to make up my mind, I went into […]
Monique Rinere | Columbia University Advising
I have worked in higher education administration for over a dozen years. Frankly, I know that no one grows up answering the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” by saying, “I want to be a higher education administrator.” But as we know, people do end up in the field, so […]
Nanette Fornabai | PwC
My move from academia to “corporate America” reminds me of “the transitions” common to fantastic and gothic culture. I would like to be able to draw similarities of my transition to the sexier, more seamless transitions of vampires and zombies. But mine was not that. There was no on-screen bloody death, followed by two […]
Pallavi Phartiyal | Union of Concerned Scientists
Earlier this year, I spoke at the Life Sciences Career Day at my alma mater, University of Wisconsin-Madison. This was a homecoming of sorts for me as it was exactly 10 years ago that I was in the audience in that same building – a much older, shabbier version of it – listening to speakers […]
Patricia Fann Bouteneff | Citi
I am the chief of staff and resident historian (that is, the head of the research and analysis unit) at Citi’s Center for Culture. The Center’s other two units are Heritage Services (the history archives) and Fine Arts. Although the roots of our company go back 200 years, to a small Wall Street bank, over […]
Peter A. Bacevice | HLW International
I have been promising to contribute to this blog for quite some time now. Ever since I learned about this extended community of academic professionals whose careers have evolved outside of the traditional ivory tower setting, I have wanted to share my own reflections on a similar experience. My career has evolved along a path […]
Peter Temes | ILO Institute
In one of my earliest memories, I’m sitting on my parents’ bed, watching them stuff envelopes promoting my father’s home-inspection business. That was his part-time enterprise, just launching; he had recently moved in his day job from a high school science post to a community-college gig teaching electrical technology. I think that’s where my own […]
Rosemary G. Feal | Modern Language Association
I am one of thousands of PhDs who work in organizations connected to the higher education world. You’ll find us concentrated in Washington, DC, the home of big players like the American Council on Education and the Association of American Colleges and Universities, or scattered across the United States and Canada as staff members of […]
Sara Ogger | New York Council for the Humanities
As a “Week in the Life” guest-blogger I will take you with me on the road—two trips that represent one of the best aspects of my job as Executive Director of the New York Council for the Humanities. Every year our staff and board undertake an intense touring itinerary of one of the state’s regions; […]
Sean Carson | Berkeley Art Museum
I won’t lie – sometimes I’ll be crouched down on the concrete, using a roll of black gaffer tape to fix a hundred feet of speaker cable to the gallery floor, and I’ll think to myself “I’m certainly putting my PhD to good use.” But really those moments are few and far-between, and I certainly […]
Todd Gilman | Yale University Library
I have served as Yale University Library’s Librarian for Literature in English since August of 2001. In this capacity I build library collections for Sterling Memorial Library and Bass Library in all formats (print, electronic, and microform) that support the study of literature in English, Comparative Literature, Linguistics, British and Commonwealth History, Film Studies, and […]
Tony Kireopoulos | National Council of Churches
If someone were to show me when I was young the path my career would take, I would have been skeptical. The title of one of my favorite songs, “The Long and Winding Road,” wouldn’t have begun to describe it. Fresh out of college with a bachelor’s degree from one of the more prominent university […]
Tse-Sung Wu | Genentech
When Michelle asked me to guest blog, before agreeing, I looked around to see what other blogs were like. I wrote back to her, “Well, it’s not exactly as if I’m the CEO of a company I founded, nor the ED of a great new non-profit. I’m actually a cog in the machine looking for […]