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Christopher P. Thornton (Wed)

June 12, 2014 By Christopher Thornton

My “Hump Day” started in the worst possible way – with a Fire and Security Drill – that saw the entire building-full of people stream out onto the sidewalk and stand around for what felt like hours.  Having been through a school fire when I was young, and numerous earthquakes since then (including in this office building back in 2012), it’s not hard to figure out what to do when the alarm goes off.  But apparently we need to practice.  A lot.

I had a really great lunch meeting today with a PhD’d ecologist in my department who oversees our international grant programs.  This colleague is about 15 years older than I, and has years of experience in grant-making and international NGOs.  It’s always fascinating to talk to him about grant-making at other organizations, and his NGO work in Singapore and Indonesia.  As someone fresh out of academia (well, four years ago, but who’s counting?), it’s always helpful for me to speak with other PhDs in the grant-making field to hear about how they’ve navigated their careers.

I spent the rest of my Wednesday continuing to work through this metric analysis of gender bias (or not) in our grant making.  I have to finish crunching the numbers before I can say anything conclusive, but if there proves to be an interesting (and possibly disturbing) trend in the findings, we’ll need to have an important discussion internally about the possible causes.

Christopher P. Thornton (Tues)
Christopher P. Thornton (Thurs)

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Christopher Thornton, PhD

Lead Program Officer
Research, Conservation, and Exploration
National Geographic Society

PhD, Anthropology

The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Metallurgy of Tepe Hissar, Northeast Iran: A Challenge to the ‘Levantine Paradigm’

University of Pennsylvania, 2009

Connect with Christopher

The best career advice I ever received:

If you never ask, then you'll never get.

My professional philosophy in a nutshell:

If you aren't excited to get out of bed in the morning, then you're in the wrong job.

Christopher's "Week in the Life"

  • Christopher P. Thornton | One Year Later
  • Christopher P. Thornton (Fri)
  • Christopher P. Thornton (Thurs)
  • Christopher P. Thornton (Wed)
  • Christopher P. Thornton (Tues)
  • Christopher P. Thornton (Mon)
  • Christopher P. Thornton | National Geographic Society

If I knew then what I know now, I would…

... have cast my jobs net wider from the beginning.

More Non-Profit Bloggers

  • Maria Lahuerta | ICAP
  • Hanna Griff-Sleven | Museum at Eldridge Street
  • Pallavi Phartiyal | Union of Concerned Scientists
  • Christopher P. Thornton | National Geographic Society
  • Tony Kireopoulos | National Council of Churches
  • Rosemary G. Feal | Modern Language Association
  • Joseph Shahadi | The Art of Brooklyn
  • Sara Ogger | New York Council for the Humanities
  • Sean Carson | Berkeley Art Museum

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